Oberahr

Oberahr is an Ortsgemeinde – a community belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde – in the Westerwaldkreis in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.GeographyLocationThe community lies in the Westerwald between Montabaur and Hachenburg. Through the community from north to south flows the Ahrbach. Oberahr belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Wallmerod, a kind of collective municipality. Its seat is in the like-named town.HistoryOberahr, in 1490 Oberanre to use the form in its first documentary mention, lies in the headwaters of the Ahrbach, which was mentioned as early as 959 as the Anara. It is the community’s namesake and flows through the municipal area from north to south. Oberahr lay in the former Niederlahngau from its earliest times, in the parish and court district of Meudt under the overlordship of the Counts at Diez and Nassau. Under the 1564 Treaties of Diez, the parish of Meudt passed to the Electorate of Trier, and thereby the Oberahrers lived in the Trierschland until 1802 under the rule of the Krummstab (literally “Crooked Staff”, but meaning “crosier”). Later, the Nassau princes took the areas on the Rhine’s right bank back into their ownership, and as of 1815, Oberahr, too, belonged to the newly formed Duchy of Nassau, after whose annexation in 1866, Oberahr found itself in the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau.