Hettenrodt
Encyclopedia
Hettenrodt is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality
belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde
, a kind of collective municipality – in the Birkenfeld
district
in Rhineland-Palatinate
, Germany
. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Herrstein
, whose seat is in the like-named municipality
.
and borders directly on the town of Idar-Oberstein
. The municipal area measures 532 ha, of which some 120 ha is state forest. The actual village itself covers 29 ha. The municipal area has a rather odd shape, which has given it its unusually long municipal limit of roughly 20 km. The village centrepoint has an elevation of 410 m above sea level
, and the municipality’s highest point, the fort near Kirschweiler
, lies at 623 m above sea level.
Hettenrodt lies on the Deutsche Edelsteinstraße (“German Gem Road”) and within both the Naturpark Saar-Hunsrück and the Wildenburg hiking
area.
times in what is now Hettenrodt, very little is known. It is likely, however, that running over the ridge set north-south between the Idarbach and the Siesbach (two small rivers), from the Silberich towards the Steinkaulenberg (two mountains) was a Roman road. Since the Romans
used, cared for and even guarded all springs
that lay near their roads, it can be assumed that at that time – about the year 1 – there was already a small settlement, or perhaps a fort, on the “Kremel”.
There is no doubt that the Sielburg, a site lying in the cadastral area known as Flur 1, within Hettenrodt’s limits, which is sometimes mistakenly called the Kirschweiler Festung (“Kirschweiler Fort”), is a prehistoric
ringwall that, as archaeological
finds have shown, was also used in Roman and Carolingian times and on into the Early Middle Ages
.
The name “Hettenrodt”, though, with the ending —rodt (“clearing”), shows that the village arose at the time of the third Frankish
settlement period. Professor Dr. Baldes writes in his local history of the Birkenfeld countryside: “In 1262, Ritter (roughly “Sir”) Wilhelm von Schwarzenberg
had serfs
there, because of whom he had disagreements with the Count of Sponheim
, whose vassal he was.”
Beginning in 1321, the village cropped up under the names Hettelrodt and Hettenrodt in feudal bonds of the Idarbann (a feudal domain), and shared fate with its outlying village, Idar. To this day, Hettenrodt’s mother church stands in Idar, and no other places in the old Idarbann show such conformity in their local speech as Idar and Hettenrodt.
Even in the Middle Ages
, Hettenrodt was already no longer purely a farming village. The areas that could be used for cropraising were small and with their sparse soil on slopes yielded less than ample harvests, especially for big families. Cloth and stocking making thus became prevailing livelihoods alongside agriculture
among the villagers, until the important upswing brought by the gem-cutting industry in the Idar-Oberstein area in the 18th century.
Since the Steinkaulenberg was right nearby, only a half hour’s walk from the village along a path, it could be that some tried their luck as quarrymen in the galleries there. Others built gem-cutting mills on the Idarbach. Chroniclers report that most mill owners whose mills were Am Katzenloch (a prepositional expression, but used as a proper name; it means “At the Cat Hole”) were inhabitants of Hettenrodt.
After the Second World War, Hettenrodt changed for the better. The gem industry was once again the basis of the local economy, as well as full employment in all other fields of business. Ethnic Germans driven out of Germany’s former eastern territories
sought housing and work in Hettenrodt, too, as they did throughout Germany. This need for housing kept growing. In 1952, the municipality built a house in which four refugee families found shelter. In 1953, two Schwedensiedlungen (“Sweden settlements”; so-called because the wooden houses had been donated by the Swedish
government) were built on the village’s outskirts, and two refugee families who had been driven out of their land moved in. These two new centres and a third one built in 1960 took the meadows and fields forsaken by smallhold farmers and put them to work. The village’s appearance changed quickly. Barn gates, which in the late 1940s were to be seen on almost every house, were replaced with garage doors; stables and barns became modern dwellings. Streets were tarred to handle the ever growing motorized traffic using them. Between 1965 and 1975, the whole village was provided with sewerage
and street lighting was modernized.
Several new building developments were opened (Birkenweg, Struthwiese, Karrenweg, Unter dem Karrenweg, Am Dicken Stein). Meanwhile, a few children’s playgrounds were also laid out. Even the graveyard underwent an overhaul. Work began on a mortuary in 1969. The graveyard itself was expanded in 1973, and a belltower was added in 1980.
In 1984, Hettenrodt became the first municipality in Rhineland-Palatinate to own its own grocery shop. After buying out the Keppler business in the village centre in 1972, the municipality had the house torn down in 1983, from whose rubble arose the shop. It was acquired by the municipality the following year.
In 1965, the former village pond on the “Kremel” was expanded into a swimming pool
, and at the same time served as the fire pond. In the late 1980s, the complex was converted into a biotope
.
In 1974, some of the inhabitants expressed a wish for Hettenrodt to be amalgamated into the town of Idar-Oberstein, but this never came to pass.
A pilot project in 1983 saw all 300 households in the village hooked up to cable television
. Hettenrodt’s population was then some 700. Since then it has risen to almost 800.
German reunification
in 1990 spurred the establishment of a partnership with a municipality in the former East Germany, Kleinneuhausen
in Thuringia
.
at the municipal election held on 7 June 2009, and the honorary mayor as chairman.
might be described thus: Per bend chequy gules and argent and vert a lime tree eradicated Or.
, Sömmerda
, Thuringia
Municipalities of Germany
Municipalities are the lowest level of territorial division in Germany. This may be the fourth level of territorial division in Germany, apart from those states which include Regierungsbezirke , where municipalities then become the fifth level.-Overview:With more than 3,400,000 inhabitants, the...
belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde
Verbandsgemeinde
A Verbandsgemeinde is an administrative unit in the German Bundesländer of Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony-Anhalt.-Rhineland-Palatinate:...
, a kind of collective municipality – in the Birkenfeld
Birkenfeld (district)
Birkenfeld is a district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is bounded by the districts of Sankt Wendel , Trier-Saarburg, Bernkastel-Wittlich, Rhein-Hunsrück, Bad Kreuznach and Kusel.- History :...
district
Districts of Germany
The districts of Germany are known as , except in the states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein where they are known simply as ....
in Rhineland-Palatinate
Rhineland-Palatinate
Rhineland-Palatinate is one of the 16 states of the Federal Republic of Germany. It has an area of and about four million inhabitants. The capital is Mainz. English speakers also commonly refer to the state by its German name, Rheinland-Pfalz ....
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Herrstein
Herrstein (Verbandsgemeinde)
Herrstein is a Verbandsgemeinde in the district of Birkenfeld, in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. The seat of the Verbandsgemeinde is in Herrstein....
, whose seat is in the like-named municipality
Herrstein
Herrstein is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Birkenfeld district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany...
.
Location
The municipality lies on the east side of a ridge between the Idarbach and the Siesbach in the VorderhunsrückHunsrück
The Hunsrück is a low mountain range in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is bounded by the river valleys of the Moselle , the Nahe , and the Rhine . The Hunsrück is continued by the Taunus mountains on the eastern side of the Rhine. In the north behind the Moselle it is continued by the Eifel...
and borders directly on the town of Idar-Oberstein
Idar-Oberstein
Idar-Oberstein is a town in the Birkenfeld district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. As a Große kreisangehörige Stadt , it assumes some of the responsibilities that for smaller municipalities in the district are assumed by the district administration...
. The municipal area measures 532 ha, of which some 120 ha is state forest. The actual village itself covers 29 ha. The municipal area has a rather odd shape, which has given it its unusually long municipal limit of roughly 20 km. The village centrepoint has an elevation of 410 m above sea level
Sea level
Mean sea level is a measure of the average height of the ocean's surface ; used as a standard in reckoning land elevation...
, and the municipality’s highest point, the fort near Kirschweiler
Kirschweiler
Kirschweiler is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Birkenfeld district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Herrstein, whose seat is in the like-named municipality.-Location:The municipality...
, lies at 623 m above sea level.
Hettenrodt lies on the Deutsche Edelsteinstraße (“German Gem Road”) and within both the Naturpark Saar-Hunsrück and the Wildenburg hiking
Hiking
Hiking is an outdoor activity which consists of walking in natural environments, often in mountainous or other scenic terrain. People often hike on hiking trails. It is such a popular activity that there are numerous hiking organizations worldwide. The health benefits of different types of hiking...
area.
History
Of protohistoricProtohistory
Protohistory refers to a period between prehistory and history, during which a culture or civilization has not yet developed writing, but other cultures have already noted its existence in their own writings...
times in what is now Hettenrodt, very little is known. It is likely, however, that running over the ridge set north-south between the Idarbach and the Siesbach (two small rivers), from the Silberich towards the Steinkaulenberg (two mountains) was a Roman road. Since the Romans
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
used, cared for and even guarded all springs
Spring (hydrosphere)
A spring—also known as a rising or resurgence—is a component of the hydrosphere. Specifically, it is any natural situation where water flows to the surface of the earth from underground...
that lay near their roads, it can be assumed that at that time – about the year 1 – there was already a small settlement, or perhaps a fort, on the “Kremel”.
There is no doubt that the Sielburg, a site lying in the cadastral area known as Flur 1, within Hettenrodt’s limits, which is sometimes mistakenly called the Kirschweiler Festung (“Kirschweiler Fort”), is a prehistoric
Prehistory
Prehistory is the span of time before recorded history. Prehistory can refer to the period of human existence before the availability of those written records with which recorded history begins. More broadly, it refers to all the time preceding human existence and the invention of writing...
ringwall that, as archaeological
Archaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...
finds have shown, was also used in Roman and Carolingian times and on into the Early Middle Ages
Early Middle Ages
The Early Middle Ages was the period of European history lasting from the 5th century to approximately 1000. The Early Middle Ages followed the decline of the Western Roman Empire and preceded the High Middle Ages...
.
The name “Hettenrodt”, though, with the ending —rodt (“clearing”), shows that the village arose at the time of the third Frankish
Franks
The Franks were a confederation of Germanic tribes first attested in the third century AD as living north and east of the Lower Rhine River. From the third to fifth centuries some Franks raided Roman territory while other Franks joined the Roman troops in Gaul. Only the Salian Franks formed a...
settlement period. Professor Dr. Baldes writes in his local history of the Birkenfeld countryside: “In 1262, Ritter (roughly “Sir”) Wilhelm von Schwarzenberg
House of Schwarzenberg
-History:The family was first mentioned in 1172. A branch of the Seinsheim family was created when Erkinger I of Seinsheim acquired the Franconian barony of Schwarzenberg, the castle Schwarzenberg and the title Baron of Schwarzenberg, in 1405–21. At this time, they also possessed some fiefdoms in...
had serfs
Serfdom
Serfdom is the status of peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to Manorialism. It was a condition of bondage or modified slavery which developed primarily during the High Middle Ages in Europe and lasted to the mid-19th century...
there, because of whom he had disagreements with the Count of Sponheim
County of Sponheim
The County of Sponheim was an independent territory in the Holy Roman Empire which lasted from the 11th century until the early 19th century...
, whose vassal he was.”
Beginning in 1321, the village cropped up under the names Hettelrodt and Hettenrodt in feudal bonds of the Idarbann (a feudal domain), and shared fate with its outlying village, Idar. To this day, Hettenrodt’s mother church stands in Idar, and no other places in the old Idarbann show such conformity in their local speech as Idar and Hettenrodt.
Even in the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
, Hettenrodt was already no longer purely a farming village. The areas that could be used for cropraising were small and with their sparse soil on slopes yielded less than ample harvests, especially for big families. Cloth and stocking making thus became prevailing livelihoods alongside agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
among the villagers, until the important upswing brought by the gem-cutting industry in the Idar-Oberstein area in the 18th century.
Since the Steinkaulenberg was right nearby, only a half hour’s walk from the village along a path, it could be that some tried their luck as quarrymen in the galleries there. Others built gem-cutting mills on the Idarbach. Chroniclers report that most mill owners whose mills were Am Katzenloch (a prepositional expression, but used as a proper name; it means “At the Cat Hole”) were inhabitants of Hettenrodt.
After the Second World War, Hettenrodt changed for the better. The gem industry was once again the basis of the local economy, as well as full employment in all other fields of business. Ethnic Germans driven out of Germany’s former eastern territories
Flight and expulsion of Germans from Poland during and after World War II
The flight and expulsion of Germans from Poland was the largest of a series of flights and expulsions of Germans in Europe during and after World War II...
sought housing and work in Hettenrodt, too, as they did throughout Germany. This need for housing kept growing. In 1952, the municipality built a house in which four refugee families found shelter. In 1953, two Schwedensiedlungen (“Sweden settlements”; so-called because the wooden houses had been donated by the Swedish
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
government) were built on the village’s outskirts, and two refugee families who had been driven out of their land moved in. These two new centres and a third one built in 1960 took the meadows and fields forsaken by smallhold farmers and put them to work. The village’s appearance changed quickly. Barn gates, which in the late 1940s were to be seen on almost every house, were replaced with garage doors; stables and barns became modern dwellings. Streets were tarred to handle the ever growing motorized traffic using them. Between 1965 and 1975, the whole village was provided with sewerage
Sewerage
Sewerage refers to the infrastructure that conveys sewage. It encompasses receiving drains, manholes, pumping stations, storm overflows, screening chambers, etc. of the sanitary sewer...
and street lighting was modernized.
Several new building developments were opened (Birkenweg, Struthwiese, Karrenweg, Unter dem Karrenweg, Am Dicken Stein). Meanwhile, a few children’s playgrounds were also laid out. Even the graveyard underwent an overhaul. Work began on a mortuary in 1969. The graveyard itself was expanded in 1973, and a belltower was added in 1980.
In 1984, Hettenrodt became the first municipality in Rhineland-Palatinate to own its own grocery shop. After buying out the Keppler business in the village centre in 1972, the municipality had the house torn down in 1983, from whose rubble arose the shop. It was acquired by the municipality the following year.
In 1965, the former village pond on the “Kremel” was expanded into a swimming pool
Swimming pool
A swimming pool, swimming bath, wading pool, or simply a pool, is a container filled with water intended for swimming or water-based recreation. There are many standard sizes; the largest is the Olympic-size swimming pool...
, and at the same time served as the fire pond. In the late 1980s, the complex was converted into a biotope
Biotope
Biotope is an area of uniform environmental conditions providing a living place for a specific assemblage of plants and animals. Biotope is almost synonymous with the term habitat, but while the subject of a habitat is a species or a population, the subject of a biotope is a biological community.It...
.
In 1974, some of the inhabitants expressed a wish for Hettenrodt to be amalgamated into the town of Idar-Oberstein, but this never came to pass.
A pilot project in 1983 saw all 300 households in the village hooked up to cable television
Cable television
Cable television is a system of providing television programs to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through coaxial cables or digital light pulses through fixed optical fibers located on the subscriber's property, much like the over-the-air method used in traditional...
. Hettenrodt’s population was then some 700. Since then it has risen to almost 800.
German reunification
German reunification
German reunification was the process in 1990 in which the German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany , and when Berlin reunited into a single city, as provided by its then Grundgesetz constitution Article 23. The start of this process is commonly referred by Germans as die...
in 1990 spurred the establishment of a partnership with a municipality in the former East Germany, Kleinneuhausen
Kleinneuhausen
Kleinneuhausen is a municipality in the Sömmerda district of Thuringia, Germany.-Town partnerships:Kleinneuhausen fosters partnerships with the following places: Hettenrodt, Birkenfeld, Rhineland-Palatinate.-References:...
in Thuringia
Thuringia
The Free State of Thuringia is a state of Germany, located in the central part of the country.It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen states....
.
Municipal council
The council is made up of 8 council members, who were elected by majority votePlurality voting system
The plurality voting system is a single-winner voting system often used to elect executive officers or to elect members of a legislative assembly which is based on single-member constituencies...
at the municipal election held on 7 June 2009, and the honorary mayor as chairman.
Mayor
Hettenrodt’s mayor is Jürgen Thom, and his deputies are Hans-Günter Müller and Bernhard Koch.Coat of arms
The municipality’s armsCoat of arms
A coat of arms is a unique heraldic design on a shield or escutcheon or on a surcoat or tabard used to cover and protect armour and to identify the wearer. Thus the term is often stated as "coat-armour", because it was anciently displayed on the front of a coat of cloth...
might be described thus: Per bend chequy gules and argent and vert a lime tree eradicated Or.
Town partnerships
Hettenrodt fosters partnerships with the following places: KleinneuhausenKleinneuhausen
Kleinneuhausen is a municipality in the Sömmerda district of Thuringia, Germany.-Town partnerships:Kleinneuhausen fosters partnerships with the following places: Hettenrodt, Birkenfeld, Rhineland-Palatinate.-References:...
, Sömmerda
Sömmerda (district)
Sömmerda is a Kreis in the north of Thuringia, Germany. Neighboring districts are the districts Kyffhäuserkreis, the Burgenlandkreis in Saxony-Anhalt, the district Weimarer Land and the district-free city Erfurt, and the districts Gotha and Unstrut-Hainich.-History:The district Sömmerda was...
, Thuringia
Thuringia
The Free State of Thuringia is a state of Germany, located in the central part of the country.It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen states....