Bruschied is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Bad Kreuznach district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde Kirner Land, whose seat is in the town of Kirn.
Bruschied lies in the southern Hunsrück, west of the Lützelsoon plateau. The Lützelsoon Cycleway (Lützelsoon-Radweg) runs through the village.
As at 31 December 2009, land use in Bruschied breaks down thus:
Agriculture: 37.6%
Woodland: 45.8%
Open water: 1.0%
Residential and transport: 15.6%
Clockwise from the north, Bruschied's neighbours are the municipalities of Schneppenbach, Woppenroth (in the Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis), Hennweiler, Sonnschied and Bundenbach (both in the Birkenfeld district).
Also belonging to Bruschied is the outlying homestead of Rudolfshaus in the Hahnenbach valley on the road between Bundenbach and Hahnenbach.
In the Middle Ages, the village of Bruschied belonged to a great landhold of Saint Maximin's Abbey near Trier, which comprised, besides Bruschied itself, also Hausen near Rhaunen, Woppenroth, Blickersau, Kaffeld (two now vanished villages that once lay within Woppenroth's limits), Bundenbach and Schneppenbach, and was presumably subject to the Hof Hausen (the manor). Bruschied formed together with Schneppenbach a single municipal area and had its first documentary mention in 1023 under the name Prubesdervot in the directories of holdings. In 1282 it was called Probsterade and in 1426 Proistrot. Placename researchers interpret the name as meaning “clearing (—rade, —rot) laid out on a provost’s estate”. The two villages’ municipal area was at the same time in the Middle Ages a “court region”, where the Schultheiß and Schöffen (roughly “lay jurists”) exercised low jurisdiction (that is, they did not have the power to impose the death penalty) within this Ingericht. The Ingericht was itself part of the high court region of Rhaunen, which was originally under the Waldgraves’ ownership, and unlike the lower court, it could sentence wrongdoers to death.