Hahnenbach 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 Kirner Land, whose seat is in the town of Kirn. Hahnenbach is a state-recognized tourism community.[ Statistisches Landesamt Rheinland-Pfalz – Regionaldaten]
Geography
Location
Hahnenbach lies on the like-named brook, the Hahnenbach, which empties into the Nahe near Kirn. Hahnenbach lies northwest of Kirn right at the boundary with the neighbouring Birkenfeld district.
Neighbouring municipalities
Clockwise from the north, Hahnenbach's neighbours are the municipalities of
Hennweiler and Oberhausen bei Kirn and the town of
Kirn, all of which likewise lie within the Bad Kreuznach district, while the municipalities of Bergen,
Griebelschied and
Sonnschied all lie in the neighbouring Birkenfeld district. Hahnenbach also comes to within a few metres of the municipality of
Bruschied (Bad Kreuznach district), but does not touch it.
History
Like the neighbouring village of
Hennweiler (formerly known as
Hanenwilare), the name Hahnenbach (formerly known as
Hanenbach) may go back to a common forename that cropped up in a
Franks noble clan, the Haganons. They were, beginning in the 7th century, enfeoffed and resident as members of a so-called Imperial nobility in the
Rhenish Hesse area. This clan's descendants are believed to have made land arable and founded settlements in the 7th and 8th centuries when the woodlands between the Moselle and the Nahe were opened up. Many placenames therefore go back to a village's owner, founder or head from whom the original homestead, or later the village, drew its name. In the High and Late Middle Ages, Hahnenbach was held by the Lords of Stein (Steinkallenfels), that is to say, the villagers were liable to the lords of that
castle for service and taxes. After Castle Wartenstein had been built by Sir Tilmann vom Stein (1357), Hahnenbach became part of the Lordship, and later
Amt of Wartenstein, which was made up of the
Unterämter of Hennweiler and Hahnenbach or Weiden. Belonging to the
Unteramt of Hahnenbach/Weiden were the villages of Hahnenbach, Weiden and Herborn as well as parts of
Niederhosenbach and Königsau. While the
Amt of Hennweiler lay under Palatine Zweibrücken sovereignty, in the
Amt of Hahnenbach the Prince-Archbishop-Elector of Trier was the overlord. Beginning in the 16th century, both
Ämter were governed from Wartenstein by an
Amtmann in
personal union. After various families from the lesser nobility had exercised lordly rights in the
Amt of Wartenstein beginning about 1400, in the 16th century, the Lords of Schwarzenberg became the sole lords in the Imperially immediate lordship of Wartenstein, and after they died out in 1583, the Lords of Warsberg succeeded them. This lordship persisted until French Revolutionary troops overran and occupied the German lands on the
Rhine’s left bank in the late 18th century. In 1688, Castle Wartenstein was destroyed by the
France during the Nine Years' War (known in Germany as the
Pfälzischer Erbfolgekrieg, or War of the Palatine Succession). A new castle was then built in the years 1704-1728.
[ Castle’s destruction and reconstruction ] During French Revolutionary, and later
, times (1798-1814), Hahnenbach was one of 12 outlying, rural municipalities that were grouped together with the main town of
Kirn to form the
Mairie (“Mayoralty”) of Kirn, which in turn belonged to the Arrondissement of Simmern. After the French had been driven out and the Congress of Vienna imposed a new political order on post-Napoleonic
Europe, Hahnenbach found itself in the Kingdom of
Prussia, and after a short time in the Simmern district (1815-1816) and then in the Oberstein district (1816-1817), the
Bürgermeisterei of Kirn, as the old French mayoralty was now called, passed on 16 April 1817 to the Kreuznach district. Hahnenbach remained a municipality within this body, which through several rounds of administrative restructuring (1817, 1858, 1894, 1927, 1940, 1969-1970) has become today's
Kirn-Land.
[ History][Statistische Mappen, VG Kirn-Land, 2009] In 1957, a glassworks located in Hahnenbach, which brought about a doubling in the village's population (to date). Many of the newcomers came from
Thuringia.
[ Glassworks ]
Population development
Hahnenbach's population development since
times is shown in the table below. The figures for the years from 1871 to 1987 are drawn from census data:
| { class="wikitable"
! Year !! Inhabitants
|
| 165 |
| 211 |
| 201 |
| 257 |
| 271 |
| valign="top" |
|}
Religion
In the 12th century, there was supposedly a
chapel in Hahnenbach, and a new church was built in the 14th century. In 1775 came the first major renovation to the church. A century later, on 5 August 1875, the church was destroyed by a
flood and could no longer be used. Worse still, many people died in the disaster.
[ Church history ] Most of Hahnenbach's inhabitants today are Evangelical. The Evangelical church, a six-sided Baroque Revival building, was built in 1948/1949. It belongs to the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland parish of
Hennweiler-Oberhausen. Further, there is a
Catholic Church chapel, a Baroquified
aisleless church built in 1933 tended by the parish office of Saint Pancras in
Kirn in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Trier. As at 30 September 2013, there are 528 full-time residents in Hahnenbach, and of those, 294 are Evangelical (55.682%), 141 are
Catholic Church (26.705%), 1 is Greek Orthodox (0.189%), 1 is Russian Orthodox (0.189%), 8 (1.515%) belong to other religious groups and 83 (15.72%) either have no religion or will not reveal their religious affiliation.
[ Religion]
Politics
Municipal council
The council is made up of 12 council members, who were elected by majority vote at the municipal election held on 7 June 2009, and the honorary mayor as chairman.
[ Kommunalwahl Rheinland-Pfalz 2009, Gemeinderat]
Mayor
Hahnenbach's mayor is Mathias Vier.
[
]
Coat of arms
The German blazon reads: Schild gespalten, vorne in Schwarz ein silberner, goldgekrönter, -bewehrter und -gezungter Löwe, hinten in Gold ein blauer Hahnenkopf über einem blauen Wellenbalken.
The municipality's arms might in English Heraldry language be described thus: Per pale sable a lion rampant sinister argent armed, langued and crowned Or and Or a cock's head couped at the neck above a fess wavy abased, both azure.
The charge on the dexter (armsbearer's right, viewer's left) side, the lion, is a reference to the village's former allegiance to the Lordship of Wartenstein, a fief granted by the Electorate of Trier to the Lords of Warsberg. The charges on the sinister (armsbearer's left, viewer's right) side are Canting arms for the village's name. The word for “cock” in German language is Hahn, and the wavy fess represents a brook, which is Bach in German.
Municipal council, on 30 November 1963, gave the graphic artist Brust from Kirn-Sulzbach the task of designing a municipal coat of arms. At a council meeting on 28 April 1964, council adopted the design that had been put forth. After consent by the state archive, the Ministry of the Interior in Mainz granted approval for Hahnenbach to bear its own arms on 12 May 1965.[ Municipal banner]
Culture and sightseeing
Buildings
The following are listed buildings or sites in Rhineland-Palatinate’s Directory of Cultural Monuments:[ Directory of Cultural Monuments in Bad Kreuznach district]
-
Evangelical church, Mühlenweg – Baroque Revival hexagon, quarrystone, marked 1948
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Catholic Church church, Mühlenweg – Baroquified aisleless church, 1933, architect Friedrich Otto
-
Graveyard – Late Baroque cross, marked 1775
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Hahnenbachstraße 15 – former Stiltzmühle (mill); Classicism quarrystone building, about 1860/1870
-
Hahnenbachstraße 34 – estate complex with Timber framing house, possibly earlier half of the 19th century
-
Hennweilerstraße 7 – complex with single roof ridge; Late Baroque timber-frame building, mansard roof, possibly 18th century
-
Mühlenweg – bridge across the Hahnenbach; two arches, quarrystone, possibly earlier half of the 19th century
-
Mühlenweg – parish hall; quarrystone, partly slated timber framing, Heimatstil, 1939, hose-drying tower
-
Bridge across the Hahnenbach, on Kreisstraße 27 – two arches, quarrystone, 19th century
Clubs
The following clubs are active in Hahnenbach:[ Clubs]
-
Angelsportverein Hahnenbach — angling club
-
Förderverein der freiwilligen Feuerwehr — volunteer fire brigade promotional association
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Förderverein St. Nikolaus Kapelle — Saint Nicholas’s Chapel promotional association
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Sportförderungsverein 1990 Hahnenbach e.V. — sport promotional association
-
Turnverein Hahnenbach 1961 e.V. — Gymnastics club
Economy and infrastructure
Transport
Running by Hahnenbach to the south is Bundesstraße 41. Serving Kirn is a railway station on the Nahe Valley Railway (Bingen–Saarbrücken).
Established businesses
-
ESO Electronic Service Ottenbreit GmbH
External links
