Rhaunen - History

History

Given the central location, the place now called Rhaunen was already settled in Roman times, as witnessed by the sandstone blocks in the Evangelical church’s north wall, which were formerly walled up. Rhunanu, first named in a record from Lorch Abbey (not to be confused with Lorsch Abbey) in the late 8th century, crops up again in 841 as Rhuna in a donation to Fulda Abbey. Rhaunen became the seat of the like-named high court district. Until the 14th century, the Waldgraves were the unqualified owners of the court and the places that it governed. Besides Rhaunen itself, these were Bollenbach, Bruschied, Bundenbach, Gösenroth, Hausen, Krummenau, Laufersweiler, Lindenschied, Oberkirn, Schwerbach, Stipshausen, Sulzbach, Weitersbach and Woppenroth. Also under the court’s sway was the Schmidtburg. With this Waldgravial castle’s loss to Archbishop Baldwin of Trier in 1330, however, part of the court’s territory in the form of three villages also passed to the Electorate of Trier. Baldwin also managed at the same stroke to relieve the Waldgraves of one fourth of the high court. Territorial relations remained so until an end was put to the Old Empire in the late 18th century and the old mediaeval governmental body, the court, was likewise swept away.

In the course of the French occupation of the lands on the Rhine’s left bank in the wake of the Treaty of Lunéville, Rhaunen was grouped into the Department of Sarre, the arrondissement of Birkenfeld and the canton of Rhaunen. After the French withdrew in 1814, Rhaunen found itself in Prussia’s new Rhine Province, also becoming the seat of a Bürgermeisterei (“mayoralty”) in the Bernkastel-Kues district. Parts of the old high court district, however – Bundenbach, for instance – now belonged to the Principality of Birkenfeld, an exclave of the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg, most of whose territory was in what is now northwest Germany, with a coastline on the North Sea. Even after the First World War, through the Weimar Republic and on through the time of the Third Reich, Rhaunen was the administrative seat for the surrounding villages. In the course of administrative restructuring in the 1960s, the Amt of Rhaunen became the Verbandsgemeinde of Rhaunen in the Birkenfeld district. This arrangement still stands.

The Baroque house at Otto-Conradt-Straße 5 (until 1978, Am Bach 5) was the Waldgravial Oberamtshaus (administrative centre of the Oberamt), and later, through inheritance, it fulfilled the same function for the comital family of Salm. Under French rule, it was the Gendarmerie barracks. In Prussian times, it first became a Catholic rectory, and then until 1899 a court building. Today it is an inn. The Amtmann who oversaw the Electoral-Trier fourth of the Rhaunen high court sat at the Schmidtburg (near Bundenbach).

The parish of Rhaunen comprised not only the like-named village but also Sulzbach, Weitersbach and, until 1504, Stipshausen. Rhaunen had a simultaneous church beginning in 1685, used by both Catholics and Evangelicals. This arrangement lasted more than two centuries, until 1887/1888, when the Catholic community built its own church on the way out of the village towards Sulzbach. Rhaunen was for centuries a judiciary, administrative and commercial hub. Its development peaked in Prussian times when it had the mayor’s office, the Amt court and prison on the way out of the village towards Hausen, the chief forester’s house on Hauptstraße, a notary’s office, the cadastral office – later a professional college – on Poststraße on the way out of the village towards Bundenbach, a dairy likewise there, Catholic and Evangelical churches, a synagogue on Salzengasse and a hospital on the way out of the village towards Stipshausen, although this last site has been occupied since the 1960s by the Verbandsgemeinde administration building. Over the last few decades, though, with the growth of regional centres, the village has gradually lost its functions as a centre. Still left, however, are the Verbandsgemeinde administration, the two churches and a Mittelpunktschule (“midpoint school”, a central school, designed to eliminate smaller outlying schools) on the road towards Weitersbach.

The long timespan during which Rhaunen functioned as a centre for the other local villages has left its mark on the village’s structure: Unlike the scattered settlement pattern seen in most of its neighbours, Rhaunen has a much more heavily concentrated built-up centre. The old neighbourhoods can still be made out in the three heavily built-up blocks bounded by Otto-Conradt-Straße (formerly called Am Bach, for its geographical location alongside the brook), Unterdorf, Hauptstraße, Straße am Wartenberg and Marktplatz (“Marketplace”). The church stands a short way outside this zone on a slope overlooking the village. This seemingly odd location is explained by the church’s construction on top of an existing building – one of Roman origin.