Kempfeld

Geschichte

Kempfeld 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 of Herrstein, whose seat is in the like-named municipality.GeographyLocationThe municipality lies on the Deutsche Edelsteinstraße in the southern Hunsrück between the Idar Forest in the north and the town of Idar-Oberstein in the south.Constituent communitiesAlso belonging to Kempfeld are the hamlet of Katzenloch and the outlying homesteads of Auf dem Steinberg, Herrenflur and Wildenburg.Village’s nameKempfeld was originally settled by a man named Campo. On the other hand, other researchers derive the name from the Latin campus, meaning field (and since Feld means the same, the name would therefore mean “Field Field”). This hypothesis is, however, contradicted by the dialectal name “Käfelt” and the mediaeval name cempinvelt from 1319.HistoryIn a copy of the Liber Aureus, which came into being about 1200, Kempfeld had its first documentary mention.