Hecken (Hunsrück)

Hecken 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 Kirchberg, whose seat is in the like-named town.GeographyLocationThe municipality lies in the Hunsrück some 3 km south of the town of Kirchberg, on the edge of the Kyrbach valley. The name Hecken derives from the Old High German word hag, meaning a hedged field or wood. Hecken’s area is 3.89 km² and its elevation ranges from roughly 390 to 420 m above sea level. Roughly half the municipal area is wooded.HistoryIn 1291, Hecken had its first documentary mention when Count Johan von Sponheim gave his Burgmann from Kastellaun, Herrmann von Kestilun, leave to let his wife Sophia live at the estate in Hecken should anything untoward befall him.A knightly family named itself after the village. The family’s first representative, Heinrich von Hecken, belonged in 1290 to the Court of Schöffen (roughly “lay jurists”) at Kirchberg. In Hecken itself, the Counts had an estate made up of three houses and as many barns with the attendant estate lands.