Krummenau (Hunsrück)

Krummenau 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 Herrstein-Rhaunen, whose seat is in Herrstein. The municipality lies in the Hunsrück north of the 746 m-high Idarkopf in the Idar Forest. The municipal area is 61.6% wooded. The Idarbach flows through the village. Krummenau borders in the north on the municipality of Niederweiler, in the east on the municipality of Laufersweiler and in the west on the municipality of Horbruch. Also belonging to Krummenau is the outlying homestead of Weylandsmühle. On 20 November 1086, Krummenau had its first documentary mention in a donation document From Archbishop Wezilo. A manuscript from the late 18th century – kept at the archive of the Museum of Wasserburg-Anholt of the Prince of Salm-Salm in Isselburg-Anholt in Westphalia – is the only record of this. The original was a donation document whereby Wezilo granted Saint Christopher's Church at Ravengiersburg an estate in the village of Lindenschied and also three mansos in Runa und Crummenauwe in pago Nachgowe (“oxgangs in Rhaunen and Krummenau in the County of the Nahegau”). Such pious gestures to the church were not unusual in mediaeval Germany, but they did come with conditions. This particular donation, for instance, required the recipient to say a Mass each Friday for the donor's salvation and also to sing a Requiem for him when he died. There is some question as to whether the manuscript writer, J. G. F. Schott, falsified the document just so that he could earn money by selling it, but whatever happened in the 18th century, it is highly likely that Krummenau is older than 900 years anyway. The Romans could never feel altogether safe in the Hunsrück in what they called Germania Superior. Beginning in the mid 4th century AD, Germanic peoples were thronging into the region.