Mutterschied

Mutterschied 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 Simmern, whose seat is in the like-named town.GeographyLocationThe municipality lies in the central Hunsrück between Argenthal and Simmern on the edge of the Simmerner Mulde (hollow). Mutterschied, with its share of the once royally owned Soonwald, a heavily wooded section of the west-central Hunsrück, held since 1311 at the latest, has been one of the northern Soonwald villages since at least that time. The wooded portion, which is an outlying piece of the municipal area, not contiguous with the main portion, lies near the Simmerkopf, the district’s highest peak.HistoryAntiquityThe local area was originally settled by Celts. In Roman times, the settlement lay at the corner of two Roman roads; to the southwest ran the main road between Trier and Bingen, while to the north ran another road between Simmern and Bacharach. Finds in the cadastral area known as Herzefeld have yielded remnants of a Roman way station and also coins from the Emperor Hadrian’s time (117-138). There was once a Roman villa rustica 700 m south of the spot where the church now stands. There have also been scattered finds of Roman potsherds, and two finds, one 700 m west of the village and the other 500 m east, have involved fragments of basalt quernstones.