Heinzenberg

Prehistoric barrows and traces of a Roman presence bear witness to an early settlement history on the small patch of ground on which Heinzenberg now lies. In the Middle Ages a small castle stood not far above the village, and it was mentioned in documents in 1152 as Hemezberg or Henzenberg. Some inhabitants, such as the Lords of Heinzenberg, played quite an important part in the region’s history as vassals of the Counts of Veldenz and the Waldgraves, and also as ministeriales of the Archbishops of Mainz and Trier. Belonging to the Veldenz holding with which the Lords of Heinzenberg had been enfeoffed was, among other things, the Vogtei of Hennweiler. There they were tasked as Vögte by their overlords with the exercise of jurisdiction, the setting and collection of taxes and other levies from the subjects and the military protection of the populace and the church. The area of jurisdiction within which the lords exercised these functions comprised the villages of Hennweiler, Oberhausen, Guntzelberg, Rode, the dale (village) of Heinzenberg and the estate of Eigen. In 1278, the Lords of Heinzenberg sold their castle to the Archbishop of Trier, who then enfeoffed the ministerial family of his time with it. Several times, the Lords of Heinzenberg were Ravengiersburg Abbey’s Schirmvögte (roughly, ecclesiastical protectors). Their coat of arms with the silver buckle hints at a kinship with the Lords of Schmidtburg. Standing out among the Lords of Heinzenberg was Wilhelm III of Heinzenberg, which was underscored even in his own time by the Latin title that he bore: Nobilis vir (“nobleman”). As a Minnesänger whose songwriting even found its way into the Codex Manesse, this member of the lordly house earned his own fame. Shortly before 1400, the lordly House of Heinzenberg died out, and their holdings were then inherited by the Knights of Wartenstein, who lived above the Hahnenbach valley. Wartenstein, the knights’ castle – nowadays a Schloss – became in the early 15th century an administrative hub of the Imperial knightly lordship of Wartenstein, to which also belonged the village of Heinzenberg. The jurisdiction in this zone lay first with the Lords of Schwarzenberg, and then beginning in 1583 with the Lords of Warsberg. After feudalism came to an end once French Revolutionary troops had overrun and occupied the German lands on the Rhine’s left bank, the French imposed a new administrative order on the French Revolutionary model. Beginning in 1798, Heinzenberg belonged to the Mairie (“Mayoralty”) of Kirn. About 1800, the village boasted only six one-floor buildings. After Napoleonic (as it had become in the meantime) French rule ended and the Congress of Vienna imposed yet another new administrative order, the Bürgermeisterei (“Mayoralty”) of Kirn, as it was now called, first belonged to the Simmern district, and then later to the Oberstein district. Only in May 1817 was it grouped into the Prussian Kreuznach district. When Kirn was granted town rights and along with them its own council in 1857, the outlying country villages became the Landbürgermeisterei (“Rural Mayoralty”) of Kirn, which was also headed by the Mayor of Kirn. When this “personal union” was abolished in 1896, the representatives of the rural villages elected their own mayor. The tiny municipality of Heinzenberg remained within this body, now the Amt of Kirn-Land, uninterruptedly through the administrative restructuring in 1969/1970, when the Amt became the Verbandsgemeinde of Kirn-Land. In 1980, the village had 50 inhabitants living in 13 dwellings in 11 buildings.[4]

Population development

Heinzenberg – a very small village

Heinzenberg's population development since Napoleonic times is shown in the table below. The figures for the years from 1871 to 1987 are drawn from census data:[5]

Year Inhabitants 1815 66 1835 66 1871 49 1905 48 1939 60

Year Inhabitants 1950 58 1961 53 1970 52 1987 30 2005 27

As at 30 September 2013, there are 28 full-time residents in Heinzenberg, and of those, 2 are Evangelical (7.143%), 20 are Catholic (71.429%), 1 (3.571%) belongs to another religious group and 5 (17.857%) either have no religion or will not reveal their religious affiliation.[6]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Heinzenberg.

• Heinzenberg in the collective municipality’s webpages (in German)