Alflen

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.[3]

Alflen’s mayor is Berthold Schäfer.[4]

The German blazon reads: In grünem Schildhaupt eine silberne Urne, in Silber eine eingeschweifte rote Spitze, darin ein goldener Sparrenschrägbalken, vorne ein rotes Hifthorn, hinten eine schwarze Muschel.

The municipality’s arms might in English heraldic language be described thus: Tierced in mantle, dexter argent a bugle-horn gules, sinister argent an escallop sable, in base gules a bend dancetty Or, on a chief vert an urn of the first.

The charge in the chief, an urn, stands for the village’s long settlement history, dating back to prehistory. In the cadastral area of Linderflur in 1823, various details of this were brought to light. The horn, the scallop shell and the “bend dancetty” (slanted zigzag stripe) are all drawn from the arms once borne by the Metternich-Winneburg-Beilstein noble family, and can be found in the court seals from 1477 and 1761. This family held the lordship in the village and also owned lands. The Weistum of 1494 guaranteed the Winneburg-Beilstein family the local high court jurisdiction as well as hunting and forest rights (a Weistum – cognate with English wisdom – was a legal pronouncement issued by men learned in law in the Middle Ages and early modern times). In 1652, the court passed to the Baron of Metternich.[5]

As a result of an exhibition organized by the Cochem-Zell district administration named On de Geman gien (in Standard High German In die Gemeinde gehen, meaning “Go into the Community”) at which were shown old communication methods and technology, the Alflen Local History Museum (Heimatmuseum Alflen) came into being. It was set up on the attic floor of the old school, which is now the kindergarten and youth group building.

Saint John the Baptist’s Parish Church with its Gothic building style and its extraordinary ceiling paintings may well be one of the most noteworthy churches in the area. Even the church’s location, surrounded by three great chestnut trees, each more than 300 years old, is a picturesque setting the year round.

The “Felser-” Haus, a timber-frame house from 1880 below the church, stood through both World Wars although it was once the target of a grenade attack. Formerly it housed a shop, but is now only a residential building.

The following are listed buildings or sites in Rhineland-Palatinate’s Directory of Cultural Monuments:

• Saint John the Baptist’s Catholic Parish Church (Pfarrkirche St. Johann Baptist), Pfarrweg – west tower’s lower building work Romanesque, upper floors and nave from after 1716, Late Gothic quire and sacristy renovated after 1716; whole complex with graveyard.
• Chapel, small aisleless church with niche relief, apparently essentially 16th century, rebuilt in 1921 as a warriors’ remembrance chapel.
• Way of the Cross – Crucifixion relief at the chapel, from 1766.[6]