Schwarzerden

Coat of arms

Schwarzerden

Location of Schwarzerden within Bad Kreuznach district

Coordinates: 49°51′43″N 07°30′47″E / 49.86194°N 7.51306°ECoordinates: 49°51′43″N 07°30′47″E / 49.86194°N 7.51306°E

Country

Government

• Mayor

Claudia Schneiß

Area

• Total

6.98 km² (2.69 sq mi)

Elevation

450 m (1,480 ft)

Population (2015-12-31)

• Total

243

• Density

35/km² (90/sq mi)

CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)

55629

06765

Schwarzerden 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.

Schwarzerden lies in the Hunsrück at an elevation of 450 m above sea level at the southern edge of the Soonwald above the Kellenbach. The municipal area is 58.6% wooded.

Clockwise from the north, Schwarzerden’s neighbours are the municipality of Mengerschied, the town of Bad Sobernheim (exclave, not main townsite), and the municipalities of Weitersborn, Kellenbach and Henau, all of which likewise lie within the Bad Kreuznach district except the first and last named, which lie in the neighbouring Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis.

Schwarzerden’s name is interpreted by placename researchers as meaning a settlement area with dark-coloured, humus-rich soil, and indeed the words for “black earth” are still quite obvious in the village’s name to a modern German speaker. In 1325, Schwarzerden had its first documentary mention when Prince-Archbishop-Elector of Trier Baldwin of Luxembourg acquired rights and landholds at the village from the knight Sir Friedrich of Steinkallenfels. Mentioned in 1334 was a forest with the name Schwartzerdyn that was “propre castrum Coppenstein” (near Castle Koppenstein, now a ruin outside neighbouring Henau) that the Prince-Archbishop-Elector also chose to buy. In 1355, the knight Sir Tilmann vom Stein (Wartenstein) was enfeoffed with this landhold. The Trier landholds were in the time that followed granted to families of the lower nobility as mesne fiefs. Named as feudal lords were the Family von Rüdesheim (1439) and the Family von der Leyen (1543). Furthermore, the Knights of Schmidtburg (1517) and the Vögte of Hunolstein (1555) were furnished with rights and landholds in Schwarzerden. During the Middle Ages, the village belonged to the High Court of Kellenbach, which also comprised the villages of Kellenbach, Henau and Königsau. The Lords of Steinkallenfels and their coheirs might originally have been the only court lords in this judicial zone. Through division of inheritance, sale and enfeoffments, though, the court lordship was later shared by several local lords, making the High Court of Kellenbach a condominium under joint high-court jurisdiction. In 1601, there were 14 hearths (for which read “households”) in Schwarzerden, which would have made the number of inhabitants roughly 60 or 70. By 1579, the Schwarzerden villagers were still having to pay two Simmer in “toll oats” (Zollhafer) to the Lords of Steinkallenfels for using the market at Kirn. Clear from this on the one hand is an older dependence on the Steinkallenfelses, and on the other hand a certain economic tendency on the villagers’ part towards Kirn. In 1702, there were eleven families living in Schwarzerden who were subjects of the Counts of Sponheim. In 1766, there were all together 44 households who were all subject to the sovereignty of the Margrave of Baden, who was now the rightful heir to the Sponheim comital family’s territory. In the course of French Revolutionary administrative restructuring about 1800, the village was assigned to the then newly founded Mairie (“Mayoralty”) of Monzingen in the Canton of Sobernheim and the Arrondissement of Simmern. After French rule ended in the German lands on the Rhine’s left bank, Schwarzerden passed in 1816 to the Bürgermeisterei (“Mayoralty”) of Gemünden in the Prussian district of Simmern, where it remained until the latest administrative restructuring in Rhineland-Palatinate. Since 8 November 1970, Schwarzerden has been part of the Verbandsgemeinde of Kirn-Land.

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Wikipedia