Vollmersbach
Municipality
Coat of arms
Location of Vollmersbach within Birkenfeld district
Vollmersbach Show map of Germany Vollmersbach Show map of Rhineland-Palatinate
Coordinates: 49°44′37″N 07°18′26″E / 49.74361°N 7.30722°E / 49.74361; 7.30722
Country	Germany
State	Rhineland-Palatinate
District	Birkenfeld
Municipal assoc.	Herrstein-Rhaunen
Government
• Mayor (2019–24)	Dieter Petsch[1]
Area
• Total	2.44 km2 (0.94 sq mi)
Elevation	390 m (1,280 ft)
Population  (2021-12-31)[2]
• Total	461
• Density	190/km2 (490/sq mi)
Time zone	UTC+01:00 (CET)
• Summer (DST)	UTC+02:00 (CEST)
Postal codes	55758
Dialling codes	06781
Vehicle registration	BIR
Website	www.vollmersbach.de

Vollmersbach 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.

Geography

History

In the 1st century BC, the region between the rivers Nahe and Meuse was inhabited by the Treveri, a people of mixed Celtic and Germanic stock, who crossed the Rhine quite early on and settled in the area where Vollmersbach now lies, and from whom the Latin name for the city of Trier, Augusta Treverorum, is also derived. Until Drusus's time – shortly before the Christian Era – they lived fully independently, even while recognizing the Roman Empire’s hegemony in the region. They were grouped into the Roman province of Germania Superior. Unhindered, Roman influence made itself felt in the Vollmersbach area, and the Empire’s borders spread beyond the Rhine.

Still preserved from that time are parts of the extensive road network that the Romans built for transport through their conquered provinces. Such a road ran near where Vollmersbach now lies. The stretch within municipal limits, which is still used today, is known to the local inhabitants simply as the Strohs, a dialectal form of the German word Straße (“street” or “road”), thereby giving it the meaning that it actually bore fifteen centuries ago when it was the only road that linked the inhabitants to neighbouring centres and the main roads.

In the 4th century, the Alamanni were thrusting their way into Roman territory on the Rhine's left bank, and may even have settled in what is now Vollmersbach. With the partition of the Frankish Empire negotiated in the 843 Treaty of Verdun, the three Gaue (roughly “shires”) on the Rhine's left bank, the Wormsgau, the Speyergau and the Nahegau, passed to Louis the German’s inheritance. The Nahegau’s nearby border villages were Hammerstein, Enzweiler, Idar-Algenrodt (all three of which are nowadays part of Idar-Oberstein), Mackenrodt, Hettenrodt and Kirschweiler. The border led on up the Idarbach to its source and to the Schwarzwälder Hochwald (forest). From this time forth, Vollmersbach is witnessed continuously, but for a brief interruption in the 13th century, in historical records.

Vollmersbach was settled quite early on. It is among the district’s oldest populated centres. In 902, Vollmersbach had its first documentary mention, although it is likely somewhat older. In 990, Vollmersbach was mentioned by the name Folemarisbach along with the Saint Maximin’s Abbey holding of Siemora (Simmern and Dhaun). The village was also mentioned as belonging to Saint Maximin’s in a 1044 document that used the slightly different spelling Folemaresbach. It is unknown how this name developed into the modern name Vollmersbach. Moreover, what is also unknown is whether these documents are genuine. They could be among the many so-called Saint Maximin’s Abbey forgeries.

Whatever the truth about the documents is, the fact that there is also a brook with the name Vollmersbach (Bach is German for “brook”) implies that the village must have lain either near or right on this brook. In ascertaining where the oldest part of the village lay, two local cadastral names are important: “In der Hubstatt” and “Am Hofgarten” (the latter literally means “at the estate garden”, while the first syllable of the former is a corruption of Hof – estate – with the full name meaning “in the estate place”). A further estate area seems to have sprung up in the 14th century, early in the time when Vollmersbach belonged to the lordship of Oberstein, in the upper part of the village. It is to this place that the cadastral name “Am Hofgarten”, used until 1822, refers.

Thereafter, the estate or the manor house would have stood on the plot nowadays known as the Dörn’sches Grundstück, which is where the ancestral seat of the now widespread family Dreher stood until a few years ago, as likewise did the tithe barn, which was Vollmersbach's oldest building.

It was from this site that reconstruction began after the widespread destruction wrought by the Thirty Years' War. The old upper village formed Vollmersbach's core until the early 19th century. Here were found an old public well, the first watermain, a winepress, and, built in 1856, the “springing well”.

Along with Oberstein, which had hitherto been under Prussian administration, Vollmersbach passed on 9 April 1817 to the newly formed 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. Vollmersbach, which had always belonged politically to Oberstein, passed upon the formation of the Stadtbürgermeisterei (“town mayoralty”) of Oberstein in 1902 to the Bürgermeisterei (“Mayoralty”) of Idar-Land. This mayoralty was abolished with effect from 9 October 1933 by the Nazis, and on the same day, Vollmersbach was grouped into the Bürgermeisterei of Herrstein.

The Second World War came home to Vollmersbach on the night of 9–10 August 1943 when an RAF Handley Page Halifax piloted by Jim Pestridge crashed in a meadow in the municipality. It had been shot down during an attack on Mannheim by German night fighter pilot Oberleutnant Johannes Engels over Idar-Oberstein. Three of the four crewmen died in the wreck, but Pestridge managed to save himself by bailing out. He came down near Nahbollenbach (now an outlying centre of Idar-Oberstein) and was later captured at Birkenfeld railway station.^[3]

Politics

Culture and sightseeing

Economy and infrastructure

References

External links

• Official website (in German)