Veitsrodt

Veitsrodt
Coat of arms
Veitsrodt
Location of Veitsrodt within Birkenfeld district
Coordinates: 49°45′23″N 07°18′07″E / 49.75639°N 7.30194°E / 49.75639; 7.30194Coordinates: 49°45′23″N 07°18′07″E / 49.75639°N 7.30194°E / 49.75639; 7.30194
Country	Germany
State	Rhineland-Palatinate
District	Birkenfeld
Municipal assoc.	Herrstein
Government
• Mayor	Bernd Hartmann
Area
• Total	7.94 km2 (3.07 sq mi)
Elevation	460 m (1,510 ft)
Population (2015-12-31)
• Total	677
• Density	85/km2 (220/sq mi)
Time zone	CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)
Postal codes	55758
Dialling codes	06781
Vehicle registration	BIR
Website	www.veitsrodt.de

Veitsrodt 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 at the edge of the Hunsrück on the Deutsche Edelsteinstraße (“German Gem Road”), roughly 5 km north of Idar-Oberstein.

Veitsrodt borders in the north on the municipality of Herborn, in the east on the municipality of Niederwörresbach, in the south on the municipality of Vollmersbach, in the west on the town of Idar-Oberstein and the municipality of Kirschweiler and in the northwest on the municipality of Kempfeld. Veitsrodt also meets the town of Idar-Oberstein elsewhere, at a single point in the southeast.

Also belonging to Veitsrodt are the outlying homesteads of Lindenhof, Strudthof and Ziegelhütte.

Veitsrodt most likely arose in Frankish times, in the 9th or 10th century. In the early 13th century, Veitsrodt had its first documentary mention in a directory of fiefs kept by Saint Maximin’s Abbey in Trier. The village was then known simply as Rodt, which was descriptive of how it had arisen, namely as a clearing (Modern High German: Rodung) in the forest. Veit meant the same as Vogt (“reeve”), and it can therefore easily be assumed that the village’s name stemmed from the Waldgravial Vögte (the plural of Vogt) within whose administrative holdings Veitsrodt found itself for centuries. On the other hand, the church in Veitsrodt was consecrated to Saint Vitus (called Veit in German), which would mean that the name meant “Vitus’s Clearing”. Saint Maximin’s Abbey held the church patronage rights and the tithes in Veitsrodt at the beginning of the 13th century.