Kappel (Hunsrück)

Kappel 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 on the western boundary of the Verbandsgemeinde of Kirchberg, which here also forms the district boundary between the Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis and the district of Cochem-Zell. The area within the municipality’s limits is some 1 240 ha, of which 340 ha is wooded.Kappel lies at the crossroads of Bundesstraßen 421 and 327, the latter of which is also known as the Hunsrückhöhenstraße (“Hunsrück Heights Road”, a scenic road across the Hunsrück built originally as a military road on Hermann Göring’s orders).Kappel lies at the edge of a plateau which is capped off in the northeast by a knoll of some 525 m above sea level known as the Hasensteil. Between the flat hollow of the Kyrbach (brook) and a small gulley in Mörßberg (a long vanished village) towards Kludenbach, this plateau forms a ridge that presents itself especially prominently as a spur at the church hill. Beyond the brook, the plateau stretches on farther towards Frankfurt-Hahn Airport. On the horizon, it is marked by the Idarkopf (mountain). Also, it was in the neighbourhood of Zeller Straße (street) that water from the local aquifers was first drawn. This laid the groundwork for the settlement that has sprung up here.