Kempfeld
| Kempfeld | ||
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 Kempfeld
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Location of Kempfeld within Birkenfeld district
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| Coordinates: 49°47′28″N 07°15′35″E / 49.79111°N 7.25972°ECoordinates: 49°47′28″N 07°15′35″E / 49.79111°N 7.25972°E | ||
| Country | Germany | |
| State | Rhineland-Palatinate | |
| District | Birkenfeld | |
| Municipal assoc. | Herrstein | |
| Government | ||
| • Mayor | Wolfgang Wannemacher | |
| Area | ||
| • Total | 9.66 km2 (3.73 sq mi) | |
| Elevation | 526 m (1,726 ft) | |
| Population (2015-12-31) | ||
| • Total | 781 | |
| • Density | 81/km2 (210/sq mi) | |
| Time zone | CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2) | |
| Postal codes | 55758 | |
| Dialling codes | 06786 | |
| Vehicle registration | BIR | |
| Website | www.kempfeld.de | |
Kempfeld 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 Deutsche Edelsteinstraße (“German Gem Road”) in the southern Hunsrück between the Idar Forest in the north and the town of Idar-Oberstein in the south.
Also belonging to Kempfeld are the hamlet of Katzenloch and the outlying homesteads of Auf dem Steinberg, Herrenflur and Wildenburg.
Kempfeld was originally settled by a man named Campo. On the other hand, other researchers derive the name from the Latin campus, meaning field (and since Feld means the same, the name would therefore mean “Field Field”). This hypothesis is, however, contradicted by the dialectal name “Käfelt” and the mediaeval name cempinvelt from 1319.
In a copy of the Liber Aureus (St. Maximin’s Abbey’s “Golden Book”), which came into being about 1200, Kempfeld had its first documentary mention.
Matched by the extensive network of paths was relatively heavy settlement in individual homesteads, which belonged mostly to local people, but in almost every municipality in the Kempfeld area, traces of habitation from Roman times (roughly 50 BC to AD 375) can be found. The Romans built their houses from stone, put their dead in stone chests and built memorials to them, and monuments to their gods, out of stone. In 1901, one of these cist graves was unearthed 500 m south of the village on the way to Katzenloch. This, however, yielded no further knowledge.
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Wikipedia