Stipshausen

Stipshausen 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 on the Kehrbach southeast of the Idarkopf (746 m above sea level) at the edge of the Idar Forest in the Hunsrück. The municipal area is 71.1% wooded. Stipshausen borders in the north on the municipality of Weitersbach, in the east on the municipality of Rhaunen, in the south on the municipality of Hottenbach, in the southwest on the municipality of Morbach and in the west on the municipality of Hochscheid. The last two named municipalities lie in the neighbouring Bernkastel-Wittlich district. Also belonging to Stipshausen are the “Siedlung Heck” development and the outlying homesteads of Stipshausener Mühle, Gerwertsmühle and Lerchenmühle. At the time of Stipshausen's first documentary mention, the village's name was Stebeshusen. This changed over the centuries to Stibshusen, Steibshausen and, by 1850, Stiebshausen before settling on the current name. It seems likely that different spellings existed alongside each other at times, for although the first topographic map compiled by the Prussians in 1850 featured the spelling Stiebshausen, the Napoleonic French authorities only a few decades earlier had used the modern spelling. Several barrows within municipal limits show that the area was settled quite early on. The most important archaeological finds, however, stem from Roman times. Where today the road leads out of the village – near the playground – once stood a villa rustica. Unearthed nearby was a Jupiter Column. In 1334, Stipshausen had its first documentary mention in a church document as Stebeshusen. In the middle of this old document is the granting of an indulgence, which apparently had something to do with the building of the new, but now vanished, Saint Anthony's Chapel. A first documentary mention nevertheless has nothing much to do with a village's actual age.