Oberkirn - History

History

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. Sometime over the course of the centuries, it is said, the two village’s names were confused, and thereby exchanged, in a document. However, there is no scientific proof for this.

Slate was long quarried within Oberkirn’s municipal limits, first for building houses and then, beginning in the 19th century until the 1960s for making roof slates. Most men in the village earned their livelihood at the pits, and then also worked the land as well. When cheaper artificial slates appeared on the market, the slate pits went out of business, the last one closing in 1966.