Product Code Database
Hinterweiler is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Vulkaneifel district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Daun, whose seat is in the like-named town.
Witnessed in documents is Hinterweiler's early name before the year 349, which was simply Whyler, which meant “place” (its German language descendant, Weiler, means “hamlet”), and it was also certain that the neighbouring place was also called Whyler. Whether the modern name Hinterweiler was derived from hinter Whyler (“behind Whyler”) is unknown. This is presumed, but there is no proof.
Within the Roman ruin site “Im Kloster” (“In the Monastery”), it has also been confirmed that there is a Dry-stone wall grave, although with no grave goods, which could be from Merovingian times. In Feudalism times the village belonged to the Amt of Daun in the Archbishopric of Trier. In times, Hinterweiler was a municipality in the Bürgermeisterei (“Mayoralty”) of Rockeskyll.
From the Middle Ages until about 1930, millstones were mined at the foot of the Ernstberg. Hinterweiler’s history – Click on Information, and then on Ortsinformationen.
Even today, church records stand as a main reference source. According to them, Hinterweiler was home to three smaller churches in the Middle Ages, of which only one chapel – the current building dates from 1860 – remains today. At that time, a population figure of 356 souls was counted within the parish. Higher than today's figure, too, was the number of hearths – and this surely meant households – in the village. Hinterweiler’s prehistory and early history – Click on Kultur, and then on Vorgeschichtliches/Urgeschichtliches.
The municipality's arms might in English Heraldry language be described thus: Per fess abased embowed, argent a demi-eagle sable armed and langued gules and vert a millstone of the first surmounted by three ears of wheat radiating from the hole Or.
The parting is meant to represent a mountain, the nearly 700 m-high Ernstberg. The charge below the line of partition, the millstone, represents the former millstone quarry at the foot of this mountain. The three ears of wheat stand for what was for centuries the village's main livelihood: agriculture. The eagle is Saint John the Evangelist's attribute, thus representing the municipality's and the church's patron saint.
|
|
