Scheid, Germany
Encyclopedia
Scheid is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality
belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde
, a kind of collective municipality – in the Vulkaneifel district
in Rhineland-Palatinate
, Germany
. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Obere Kyll
, whose seat is in the municipality of Jünkerath
.
, a part of the Eifel
known for its volcanic history, geographical and geological features, and even ongoing activity today, including gases that sometimes well up from the earth.
Scheid is the northwesternmost place in the Vulkaneifel district. It lies roughly 1 km northwest of Hallschlag
on a mountain ridge. Its elevation is 593 m above sea level
.
word Wasserscheide, cognate
with, and meaning the same as (at least in some varieties of English
) the word “watershed”, for south from Scheid flows the Hallschlager Bach and north from the village flows the Scheider or Gonsbach. Still others derive the name from the road junction here in Roman
times, when the road from Trier
to Cologne
and Aachen
branched at what is now Scheid (scheiden means “divide” or “split” in German; this is cognate with the English word “shed” [v]). On the other hand, placename researchers hold that the name is not German at all. They derive it from the old Celtic
word keito-n, meaning “wood” or “forest” (cf. Welsh
coedwig and Breton
koadeg).
trade traffic – dating from Roman times, it is understandable that there would have been a “tollhouse” in Scheid.
According to local oral history, there was once a village of Niederscheid over on the opposite slope to where today’s Scheid is, about 500 m to the east. The village lore holds that it was wiped out by the Plague, but no written records of this event have survived.
The villagers of Scheid have from days of yore won their livelihood exclusively from agriculture
. When the Jünkerath
-Malmedy
railway was built, the dwellers of the Upper Kyll
Valley were afforded better links to the surrounding area.
At the turn of the 20th century, a grenade
factory was built 3 km from Scheid, which furnished jobs. This factory was utterly destroyed by fire after the First World War. From the late 1920s to the mid 1930s, despite the region’s generally high rate of joblessness, construction was busily being carried out. This mainly entailed the building of the (second) Siegfried Line
.
The bunker
s and line of dragon's teeth
bordered right on Scheid. On the one hand, this brought the region’s inhabitants better financial circumstances, but on the other hand, only a short time later they found themselves right at an active defensive line, for between September 1944 and March 1945, the front ran right through Scheid as the Allies
thrust their way into Germany late in the Second World War. Scheid was almost utterly destroyed in the war.
In 1927, the municipal council planned and decided, at the then mayor Josef Schröder’s suggestion, to clear 29 ha of wasteland to create grazing land for the municipality’s livestock owners. The undertaking was approved by the Bonn
Chamber of Agriculture and overseen by professionals. The cost for the whole project was assessed at 41,000 Reichsmark, of which 18,000 Reichsmark was afforded through a grant. The municipality had to come up with the rest. The project was a great success.
Flurbereinigung
was carried out between 1958 and 1970.
After the Second World War ended, half Scheid’s municipal area had become unusable for any normal, peacetime purpose because of demolished Siegfried Line bunkers and all the minefields
; there were roughly a million mines.
In 1956, the community centre was built, with a fire brigade area, and also a freezer room with 30 freezing chests. In 1964, sewerage
and sidewalks were built.
After much negotiating with the diocese, leave was granted to tear the old chapel
down. The municipality financed the new chapel with a grant from the diocese. After it was finished, the municipality had to hand the new chapel over to the parish. Along with this work, a graveyard with greenspace was also laid out.
In 1969, the seven wayside crosses were renewed so that an old tradition would not be forgotten.
In 1970 came administrative reform. Ever since then, the forester’s office, the district waterworks, the agricultural advisory centre and school, the cadastral office and the lawcourt that are responsible for Scheid, have been in Prüm.
In the early 1970s, there were 28 agricultural
businesses in Scheid; by 2001, there were only seven, only five of which were fulltime operations. Tourism
has challenged farming’s status as the municipality’s top income earner. Nevertheless, despite the great number of agricultural businesses that have been forsaken by their owners, all usable agricultural lands in Scheid are still fully used.
Scheid has rebounded from the utter destruction wrought in the Second World War. Nevertheless, Scheid’s scenery includes not only its forest and open landscape with its hedgerows, but also “dragon’s teeth” tank traps left over from wartime, stark reminders of those awful days.
at the municipal election held on 7 June 2009, and the honorary mayor as chairman.
The municipality’s arms
might in English heraldic
language be described thus: Argent a bend sinister wavy between a spruce with two lower branches couped vert and a bugle-horn bendwise sinister gules.
The spruce
tree is a canting
reference to the municipality’s name, Scheid, on the assumption that the Celtic
theory of the name’s origin holds true (“wood” or “forest”). The tree is also meant to stand for forestry, which has always been important in Scheid. The horn is Saint Cornelius’s attribute, thus representing the municipality’s and the chapel’s patron saint. During the 19th century, a small herd of sheep was kept in Scheid, the so-called “Cornelius sheep”, which served to support the chapel.
The arms were created by the Daun
herald Friedbert Wisskirchen.
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 Vulkaneifel 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 Obere Kyll
Obere Kyll
Obere Kyll is a Verbandsgemeinde in the district Vulkaneifel, in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is situated on the upper course of the river Kyll, approx. 55 km south-west of Bonn. The seat of the Verbandsgemeinde is in Jünkerath.The Verbandsgemeinde Obere Kyll consists of the following...
, whose seat is in the municipality of Jünkerath
Jünkerath
Jünkerath is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Vulkaneifel district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Obere Kyll, and is home to its seat.- Location :Jünkerath, along with its outlying...
.
Location
The municipality lies in the VulkaneifelVulkan Eifel
The Vulkan Eifel is a region in the Eifel Mountains in Germany, that is defined to a large extent by its volcanic geological history. Characteristic of the Vulkan Eifel are its typical explosion crater lakes or maars, and numerous other signs of volcanic activity such as volcanic tuffs, lava...
, a part of the Eifel
Eifel
The Eifel is a low mountain range in western Germany and eastern Belgium. It occupies parts of southwestern North Rhine-Westphalia, northwestern Rhineland-Palatinate and the south of the German-speaking Community of Belgium....
known for its volcanic history, geographical and geological features, and even ongoing activity today, including gases that sometimes well up from the earth.
Scheid is the northwesternmost place in the Vulkaneifel district. It lies roughly 1 km northwest of Hallschlag
Hallschlag
Hallschlag is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Vulkaneifel district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany...
on a mountain ridge. Its elevation is 593 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...
.
Name
The name Scheid might best be explained as coming from the GermanGerman 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 Wasserscheide, cognate
Cognate
In linguistics, cognates are words that have a common etymological origin. This learned term derives from the Latin cognatus . Cognates within the same language are called doublets. Strictly speaking, loanwords from another language are usually not meant by the term, e.g...
with, and meaning the same as (at least in some varieties of 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...
) the word “watershed”, for south from Scheid flows the Hallschlager Bach and north from the village flows the Scheider or Gonsbach. Still others derive the name from the road junction here in 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....
times, when the road from 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....
to 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...
and Aachen
Aachen
Aachen has historically been a spa town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Aachen was a favoured residence of Charlemagne, and the place of coronation of the Kings of Germany. Geographically, Aachen is the westernmost town of Germany, located along its borders with Belgium and the Netherlands, ...
branched at what is now Scheid (scheiden means “divide” or “split” in German; this is cognate with the English word “shed” [v]). On the other hand, placename researchers hold that the name is not German at all. They derive it from the old Celtic
Celtic languages
The Celtic languages are descended from Proto-Celtic, or "Common Celtic"; a branch of the greater Indo-European language family...
word keito-n, meaning “wood” or “forest” (cf. Welsh
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
coedwig and Breton
Breton language
Breton is a Celtic language spoken in Brittany , France. Breton is a Brythonic language, descended from the Celtic British language brought from Great Britain to Armorica by migrating Britons during the Early Middle Ages. Like the other Brythonic languages, Welsh and Cornish, it is classified as...
koadeg).
History
In 1276, Scheid had its first documentary mention as a holding of the Counts of Neuenahr. The document itself deals with Count Theoderich von Neuenahr’s widow Mechtildis’s and her children’s pledge of their lordship of Neuenahr and other holdings with the exception of the estate of “Greuel in Scheid” for four years to Archbishop of Cologne Sigfrid. At this time, the village consisted of no more than a few farms. The same document also held the Archbishop to a yearly payment of three Marks from the tolls that he would raise in Scheid to Wincmarcus von Gelzdorf. With a busy road – busy with mediaevalMiddle 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...
trade traffic – dating from Roman times, it is understandable that there would have been a “tollhouse” in Scheid.
According to local oral history, there was once a village of Niederscheid over on the opposite slope to where today’s Scheid is, about 500 m to the east. The village lore holds that it was wiped out by the Plague, but no written records of this event have survived.
The villagers of Scheid have from days of yore won their livelihood exclusively from 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...
. When the Jünkerath
Jünkerath
Jünkerath is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Vulkaneifel district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Obere Kyll, and is home to its seat.- Location :Jünkerath, along with its outlying...
-Malmedy
Malmedy
Malmedy is a municipality of Belgium. It lies in the country's Walloon Region, Province of Liège. It belongs to the French Community of Belgium, within which it is French-speaking with facilities for German-speakers. On January 1, 2006 Malmedy had a total population of 11,829...
railway was built, the dwellers of the Upper Kyll
Kyll
The Kyll , noted by the Roman poet Ausonius as Celbis, is a 142km long river in western Germany , left tributary of the Moselle. It rises in the Eifel mountains, near the border with Belgium and flows generally south through the towns Stadtkyll, Gerolstein, Kyllburg and east of Bitburg...
Valley were afforded better links to the surrounding area.
At the turn of the 20th century, a grenade
Grenade
A grenade is a small explosive device that is projected a safe distance away by its user. Soldiers called grenadiers specialize in the use of grenades. The term hand grenade refers any grenade designed to be hand thrown. Grenade Launchers are firearms designed to fire explosive projectile grenades...
factory was built 3 km from Scheid, which furnished jobs. This factory was utterly destroyed by fire after the First World War. From the late 1920s to the mid 1930s, despite the region’s generally high rate of joblessness, construction was busily being carried out. This mainly entailed the building of the (second) Siegfried Line
Siegfried Line
The original Siegfried line was a line of defensive forts and tank defences built by Germany as a section of the Hindenburg Line 1916–1917 in northern France during World War I...
.
The bunker
Bunker
A military bunker is a hardened shelter, often buried partly or fully underground, designed to protect the inhabitants from falling bombs or other attacks...
s and line of dragon's teeth
Dragon's teeth (fortification)
Dragon's teeth are square-pyramidal fortifications of reinforced concrete first used during the Second World War to impede the movement of tanks and mechanised infantry...
bordered right on Scheid. On the one hand, this brought the region’s inhabitants better financial circumstances, but on the other hand, only a short time later they found themselves right at an active defensive line, for between September 1944 and March 1945, the front ran right through Scheid as the Allies
Allies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
thrust their way into Germany late in the Second World War. Scheid was almost utterly destroyed in the war.
In 1927, the municipal council planned and decided, at the then mayor Josef Schröder’s suggestion, to clear 29 ha of wasteland to create grazing land for the municipality’s livestock owners. The undertaking was approved by the Bonn
Bonn
Bonn is the 19th largest city in Germany. Located in the Cologne/Bonn Region, about 25 kilometres south of Cologne on the river Rhine in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, it was the capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990 and the official seat of government of united Germany from 1990 to 1999....
Chamber of Agriculture and overseen by professionals. The cost for the whole project was assessed at 41,000 Reichsmark, of which 18,000 Reichsmark was afforded through a grant. The municipality had to come up with the rest. The project was a great success.
Flurbereinigung
Flurbereinigung
Flurbereinigung is the German word used to describe land reforms in various countries, especially Germany and Austria. The term can best be translated as land consolidation. Another European country where those land reforms have been carried out is France...
was carried out between 1958 and 1970.
After the Second World War ended, half Scheid’s municipal area had become unusable for any normal, peacetime purpose because of demolished Siegfried Line bunkers and all the minefields
Land mine
A land mine is usually a weight-triggered explosive device which is intended to damage a target—either human or inanimate—by means of a blast and/or fragment impact....
; there were roughly a million mines.
In 1956, the community centre was built, with a fire brigade area, and also a freezer room with 30 freezing chests. In 1964, 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 sidewalks were built.
After much negotiating with the diocese, leave was granted to tear the old 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,...
down. The municipality financed the new chapel with a grant from the diocese. After it was finished, the municipality had to hand the new chapel over to the parish. Along with this work, a graveyard with greenspace was also laid out.
In 1969, the seven wayside crosses were renewed so that an old tradition would not be forgotten.
In 1970 came administrative reform. Ever since then, the forester’s office, the district waterworks, the agricultural advisory centre and school, the cadastral office and the lawcourt that are responsible for Scheid, have been in Prüm.
In the early 1970s, there were 28 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...
businesses in Scheid; by 2001, there were only seven, only five of which were fulltime operations. Tourism
Tourism
Tourism is travel for recreational, leisure or business purposes. The World Tourism Organization defines tourists as people "traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes".Tourism has become a...
has challenged farming’s status as the municipality’s top income earner. Nevertheless, despite the great number of agricultural businesses that have been forsaken by their owners, all usable agricultural lands in Scheid are still fully used.
Scheid has rebounded from the utter destruction wrought in the Second World War. Nevertheless, Scheid’s scenery includes not only its forest and open landscape with its hedgerows, but also “dragon’s teeth” tank traps left over from wartime, stark reminders of those awful days.
Municipal council
The council is made up of 6 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.
Coat of arms
The German blazon reads: In Silber durch einen blauen schräglinken Wellenbalken geteilt, vorne eine grüne Fichte mit Astwerk, hinten ein rotes schäglinkes Hifthorn.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: Argent a bend sinister wavy between a spruce with two lower branches couped vert and a bugle-horn bendwise sinister gules.
The spruce
Spruce
A spruce is a tree of the genus Picea , a genus of about 35 species of coniferous evergreen trees in the Family Pinaceae, found in the northern temperate and boreal regions of the earth. Spruces are large trees, from tall when mature, and can be distinguished by their whorled branches and conical...
tree is a 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 –...
reference to the municipality’s name, Scheid, on the assumption that the Celtic
Celtic languages
The Celtic languages are descended from Proto-Celtic, or "Common Celtic"; a branch of the greater Indo-European language family...
theory of the name’s origin holds true (“wood” or “forest”). The tree is also meant to stand for forestry, which has always been important in Scheid. The horn is Saint Cornelius’s attribute, thus representing the municipality’s and the chapel’s patron saint. During the 19th century, a small herd of sheep was kept in Scheid, the so-called “Cornelius sheep”, which served to support the chapel.
The arms were created by the Daun
Daun, Germany
Daun is a town in the Vulkaneifel district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is the district seat and also the seat of the Verbandsgemeinde of Daun.- Location :...
herald Friedbert Wisskirchen.
Buildings
- Near Hauptstraße 2 – wayside cross, post-Baroque slateSlateSlate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. The result is a foliated rock in which the foliation may not correspond to the original sedimentary layering...
pedestal cross, earlier half of the 19th century. - Line of dragon’s teeth along municipality’s (and also OrmontOrmontOrmont is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Vulkaneifel district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany...
’s and HallschlagHallschlagHallschlag is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Vulkaneifel district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany...
’s) western limit – several very well preserved sections of the second Siegfried Line, 1939. - Former chapel’s old altar.