Biebern

Biebern is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis (district) in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Simmern, whose seat is in the like-named town.

Geography

Location

The municipality lies in the central Hunsrück in the Bieber (Bieberbach) valley between Bundesstraße 50 and the Hunsrückhöhenstraße (“Hunsrück Heights Road”, a scenic road across the Hunsrück built originally as a military road on Hermann Göring’s orders). Biebern lies about 7 km west of the district seat of Simmern, and about 70 km west of the state capital of Mainz.

History

Archaeological finds from Roman times show that the Biebern area was settled quite early on. Furthermore, the oldest document from anywhere in the Vorderhunsrück (“Fore-Hunsrück”) deals with Biebern. According to this document, dated 15 June 754, a man named Eggiolt donated, among other things, a share of his woodlands at Bibarahu in pago Nafinsie (or Biebern im Nahegau, as it is rendered in German – “Biebern in the Nahe region”) to Fulda Abbey for his own and his brother’s salvation. Based on this document’s date, the municipality of Biebern celebrated its 1,250-year jubilee in 2004. A 1026 document mentions a chapel in Biebern, making Biebern one of the Hunsrück’s oldest church centres. In 1076, two years after the Augustinian canonical foundation was founded, Biebern, and thereby the Bieber valley too, came into the Ravengiersburg Monastery’s ownership, binding the village’s history thereafter with the foundation’s, until this was dissolved in 1566 by Duke Georg of Simmern. Biebern was the centre of this monastic region on the Moselle. In administration and jurisdiction, Biebern played a special rôle, with the tithe court and blood court holding their assizes on the Itzelbach Heights at Biebern.