Birkenfeld (ˈbɪʁkŋ̍fɛlt) is a district (Landkreis) in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Its seat is the town of Birkenfeld. It is bounded by (from the south and clockwise) the districts of Sankt Wendel (Saarland), Trier-Saarburg, Bernkastel-Wittlich, Rhein-Hunsrück, Bad Kreuznach and Kusel.
In the early nineteenth century, the Nahe River was the boundary between two tiny principalities: Birkenfeld, west of the Nahe; and Lichtenberg, east of it. The principality of Birkenfeld was annexed by Oldenburg in 1817; Lichtenberg became an exclave of the Duchy Saxe-Coburg (Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld until 1826, Saxe-Coburg and Gotha thereafter). Prussia bought Lichtenberg in 1834 and made it the District of Sankt Wendel.
After World War I, the southern half of Sankt Wendel had to be ceded to the newly created Saar Territory, and the small part remaining in Prussia was then officially called the Restkreis Sankt Wendel ("remaining district of Sankt Wendel"). In 1937 the Oldenburgian District of Birkenfeld was merged with the remaining Sankt Wendel District to form the new Prussian District of Birkenfeld.
Following World War II, on 18 July 1946 by the French Ordinance No. 8, twenty-four more villages were ceded to the new Délégation Supérieure de la Sarre, which became the new Saar Protectorate in 1947. Not until 1970 were the present borders of the district set.
The Nahe River runs through the district from south to north. The portions west of the river are located on the eastern slopes of the Hunsrück.
The German blazon reads: Geschachtet von Rot und Silber; belegt mit einem rot gezungten, golden gekrönten und golden bewehrten blauen Löwen.
The arms might in English heraldic language be described thus: Chequy of twenty gules and argent a lion rampant azure armed and crowned Or and langued of the first.
The chequered red and silver pattern was the arms of the Counts of Sponheim, a medieval county of the region. The lion is the symbol of the Counts of Veldenz.
Verband-free town: Idar-Oberstein
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The Hunsrück (ˈhʊnsʁʏk) is a long, triangular, pronounced upland in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is bounded by the valleys of the Moselle-Saar (north-to-west), the Nahe (south), and the Rhine (east). It is continued by the Taunus mountains, past the Rhine and by the Eifel past the Moselle. To the south of the Nahe is a lower, hilly country forming the near bulk of the Palatinate region and all of the, smaller, Saarland. Below its north-east corner is Koblenz.
Rhaunen is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Birkenfeld district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It was the seat of the former Verbandsgemeinde Rhaunen. The municipality lies at the Idar Forest in the Hunsrück in a sprawling, well watered hollow. The hollow separates the Idar Forest massif from the Soonwald massif. Within the village itself, the Lingenbach empties into the Rhaunelbach, which itself, along with the Näßbach, the Macherbach and the Büdenbach, empties into the Idarbach.
Kirn is a town in the Bad Kreuznach district in Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany. It is the seat of the Verbandsgemeinde Kirner Land. Kirn is a middle centre serving an area on the Nahe and in the Hunsrück. Kirn lies in a landscape characterized by the Nahe valley and the valley of the Hahnenbach, cut deeply into the Lützelsoon, roughly 10 km northeast of Idar-Oberstein and 30 km west of Bad Kreuznach. The valley floors are heavily settled in places, whereas the steep slopes in the higher areas are mostly bare of buildings and decked with forest.