Kappel, Germany
Encyclopedia

History

In 1091, Kappel had its first documentary mention in a document from Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor
Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor
Henry IV was King of the Romans from 1056 and Holy Roman Emperor from 1084 until his forced abdication in 1105. He was the third emperor of the Salian dynasty and one of the most powerful and important figures of the 11th century...

 in which he donated holdings in the Hunsrück to the High Foundation in Speyer
Speyer
Speyer is a city of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany with approximately 50,000 inhabitants. Located beside the river Rhine, Speyer is 25 km south of Ludwigshafen and Mannheim. Founded by the Romans, it is one of Germany's oldest cities...

. The placename, the location and Roman
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....

 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 in and around Kappel, however, make it clear that the village must be much older, even if there is no proof of continuous habitation through all that time. 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...

, the village belonged to the “Further” County 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...

. Beginning in 1794, Kappel lay under French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 rule. In 1814 it was assigned to the Kingdom of Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...

 at the Congress of Vienna
Congress of Vienna
The Congress of Vienna was a conference of ambassadors of European states chaired by Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, and held in Vienna from September, 1814 to June, 1815. The objective of the Congress was to settle the many issues arising from the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars,...

. Since 1946, it has been part of the then newly founded state
States of Germany
Germany is made up of sixteen which are partly sovereign constituent states of the Federal Republic of Germany. Land literally translates as "country", and constitutionally speaking, they are constituent countries...

 of 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 ....

.

Right near the staggered intersection of Kastellauner Straße and Kirchberger Straße – a spot known as the Dreispitz (“three-point” or “tricorne”) – lies the village centre with the old Evangelical
Evangelical Church in Germany
The Evangelical Church in Germany is a federation of 22 Lutheran, Unified and Reformed Protestant regional church bodies in Germany. The EKD is not a church in a theological understanding because of the denominational differences. However, the member churches share full pulpit and altar...

 church from 1747 (as it says on the iron brackets on the tower) with mediaeval
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...

 wall components, the bakehouse (called the Backes, a variant of the usual German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 word Backhaus) with its upper floor that housed the Catholic school’s school room and teacher’s dwelling until 1849, and two of the village’s biggest homesteads with a guest parlour and guestrooms to let.

On into the 1950s, the innkeeper was one of the few who still owned horses. Baptist, the farmhand (possibly the only one in the village in those days) at the homestead zur Krone, now given up as an agricultural
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...

 concern but now restored as the municipality’s Heimathaus (local museum
Local museum
A local museum is a museum that covers local history. Its collection normally includes objects with a local connection of some sort. Such museums are often small in nature and have a low budget for their running costs...

), rode and worked with a horse and a draught ox, while most small farmers did the same with their dairy cows
Dairy cattle
Dairy cattle are cattle cows bred for the ability to produce large quantities of milk, from which dairy products are made. Dairy cows generally are of the species Bos taurus....

.

An Evangelical one-room school
One-room school
One-room schools were commonplace throughout rural portions of various countries including the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Ireland and Spain in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In most rural and small town schools, all of the students met in a single room...

 was built in 1913, after the Gothic Revival
Gothic Revival architecture
The Gothic Revival is an architectural movement that began in the 1740s in England...

 Catholic church had been built nearby in 1898 and 1899. The last Catholic school in the village dated only from the time after the First World War, indeed from 1928, well into Weimar times
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...

. Today there are no longer any schools in Kappel. The last one, which was run as an interdenominational primary school, was dissolved on 1 August 1971. The church, which today is Evangelical, served from 1688 to 1898 both Evangelicals and Catholics under a simultaneum
Simultaneum
A shared church, or Simultankirche, Simultaneum or, more fully, simultaneum mixtum, a term first coined in 16th century Germany, is a church in which public worship is conducted by adherents of two or more religious groups. Such churches became common in Europe in the wake of the Reformation...

. Before this time, it had long been the preserve of the Evangelicals. When the simultaneum was instituted by higher authorities, the minister moved to Würrich
Würrich
Würrich is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany...

, which was wholly Evangelical, and ministered to his congregation from there.

The relations between denominations were and still are good. When the Catholic Church was being built, many Evangelicals donated money for the bells, for which favour they were also “rung out” by the Catholic Church when they died. The Evangelical congregation, nowadays numbering 232, was autonomous and parochially tied to Leideneck
Bell, Rhein-Hunsrück
-History:In 1220, Bell had its first documentary mention in the directory of yearly payments to the Archbishopric of Trier, the liber annalium. Even so, Bell is a much older settlement. The name itself is pre-Germanic, being a Celtic word for a hill or a settlement in the heights...

 beginning in 1852, which had its own church, but no rectory. The Evangelical minister, who had taken up residence in Kappel once again in 1854, was responsible not only for his local parish, but also for Evangelicals in the “diaspora” – the overwhelmingly Catholic centres stretching down to the Moselle. Since 1976, Kappel has had no Evangelical minister and is now parochially tied to Kirchberg
Kirchberg, Rhein-Hunsrück
-History:Archaeological finds make it clear that by 400 BC, the Treveri, a people of mixed Celtic and Germanic stock, from whom the Latin name for the city of Trier, Augusta Treverorum, is also derived, had settled here...

. The post of Catholic priest
Priesthood (Catholic Church)
The ministerial orders of the Catholic Church include the orders of bishops, deacons and presbyters, which in Latin is sacerdos. The ordained priesthood and common priesthood are different in function and essence....

 has been vacant since 1981, and the parish was in at first Biebern
Biebern
Biebern is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany...

’s hands, and is now in Kirchberg’s.

Up until the 1960s, Kappel was still wholly characterized by 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...

. Out of the 111 households here in 1949, 80 were farming households, of which only 8 held lands greater in area than 10 ha. Kappel had then 281 Protestant
Protestantism
Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...

 and 194 Catholic inhabitants. There were also then still a Kolonialwarengeschäft (a shop that sold “colonial” – that is, from outside Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 – goods such as sugar
Sugar
Sugar is a class of edible crystalline carbohydrates, mainly sucrose, lactose, and fructose, characterized by a sweet flavor.Sucrose in its refined form primarily comes from sugar cane and sugar beet...

 and coffee
Coffee
Coffee is a brewed beverage with a dark,init brooo acidic flavor prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant, colloquially called coffee beans. The beans are found in coffee cherries, which grow on trees cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia,...

) in the village centre, and another small grocer’s shop on what is now called Kirchberger Straße. The stationer’s shop was next to the Catholic school. As well, there were a postal coach station in the Lower Village on what is now called Zeller Straße and a third inn on Waldgasse (“Forest Lane”).

Given the appreciable earnings from forest holdings, a new municipal centre, considered quite modern at the time, could be built in the 1950s. It had a fire station
Fire station
A fire station is a structure or other area set aside for storage of firefighting apparatus , personal protective equipment, fire hose, fire extinguishers, and other fire extinguishing equipment...

, a sugar beet
Sugar beet
Sugar beet, a cultivated plant of Beta vulgaris, is a plant whose tuber contains a high concentration of sucrose. It is grown commercially for sugar production. Sugar beets and other B...

 syrup kitchen, a storage facility for large pieces of equipment used to steam, freeze and wash potato
Potato
The potato is a starchy, tuberous crop from the perennial Solanum tuberosum of the Solanaceae family . The word potato may refer to the plant itself as well as the edible tuber. In the region of the Andes, there are some other closely related cultivated potato species...

es and even extra dwelling space upstairs for ethnic German refugees 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...

 after the Second World War.

Work on a newer municipal centre began in 1965 because the citizens of Kappel and the local clubs wanted a venue big enough for family celebrations and events. A kindergarten
Kindergarten
A kindergarten is a preschool educational institution for children. The term was created by Friedrich Fröbel for the play and activity institute that he created in 1837 in Bad Blankenburg as a social experience for children for their transition from home to school...

 was also planned for this new building, but this never came about. The demand for a slaughterhouse
Slaughterhouse
A slaughterhouse or abattoir is a facility where animals are killed for consumption as food products.Approximately 45-50% of the animal can be turned into edible products...

 was likewise taken into account and a fully equipped slaughterhouse was integrated into the complex. The building was widely renovated and converted in 1997 and 1998. A kindergarten for two groups had been completed in the summer of 1993 (an earlier one had been built onto the Evangelical rectory in the 1950s).

Vanished villages

Within Kappel’s municipal limits, or at them, is a whole series of former village sites that were forsaken even by 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...

, although their names live on, now applied to the rural cadastral areas that are left where the villages once stood: Kyr, Kyrweiler (in older sources also called Kerweiler), Mörßberg, Rittelhausen, Langerode, Selze and Beinhausen. Kyrweiler, together with Rohrbach
Rohrbach, Rhein-Hunsrück
Rohrbach is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany...

, Werschweiler near Dickenschied and Dickenschied
Dickenschied
-History:-Prehistory and early history:The Dickenschied area was settled as early as the New Stone Age, as witnessed by finds in the neighbouring municipalities of Woppenroth and Gemünden...

 itself, had to contribute to the maintenance of the newly instituted Dickenschied Pfarrvikarie (a parishlike body with its own priest) beginning in 1317.

Municipal council

The council is made up of 12 council members, who were elected by majority vote
Plurality 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.

Coat of arms

The German blazon reads: Über Blau-Gold geschachteltem Schildfuß in Silber eine schwarze Kapelle.

The municipality’s arms
Coat 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 in English heraldic
Heraldry
Heraldry is the profession, study, or art of creating, granting, and blazoning arms and ruling on questions of rank or protocol, as exercised by an officer of arms. Heraldry comes from Anglo-Norman herald, from the Germanic compound harja-waldaz, "army commander"...

 language be described thus: A base countercompony azure and Or above which argent a chapel sable.

The base “countercompony” (that is, with two chequered rows) is inspired by the “chequy” arms borne by the Counts 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...

 and refers to the village’s former allegiance to the “Further” County of Sponheim. The main charge
Charge (heraldry)
In heraldry, a charge is any emblem or device occupying the field of an escutcheon . This may be a geometric design or a symbolic representation of a person, animal, plant, object or other device...

 in these arms, the chapel
Chapel
A chapel is a building used by Christians as a place of fellowship and worship. It may be part of a larger structure or complex, such as a church, college, hospital, palace, prison or funeral home, located on board a military or commercial ship, or it may be an entirely free-standing building,...

, is canting
Canting arms
Canting arms are heraldic bearings that represent the bearer's name in a visual pun or rebus. The term cant came into the English language from Anglo-Norman cant, meaning song or singing, from Latin cantāre, and English cognates include canticle, chant, accent, incantation and recant.Canting arms –...

 for the municipality’s name: “chapel” is Kapelle in German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

, pronounced somewhat differently from the name Kappel, but still similar.

Buildings

The following are listed buildings or sites 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 ....

’s Directory of Cultural Monuments:
  • Evangelical
    Evangelical Church in Germany
    The Evangelical Church in Germany is a federation of 22 Lutheran, Unified and Reformed Protestant regional church bodies in Germany. The EKD is not a church in a theological understanding because of the denominational differences. However, the member churches share full pulpit and altar...

     parish church, Kastellauner Straße 7 – Baroque
    Baroque architecture
    Baroque architecture is a term used to describe the building style of the Baroque era, begun in late sixteenth century Italy, that took the Roman vocabulary of Renaissance architecture and used it in a new rhetorical and theatrical fashion, often to express the triumph of the Catholic Church and...

     aisleless church
    Aisleless church
    An Aisleless church is a single-nave church building that consists of a single hall-like room. While similar to the hall church, the aisleless church lacks aisles or passageways either side of the nave separated from the nave by colonnades or arcades, a row of pillars or columns...

    , marked 1747 (see also below)
  • Catholic Parish Church of the Holy Trinity
    Trinity
    The Christian doctrine of the Trinity defines God as three divine persons : the Father, the Son , and the Holy Spirit. The three persons are distinct yet coexist in unity, and are co-equal, co-eternal and consubstantial . Put another way, the three persons of the Trinity are of one being...

     (Pfarrkirche Hl. Dreifaltigkeit), Kastellauner Straße 3 – Gothic Revival
    Gothic Revival architecture
    The Gothic Revival is an architectural movement that began in the 1740s in England...

     hall church
    Hall church
    A hall church is a church with nave and side aisles of approximately equal height, often united under a single immense roof. The term was first coined in the mid-19th century by the pioneering German art historian Wilhelm Lübke....

    , 1898/1899, architect Eduard Endler, Cologne
    Cologne
    Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...

     (see also below)
  • Kastellauner Straße 4 – local history museum; stately building with hipped mansard roof
    Mansard roof
    A mansard or mansard roof is a four-sided gambrel-style hip roof characterized by two slopes on each of its sides with the lower slope at a steeper angle than the upper that is punctured by dormer windows. The roof creates an additional floor of habitable space, such as a garret...

    , timber-frame
    Timber framing
    Timber framing , or half-timbering, also called in North America "post-and-beam" construction, is the method of creating structures using heavy squared off and carefully fitted and joined timbers with joints secured by large wooden pegs . It is commonplace in large barns...

    , partly slated, early 19th century
  • Kastellauner Straße 5 – bakehouse; plastered building, partly slated, ground-floor hall, marked 1882; the back with half-hipped roof, timber-frame, 1910/1920
  • Kastellauner Straße 17 – former Evangelical rectory; plastered building, marked 1907 (see also below)
  • Kirchberger Straße 7 – building with hipped mansard roof, timber framing slated, early 19th century; votive cross, marked 1824
  • Zeller Straße 7 – timber-frame house, 18th or 19th century, stable marked 1881; whole complex of buildings
  • Zeller Straße 11 – building with hipped mansard roof, timber framing slated, 18th century; whole complex of buildings
  • Graveyard, eastnortheast of Kappel, east of Bundesstraße
    Bundesstraße
    Bundesstraße , abbreviated B, is the denotation for German and Austrian national highways.-Germany:...

    327 – basalt
    Basalt
    Basalt is a common extrusive volcanic rock. It is usually grey to black and fine-grained due to rapid cooling of lava at the surface of a planet. It may be porphyritic containing larger crystals in a fine matrix, or vesicular, or frothy scoria. Unweathered basalt is black or grey...

     Gothic Revival cross

Further information on local buildings and sites

The Evangelical church’s interior decoration is plain in the Reformed
Reformed churches
The Reformed churches are a group of Protestant denominations characterized by Calvinist doctrines. They are descended from the Swiss Reformation inaugurated by Huldrych Zwingli but developed more coherently by Martin Bucer, Heinrich Bullinger and especially John Calvin...

 tradition, and its original organ
Organ (music)
The organ , is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with...

 from 1900 has been preserved. This came from the Oberlinger Brothers’ workshop. The three bronze
Bronze
Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...

 bells were poured in 1779 at the Mabilo bellfoundry in Ehrenbreitstein (now an outlying centre of Koblenz
Koblenz
Koblenz is a German city situated on both banks of the Rhine at its confluence with the Moselle, where the Deutsches Eck and its monument are situated.As Koblenz was one of the military posts established by Drusus about 8 BC, the...

). Owing to their historical importance, they managed to escape seizure by the authorities for war requirements in both world wars.

The Catholic Church was one of the earliest built by architect Eduard Endler. It has mediaeval burial reliefs from the former simultaneous church
Simultaneum
A shared church, or Simultankirche, Simultaneum or, more fully, simultaneum mixtum, a term first coined in 16th century Germany, is a church in which public worship is conducted by adherents of two or more religious groups. Such churches became common in Europe in the wake of the Reformation...

.

The 1907 Evangelical rectory is built in a not very ornate style somewhere between Gründerzeit
Gründerzeit
' refers to the economic phase in 19th century Germany and Austria before the great stock market crash of 1873. At this time in Central Europe the age of industrialisation was taking place, whose beginnings were found in the 1840s...

 and Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"...

. It has brick framing around the windows, sandstone
Sandstone
Sandstone is a sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized minerals or rock grains.Most sandstone is composed of quartz and/or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earth's crust. Like sand, sandstone may be any colour, but the most common colours are tan, brown, yellow,...

 components and a representative entrance. It has stood under monumental protection since 1988.

The mill stood far downstream from the village, but was nonetheless known as the Kappeler Mühle. It was on the old Waldgasse (“Forest Lane”) where it crossed the Hunsrückhöhenstraße and used the Kyrbach as its driving force. It is nowadays under private ownership.

Local dialect

The following rhyme serves as an example of the local speech. The local form is at left, followed by Standard High German in the middle with an English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 translation rightmost:

„Kimmste noh Kappel,
do wohnt de Pere Prappel,
dä hot’n Gaul,
dä scheißt der en Appel
uf et Maul.“

„Kommst du nach Kappel,
da wohnt der Peter Prappel,
der hat ein Pferd,
das gibt dir einen Apfel – seinen Stuhlgang –
auf den Mund.“

“Are you coming to Kappel,
there lives Peter Prappel,
who has a horse,
that will shit you an apple
onto your mouth.”

Transport

The village lies at the crossing of two important roads: the road from the Rhine, Koblenz
Koblenz
Koblenz is a German city situated on both banks of the Rhine at its confluence with the Moselle, where the Deutsches Eck and its monument are situated.As Koblenz was one of the military posts established by Drusus about 8 BC, the...

/Boppard
Boppard
Boppard is a town in the Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, lying in the Rhine Gorge, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It belongs to no Verbandsgemeinde. The town is also a state-recognized tourism resort and is a winegrowing centre.-Location:Boppard lies on the upper Middle...

 to Trier
Trier
Trier, historically called in English Treves is a city in Germany on the banks of the Moselle. It is the oldest city in Germany, founded in or before 16 BC....

, the one that was later called the Hunsrückhöhenstraße (Bundesstraße
Bundesstraße
Bundesstraße , abbreviated B, is the denotation for German and Austrian national highways.-Germany:...

327), and the road from Kirn
Kirn
Kirn is a town in the district of Bad Kreuznach, in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is situated on the river Nahe, roughly 10 km north-east of Idar-Oberstein and 30 km west of Bad Kreuznach....

 on the river Nahe by way of Kirchberg
Kirchberg, Rhein-Hunsrück
-History:Archaeological finds make it clear that by 400 BC, the Treveri, a people of mixed Celtic and Germanic stock, from whom the Latin name for the city of Trier, Augusta Treverorum, is also derived, had settled here...

 to the Moselle and Zell
Zell (Mosel)
Zell is a town in the Cochem-Zell district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Zell has roughly 4,300 inhabitants and is the seat of the like-named Verbandsgemeinde.-Location:...

 (Bundesstraße 421). The crossing in Kappel is slightly staggered. Both roads are underlain by old Roman
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....

 and pre-Roman (Celtic) roads. When the Hunsrückhöhenstraße was being upgraded not long before the Second World War, it was realigned, bypassing the village to the east.

Established businesses

The village still has 5 fulltime farmers, and also 15 more who farm as a secondary source of income.

Among the municipality’s businesses are a building firm (above-ground), a fence-building firm (formerly a wireworks), an artistic glassmaking business, a poultry farm with attached farmer’s shop, a tax advisory office and an inn.

The municipality’s other workers are mainly commuters
Commuting
Commuting is regular travel between one's place of residence and place of work or full time study. It sometimes refers to any regular or often repeated traveling between locations when not work related.- History :...

 who work in neighbouring towns and municipalities such as Kirchberg, Simmern
Simmern
Simmern is a town of 8,000 inhabitants in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, the district seat of the Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis, and the seat of the like-named Verbandsgemeinde...

 and Kastellaun
Kastellaun
-Climate:Yearly precipitation in Kastellaun amounts to 755 mm, which falls into the middle third of the precipitation chart for all Germany. At 53% of the German Weather Service’s weather stations, lower figures recorded. The driest month is April. The most rainfall comes in June. In that...

, and at Frankfurt-Hahn Airport
Frankfurt-Hahn Airport
-Cargo airlines:-Other facilities:AirIT Services AG, a subsidiary of Fraport, has its head office in Building 663 at Hahn Airport.-References:*Active Air Force Bases Within the United States of America on 17 September 1982 USAF Reference Series, Office of Air Force History, United States Air Force,...

. Some commuters even go as far afield as the Frankfurt Rhine Main Region to the east or Neuwied
Neuwied
Neuwied is a town in the north of the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, capital of the District of Neuwied. Neuwied lies on the right bank of the Rhine, 12 km northwest of Koblenz, on the railway from Frankfurt am Main to Cologne...

 to the north.

Famous people

The most famous Kappeler was the Knochenflicker Pies (Knochenflicker – “bone mender” – being a kind of folk medic). The first one, Jakob Pies (b. 1860 in Dorweiler
Dommershausen
Dommershausen is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Kastellaun, whose seat is in the like-named town.-Location:The municipality...

), had “married into” Kappel in 1895. His son Robert Pies (1902–1973), was the last genuine Knochenflicker in Kappel. Both were farmers who, in the tradition of the Hunsrück Pies family, also practised chiropractic
Chiropractic
Chiropractic is a health care profession concerned with the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disorders of the neuromusculoskeletal system and the effects of these disorders on general health. It is generally categorized as complementary and alternative medicine...

, focusing especially on setting joints right again. The patients came from afar to undergo treatment. From the sometimes painful treatment supposedly came the German word piesacken (a verb meaning “badger”), but this is likely folk etymology. The Pies family’s history is documented at the Vorderhunsrückmuseum in Dommershausen
Dommershausen
Dommershausen is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Kastellaun, whose seat is in the like-named town.-Location:The municipality...

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Further reading

  • Hermann Brucker: Kappel, Entwicklungen, Ereignisse und Schicksale in einem Hunsrückdorf (1091–1991); Schriftenreihe des :de:Hunsrücker Geschichtsvereins, Band 19; 1992
  • Presbyterium der Evangelischen Kirchengemeinde Kappel (Hrsg.):250 Jahre Evangelische Kirche Kappel; Druck: Böhmer, Simmern, 1997

External links

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