Zilshausen

Zilshausen 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 Kastellaun.

Geography

Location

The municipality lies on a high plateau in the northern Hunsrück between the valleys of the Lützbach to the east and the Dünnbach to the west.

Constituent communities

Zilshausen has one outlying Ortsteil named Petershäuser Hof.

History

The village arose from an agricultural estate, which was mentioned in a document from 1346 as Zullinshausen. Zilshausen may well have belonged to the so-called “three-lord” territory, which was shared by three landholders, among them the Electorate of Trier and the House of Braunshorn-Metternich-Beilstein. This arrangement was brought to an end by the French Revolutionary occupation of lands on the Rhine’s left bank in 1794. In 1814 Zilshausen was assigned to the Kingdom of Prussia at the Congress of Vienna.