Oberkirn

Oberkirn 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 Herrstein-Rhaunen, whose seat is in Herrstein. The municipality lies in the Kyrbach valley between the Lützelsoon (a small, wooded plateau) to the southeast and the Idar Forest to the southwest, in the central Hunsrück. As of 31 December 2010, Oberkirn's population is 333. The municipal area comprises some 200 ha of forest and another 300 ha of meadowland. Oberkirn's neighbours are Rhaunen, Gösenroth, Schwerbach, Lindenschied, Rohrbach, Woppenroth and Hausen. There was clearly a Roman presence in what is now Oberkirn, for the Evangelical church on the village's upper outskirts is built on the foundations of an old Roman villa rustica. The plain, Gothic church itself was built a few years before 1400 and houses the graves of the Schenken (roughly “Stewards”) at Schmidtburg, a sideline of that great comital dynasty from the Hahnenbach valley. In 1335, Oberkirn had its first documentary mention as Overkehr. A legend has it that Oberkirn was once named Oberhausen, and that Oberhausen bei Kirn was then known as Oberkirn.