Birkenfeld

Birkenfeld (ˈbɪʁkŋ̍fɛlt) is a town and the district seat of the Birkenfeld district in southwest Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is also the seat of the like-named Verbandsgemeinde. The town itself has approximately 7,000 inhabitants. The town lies in the Nahegebiet (Nahe area), to the north of the namesake river, on the edge of the Naturpark Saar-Hunsrück. Birkenfeld lies roughly 13 km southwest of Idar-Oberstein and 12 km northwest of Baumholder. Clockwise from the north, these are Gollenberg, Elchweiler, Schmißberg, Rimsberg, Dienstweiler, Ellweiler, Dambach, Brücken, Buhlenberg and Ellenberg. The name Birkenfeld has its origin in an old German dialect, Old Frankish. It means something rather like "at the field with the birches" (it is directly cognate with the English words "birch field"). From the name's Frankish roots it can be inferred that today's town arose on a spot where there was quite a noticeable stand of birch trees sometime about the year AD 500, and that it was founded by Frankish-German farmers. To this day, there are a great number of birch trees in the bird conservation area at the clay quarries. The first attestation of the name is spelled Bikenuelt (about 700) or Birkinvelt at the time when it had a documentary mention from Archbishop of Trier Egbert in 981. From this document comes knowledge that Saint Leudwinus (Archbishop of Trier 695-713) had donated to the St. Paulinus' Abbey in Trier the churches at Birkenfeld and Brombach. Archaeological finds from the Iron Age, however, bear witness to quite heavy settlement even in the 8th century BC. In the 1st century BC, Roman legions overran the area, and for 400 years, it lay under Roman rule. This is known mainly from finds made in the town's immediate vicinity. The town that is now Birkenfeld lies right on a Roman road that served as a crosslink between two important military roads, namely the Metz-Mainz road to the south and the Trier-Bingen-Mainz road to the north, which was mentioned by Roman poet Ausonius in his Mosella in AD 350, and which also corresponds along some stretches with the Hunsrückhöhenstraße ("Hunsrück Heights Road", a scenic road across the Hunsrück built originally as a military road on Hermann Göring's orders).