Kratzenburg

Kratzenburg 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 Emmelshausen, whose seat is in the like-named town.GeographyLocationThe municipality lies in the Hunsrück roughly 4 km north of Emmelshausen and also 4 km from the Rhine to the northeast at Boppard.HistoryKratzenburg is said to be one of the oldest municipalities in the Vorderhunsrück . In 975, it had its first documentary mention as Cratzenberh in a document from Otto II, Holy Roman Emperor, although this document might well be a mediaeval forgery. Kratzenburg appeared in connection with Saint Peter’s Parish Church at Boppard: “ The village of Cratzenberh in the Gau of Trier, in Sicco’s county transfers to the parish church in the document three Königshufen.” Hufe was a word used in German to denote a rural settlement with farm and living buildings and the attendant cropland. A Königshufe, however, was a Hufe four times the usual size.