Bruchweiler

Bruchweiler
Coat of arms
Bruchweiler
Location of Bruchweiler within Birkenfeld district
Coordinates: 49°47′53″N 7°13′26″E / 49.798°N 7.224°E / 49.798; 7.224Coordinates: 49°47′53″N 7°13′26″E / 49.798°N 7.224°E / 49.798; 7.224
Country	Germany
State	Rhineland-Palatinate
District	Birkenfeld
Municipal assoc.	Herrstein
Government
• Mayor	Horst Scherer
Area
• Total	8.13 km2 (3.14 sq mi)
Elevation	555 m (1,821 ft)
Population (2015-12-31)
• Total	502
• Density	62/km2 (160/sq mi)
Time zone	CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)
Postal codes	55758
Dialling codes	06786
Vehicle registration	BIR
Website	www.bruchweiler.de

Bruchweiler 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 of Herrstein, whose seat is in the like-named municipality.

The municipality lies on the south slope of the Steingerüttelkopf, which at 756 m above sea level is one of the highest peaks in the Hunsrück. Much of the local countryside is wooded, and Bruchweiler’s elevation of 555 m above sea level makes it one of Rhineland-Palatinate’s highest municipalities. Bruchweiler also lies on the Deutsche Edelsteinstraße (“German Gem Road”).

Yearly precipitation in Bruchweiler amounts to 831 mm, which is rather high, falling into the highest third of the precipitation chart for all Germany. At 69% of the German Weather Service’s weather stations, lower figures are recorded. The driest month is April. The most rainfall comes in December. In that month, precipitation is 1.4 times what it is in April. Precipitation varies only slightly, with rainfall quite evenly spread over the whole year.

About 500 BC, the Treveri, a people of mixed Celtic and Germanic stock, from whom the Latin name for the city of Trier, Augusta Treverorum, is also derived, settled here. Their area of settlement was framed by the rivers Ahr, Rhine and Nahe. All indications are that it was these Treveri who built the ringwalls at the Wildenburg as a refuge castle when, in the last century before the Christian Era, they were beset first by Germanic tribes and then later by the Romans, who under Julius Caesar’s leadership enjoyed a number of successes that led to Roman hegemony throughout the Treveri’s homeland. It became the Roman province of Belgica, whose boundary ran from somewhere near the Stumpfer Turm, where the important Celtic-Roman centre of Belginum lay, southwards to the ridge of the Idar Forest, along the ridge for a way before turning southwards again somewhere between Sensweiler and Wirschweiler, whence it ran to the Idarbach, crossed it by way of the Ringkopf, then running down the Siesbach to the river Nahe. While the lands west of this line formed Belgica, the lands to the east, including Bruchweiler, belonged to the Roman province of Germania Superior, whose capital was at Mogontiacum (Mainz). In later centuries, the border alignment mentioned above became the boundary between the Nahegau and the Moselgau (a territory that stretched along the Moselle), and after the 843 Treaty of Verdun, the boundary between Middle Francia and East Francia, two of the three entities into which Charlemagne’s old empire was split by that treaty.