Brauweiler, Rhineland-Palatinate

Brauweiler
Coat of arms
Brauweiler
Location of Brauweiler within Bad Kreuznach district
Coordinates: 49°49′27″N 7°29′56″E / 49.82417°N 7.49889°E / 49.82417; 7.49889Coordinates: 49°49′27″N 7°29′56″E / 49.82417°N 7.49889°E / 49.82417; 7.49889
Country	Germany
State	Rhineland-Palatinate
District	Bad Kreuznach
Municipal assoc.	Kirn-Land
Government
• Mayor	Karl-Jürgen Barth
Area
• Total	3.16 km2 (1.22 sq mi)
Elevation	323 m (1,060 ft)
Population (2015-12-31)
• Total	62
• Density	20/km2 (51/sq mi)
Time zone	CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)
Postal codes	55606
Dialling codes	06754
Vehicle registration	KH

Brauweiler 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 of Kirn-Land, whose seat is in the town of Kirn, although this lies outside the Verbandsgemeinde.

Brauweiler lies in the southern Hunsrück at an elevation of 323 m above sea level in the western Soonwald foothills above the Kellenbach and the municipality of Simmertal.

Clockwise from the north, Brauweiler’s neighbours are the municipality of Kellenbach, the municipality of Simmertal, the municipality of Horbach, the municipality of Simmertal (again), the municipality of Hochstetten-Dhaun and the municipality of Heinzenberg. Brauweiler’s municipal area comes within several metres of Hennweiler’s, but does not actually border on it, while Simmertal’s crescent-shaped municipal area means that it borders on Brauweiler’s in two places, one each side of Horbach.

Many prehistoric archaeological finds from various epochs bear witness to very early settlers within what are now Brauweiler’s municipal limits. The oldest finds come from the New Stone Age (3500-1800 BC). The village originally belonged to the greater municipal area of Simmern under Dhaun, a lordly estate held by Saint Maximin’s Abbey, an Imperial monastery, and in which the Waldgraves of Dhaun exercised Vogtei rights. In the Late Middle Ages, Brauweiler was subject to the Sponheim lordship of Koppenstein. The village’s boundary alignment within the Amt of Koppenstein often led to disagreements with the Waldgraves and Rhinegraves, who had their seat at Dhaun, because territorial and judicial rights were not altogether clearly defined. The Rhinegraves’ position, for instance, was that the Brauweiler municipality outside its estate fences had neither its own municipal area nor any rights, but rather that it should be used together, for its water and grazing, with the inhabitants of Simmern. The Waldgrave and Rhinegrave of Dhaun also claimed fishing, hunting and forestry rights there. All this was argued at the Palatine arbitration tribunal, and it ruled that these rights belonged to the Counts of Sponheim. Brauweiler remained until the end of feudal times a part of the Amt of Koppenstein, which was subject to the Badish Oberamt of Kirchberg. Ecclesiastically, Brauweiler was always subject to the parish of Simmern and Dhaun. After the German lands on the Rhine’s left bank were occupied by French Revolutionary troops and administrative reform on the French Revolutionary model had been begun in 1798, Brauweiler was assigned to the Mairie (“Mayoralty”) of Monzingen. In the time that followed, Monzingen remained Brauweiler’s Amt seat. Since the Amt was dissolved in 1970, however, Brauweiler has been part of the Verbandsgemeinde of Kirn-Land.