page_title: Kirchberg, Rhein-Hunsrück
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Kirchberg, Rhein-Hunsrück / History
caption_attribution_description: Rathaus Kirchberg (Hunsrück)
context_page_description: Kirchberg, the Stadt auf dem Berg, called Kerbrich in Moselle Franconian, is a town in the Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is the seat of the like-named Verbandsgemeinde, to which it also belongs.
context_section_description: Archaeological finds make it clear that by 400 BC, the Treveri, a people of mixed Celtic and Germanic stock, from whom the Latin name for the city of Trier, Augusta Treverorum, is also derived, had settled here. In the 1st century BC, the Romans built a military road, the so-called Via Ausonia, from Trier by way of Neumagen, the Stumpfer Turm (“Stub Tower”) near Wederath (the Roman Belginum on the boundary between the Roman provinces of Belgica and Germania Inferior), Kirchberg and Bingen to Mainz. In what is now the town's east end, they built a settlement called Dumno or Vicus Dumnissus. This name is shown on a roadmap from late antiquity – the 4th century AD – of which today still exists an accurate copy from the 12th century, the Tabula Peutingeriana, named after its discoverer, Konrad Peutinger. In 368, the Roman poet and educator Decimius Magnus Ausonius also mentioned Dumnissus in his poem Mosella, which contains a poetic description of his trip from Bingen by way of the Hunsrück to Neumagen and Trier. This makes Kirchberg the oldest known settlement on the heights framed by the Moselle, the Rhine, the Nahe and the Saar.
  In the 5th century, Rome's holdings passed to the Frankish kings’ crown estate. From the Roman settlement of Vicus Dumnissus arose a new settlement, which no later than the 7th century got its first church, a wooden building that was likely built on the same spot where Saint Michael's Church now stands. This new settlement was named Chiriperg, from which developed the modern name Kirchberg. In 995, King Otto III bestowed upon Count of the Trechirgau Bezelin, the forefather of the Gau-comital family Berthold-Bezelin, the hitherto royal estate of Denzen (praedium Domnissa). In 1074, the family then transferred the eastern half of this holding, along with the village of Denzen, to the Ravengiersburg Augustinian Canonical Foundation, which the counts had endowed. The western half, along with Kirchberg, passed in 1248 to the Counts of Sponheim. Thereafter, Kirchberg's historical development was tightly bound to the Sponheims and their heirs. Kirchberg was granted town rights in 1259, making it the oldest town on the Hunsrück.
  When the County of Sponheim was partitioned in the 13th century into the “Further” and “Hinder” Counties, the Amt of Kirchberg passed to the former, and then once the Sponheims had died out in 1437 to the joint lordship of the Elector of the Palatinate, the Margrave of Baden and the Count of Veldenz (later Palatinate-Simmern) with the administrative seat in Kirchberg. In 1689, French troops destroyed the town and its defences. The joint lordship was brought to an end by the 1708 Realteilung (literally “material division”), whereby the Amt of Kirchberg passed, along with the Unteramt of Koppenstein, to Baden; Kirchberg became the seat of the like-named Badish Oberamt. The last Badish Oberamtmann was Baron Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Friedrich Drais von Sauerbronn, whose son was Karl Drais, the inventor of the velocipede and the draisine. From 1794 to 1814, Kirchberg was the administrative seat of a French canton in the arrondissement of Simmern; in 1815 the town became the seat of a Prussian Landbürgermeisterei (“Rural Mayoralty”) with 18 outlying municipalities.
  On 10 February 1928, the neighbouring village to the east, Denzen, the former Dumnissus, was amalgamated with the town of Kirchberg despite the villagers’ resistance to the move. Since 1946, the town has been part of the then newly founded state of Rhineland-Palatinate.
caption: Kirchberg town hall and marketplace
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