Dickesbach

Dickesbach 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.

Geography

Location

The municipality lies in the Hunsrück east of the Nahe.

Neighbouring municipalities

Dickesbach borders in the north on Fischbach, in the east on Mittelreidenbach, in the south on the Baumholder troop drilling ground and in the west on Idar-Oberstein.

Constituent communities

Also belonging to Dickesbach are the outlying homesteads of Katzenrech and Sonnenhöfe.

History

Barrows between Dickesbach and Mittelreidenbach are of Celtic origin and suggest that people were already living in the area sometime between 1100 and 400 BC. According to one report, hewn stones were brought to light while ploughing was being done in Dickesbach about 1900. These were reckoned to have been used as channelling. At the site of this find, the Scheed (or Scheide), lying between Weierbach (nowadays an outlying centre of Idar-Oberstein) and what is now Dickesbach, it is believed that a settlement of some kind once stood, and that today’s Dickesbach arose only after this old settlement had vanished.