Kellenbach is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Bad Kreuznach district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde Kirner Land, whose seat is in the town of Kirn.
Geography
Location Kellenbach lies in the southern Hunsrück at the edges of the Soonwald and Lützelsoon hills. The eponymous brook, the Kellenbach, flows through the village and empties some 8 km downstream near Simmertal into the Nahe. The greatest elevation within municipal limits, at 580 m above sea level, is the Blickenstein.
Neighbouring municipalities Clockwise from the north, Kellenbach's neighbours are the municipalities of Königsau, Henau, Schwarzerden, Weitersborn, Simmertal, Brauweiler, Heinzenberg, Hennweiler and Schlierschied. Henau and Schlierschied both lie in the neighbouring Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis, whereas all the others likewise lie within the Bad Kreuznach district.
Constituent communities Also belonging to Kellenbach are the outlying homesteads of Forsthaus Lützelsoon, Gerhardsmühle and Rippas-Mühle.Statistisches Landesamt Rheinland-Pfalz – Amtliches Verzeichnis der Gemeinden und Gemeindeteile , Seite 15 (PDF; 2,3 MB)
History
Antiquity Sporadic prehistoric and early historic archaeological finds make it clear that there were already people living in the Kellenbach area very early on.Antiquity
Middle Ages About 1200, Kellenbach had its first documentary mention. Theoderich vom Stein built a castle house at the village and is said to have been the father of the line of the Lords of Kellenbach, a sideline of the Lords of Stein (whose seat was at Castle Steinkallenfels, which still exists, albeit as a ruin). Until the early 18th century, the village was the seat of a court and administrative region, belonging to which were also the neighbouring villages of Henau, Königsau, Schwarzerden and, for a time, Weitersborn. In the 1560 Kellenbacher Weistum (cognate with English wisdom, this was a legal pronouncement issued by men learned in law in the Middle Ages and early modern times), the Lords of Steinkallenfels and their coheirs were named as lords of the court at the Kellenbach High Court. Meanwhile, however, the landlordship and jurisdiction was divided into four lordly shares by division of inheritance, sale and enfeoffments, so that the Kellenbach High Court was a Ganerbschaft (a joint holding or inheritance), with joint high jurisdiction. A one-fourth share of the court was held by the Amt of Koppenstein. This share had been acquired by Count Simon III of Sponheim in 1403 from Johann von Treis. The other three fourths belonged to the Knights of Stein-Kallenfels, the Knights of Schmidtburg and the Lords of Kellenbach.Middle Ages
Modern times Beginning in 1707, the landlord was the Margrave of Baden as heir to the Sponheim holdings. About 1750, the knightly estate, with and area of 651 MorgenEstate's area (roughly 2 600 m2), was sold to the former Amtmann at the neighbouring castle, Wartenstein, in the Hahnenbach valley, Franz Philipp Renauld. In the 18th century the village belonged to the Badish Oberamt of Kirchberg. After French Revolutionary troops had overrun and occupied the German lands on the Rhine’s left bank, Kellenbach, along with all the lands that the French had occupied, was absorbed into the French state. In 1794, the region was administratively reorganized according to the French Revolutionary model, putting Kellenbach in the Mairie (“Mayoralty”) of Kirn and the Arrondissement of Simmern. About 1800, there were 40 houses in Kellenbach, 4 of which had been expanded by having upper floors built onto them. The last Lord of Kellenbach died in 1798.Modern times
Recent times Under Prussian rule beginning in 1816, Kellenbach was assigned to the Bürgermeisterei (“Mayoralty”) of Gemünden (which as of 1927 became an Amt) and thereby to the Simmern district. On 7 June 1969, in the course of the implementation of the State Law of 12 November 1968, it was, together with Königsau, Bruschied, Schneppenbach and Schwarzerden, assigned to the Bad Kreuznach district and the Verbandsgemeinde of Kirn-Land.Statistische Mappen, Verbandsgemeinde Kirn-Land, 2009Recent times
Fire at the caravan factory On 9 January 1971, a great fire destroyed part of a caravan factory, a branch plant of Wilk-Caravaning GmbH, on Kellenbach's northern outskirts. The blaze was started by flying sparks in the fitter's shop, which set some nitrocellulose lacquers alight. An employee who lived on the factory lands noticed the fire in good time and notified the fire brigade. Because it was Saturday, the Kellenbach Volunteer Fire Brigade began very quickly with the job of quenching the fire, even before the Kirn, Gemünden and Pferdsfeld fire brigades could reach the fire. The blaze was thus prevented from reaching other parts of the building, which might have led to the factory's utter destruction. After the fire, the damage was reckoned to be more than 100,000 DM.Allgemeine Zeitung 11 January 1971, p. 11: "Hart am Rande der Katastrophe – Großfeuer vernichtet Teilwerk"
Icejam on the Kellenbach On 22 January 1985, an icejam led to flooding of Kellenbach's main street, resulting in great damage to the buildings there. After a three-week cold spell, the river in the village core and all the way upstream towards Simmertal was thickly frozen over, but then a thaw drove huge ice floes downstream. These then got jammed just upstream from a pool in the river, piling up underneath the bridge across the brook, which was then only a few years old. According to eyewitness reports, the growing heap of ice came to within only a few centimetres of the bridge's abutment. Disagreements between various authorities as to who was responsible for dealing with the situation prevented explosives from being used to break the icejam, as residents had demanded, and as had at times also been done before. After livestock had been evacuated and sandbags had been laid on, the icejam finally broke up by itself shortly before midnight, once again allowing the water to flow freely.Kirner Nachrichten vom 24. January 1985, Seite 11: „Eisstau brachte die Gemeinde Kellenbach hart an den Rand einer großen Katastrophe“Allgemeine Zeitung 24 January 1985: "Da kam ein lauter Knall und dann flog das Eis"
Municipality's name The name Kellenbach is believed to derive from the Old High German word kela – the Modern High German form is Kehle, meaning “channel”, “gorge” or “groove”, among other thingsTranslation of Kehle – and it is further believed that the meaning has been transferred to mean “narrow dale”.Gustav Schellack, Willi Wagner: Der Hunsrück zwischen Rhein, Mosel und Nahe; 1984; S. 8. The German word Bach means “brook”.
Population development Kellenbach's population development since Napoleonic times is shown in the table below:Statistisches Landesamt Rheinland-Pfalz Year Inhabitants 1815 296 1835 349 1871 319 1905 328 1939 298 Year Inhabitants 1950 305 1961 291 1970 305 1987 266 2008 281
Religion As at 30 September 2013, there are 247 full-time residents in Kellenbach, and of those, 168 are Evangelical (68.016%), 51 are Catholic (20.648%), 2 (0.81%) belong to other religious groups and 26 (10.526%) either have no religion or will not reveal their religious affiliation.Religion
Politics
Municipal council The council is made up of 6 council members, who were elected by majority vote at the municipal election held on 7 June 2009, and the honorary mayor as chairman. Kommunalwahl Rheinland-Pfalz 2009, Gemeinderat
Mayors Listed here are Kellenbach's mayors since 1850: 1850–1881 Peter Föhlinger 1881 Peter Zerfaß 1881–1894 Johann Keller 1894–1903 Johann Fett 1903–1923 Peter Zerfaß 1923 Peter Keller 1923–1933 Philipp Pleines 1933–1940 Peter Müller 1940–1946 Friedrich Mühlberger 1946–1948 Peter Keller 1949–1969 Otto Zerfaß 1969–1994 Hans Schmelzer 1994–2004 Alois Lambrich 2004–2019 Hans-Peter Haider 2019– Markus Römer
Coat of arms The German blazon reads:
The municipality's arms might in English heraldic language be described thus: Per fess gules a leopard passant guardant argent and argent issuant from a base wavy of the field three piles reversed, the middle one slightly taller and surmounting the outer two vert.
The charge in the upper field, the leopard, is drawn from the arms once borne by the Lords of Kellenbach. The three piles reversed (that is, upside down; piles in heraldry usually point down) are drawn from the old Court Seal of Kellenbach. The wavy base symbolizes the Kellenbach, after which the village is named. Municipal council gave the graphic artist Brust from Kirn-Sulzbach the task of designing a municipal coat of arms. At a council meeting on 27 August 1970, council adopted the design that had been put forth. After consent by the state archive, the Ministry of the Interior in Mainz granted approval for Kellenbach to bear its own arms on 20 January 1971.Statistische Mappen, VG Kirn-Land, 2009Description and explanation of Kellenbach's arms The municipal banner also bears this coat of arms in the centre.Municipal banner
Culture and sightseeing
Buildings The following are listed buildings or sites in Rhineland-Palatinate’s Directory of Cultural Monuments:Directory of Cultural Monuments in Bad Kreuznach district
Evangelical parish church, Lützelsoonstraße – formerly Saint Vitus's (St. Veit), Romanesque west tower, Late Gothic quire, earlier half of the 15th century, Late Baroque aisleless church, 1765 Saint Hildegard's Catholic Church (Kirche St. Hildegard), Schiefersteinstraße – small building with hip roof, quarrystone, Art Nouveau, 1912, architect Peter Marx, Trier Lützelsoonstraße – water cistern; partly timber-frame, Heimatstil, marked 1913 Lützelsoonstraße 1 – Baroque timber-frame house, partly solid, hipped mansard roof, marked 1739; across the street a stable, partly timber-frame, 19th century Lützelsoonstraße 6 – former Evangelical parish barn; quarrystone, possibly from the 19th century Schiefersteinstraße 14 – inn; timber-frame building in the style of building with single roof ridge, marked 1868, dance hall from the 1920s At Schiefersteinstraße 57 – house door, Gothic Revival door leaf, marked 1883 Rippas Mühle (mill), on the Simmerbach – one-floor building with half-hip roof, partly timber-frame, essentially possibly from the 18th century
More about buildings Saint Hildegard's, also described as a chapel, is a branch church of the Catholic parish of Seesbach. The Evangelical church, built on somewhat higher ground, is reckoned to be one of the oldest churches in the Verbandsgemeinde. It had its first unambiguous documentary mention in 1314; however, some elements of the building, especially around the tower, suggest that the building, or at least parts of it, are about 200 years older than that. Research by the pastor H. Gramm in the 1920s yielded the knowledge that the church had originally been consecrated to Saint Vitus (or St. Veit in German). Worth seeing most of all is the organ casing, created about 1790 by Michael Engers, a student of the Family Stumm of organ builders from Schwerbach. This casing, which was converted in 1908 by F. Faust, seems quite oversized for a church of this size. The altar, too, with its rich adornment, is worth seeing. The two smaller bells come from the 13th century, while a third one weighing 450 kg was poured in 1442. A fourth bell was seized for war requirements in the First World War.
Graveyard Next to the Evangelical church lies the graveyard for the municipalities of Kellenbach and Königsau. Formerly, the dead from Henau and Schwarzerden were also buried here, but since 1890 and 1892 respectively, these two municipalities have had their own graveyards. Buried here in 1821 was the last dweller of Castle Koppenstein, Maria Margaretha Rosenstein, known as the Koppensteiner Gretchen, but the grave's exact location is unknown today.
Regular events