Abentheuer

Abentheuer 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 Birkenfeld, whose seat is in the like-named town.

Geography

Location

The municipality lies on the Traunbach in the Schwarzwälder Hochwald (forest) in the Hunsrück. Beginning on the village’s outskirts is the Trauntalschleife, the award-winning hiking trail of the Saar-Hunsrück-Steig, a 180-kilometre (110 mi) long system of trails. The municipal area is 71.5 percent wooded.

Neighbouring municipalities

Abentheuer borders in the north on Börfink, in the east on Buhlenberg and in the south on Brücken.

Constituent communities

Two outlying homesteads also belong to Abentheuer: Arthenberg and Hujetsägemühle.

History

Abentheuer grew together in the early 20th century out of the two formerly separate centres of Leyen and Abentheuer, the latter also known as Abentheuerhütte. Leyen, which lay in the southeast of today’s municipality, on the Traunbach, had its first documentary mention in 1367, whereas Abentheuer, to the north, is first witnessed in records in 1580. Until the 18th century, each centre still bore its own name. Today’s municipal area was held by the County of Sponheim. The Traunbach then served as the border between the Hunolstein (and beginning in 1598, Palatinate-Zweibrücken) Amt of Achtelsbach to the west and the Sponheim Amt of Birkenfeld to the east. Over the course of its history, Abentheuer belonged either to the parish of Achtelsbach or to the parish of Birkenfeld; today it belongs to the parish of Brücken.