Fohren-Linden

Fohren-Linden 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 Baumholder, whose seat is in the like-named town.GeographyLocationThe municipality lies in the southern Hunsrück in the Unnertal (Unnerbach valley) in the west of Rhineland-Palatinate near the state boundary with the Saarland.Constituent communitiesAlso belonging to Fohren-Linden is the outlying homestead of Finkenmühle.HistoryThe municipality’s name comes from two trees: the word Fohren is apparently a variant of the German word Föhre (“pine”, but cognate with the English word “fir”), while the second word, Linden, is also used in English, alongside “lime” and “basswood”, for the tree of the genus Tilia that still characterizes the village today. It may be, though, that the first half of this hyphenated name comes from the archaic word Forrn (in modern German, Forelle – “trout”). It is known from historical documents that the local stream, the Unnerbach, once teemed with fish.