Kürnbach

History

In the time of Charlemagne there already stood a wooden church in Kürnbach, which was later replaced by a Romanesque stone building. The oldest surviving reference to Kürnbach dates back to 1278. It is a goods list of the monastery of Weissenburg. The document indicates that Kürnbach was already in the possession of the Benedictine monastery. About 100 years later, the name of a noble family of Kürnbach appears for the first time. In 1543 Kürnbach got the market right. The homeland poet Samuel Friedrich Sauter referred to Kürnbach as "... this market town of two states, divided into Hesse and Baden…". Thus the condominium Kürnbach offers a constitutional rarity. Two-thirds of the town belonged to the county Hesse and one-third to the Duchy of Württemberg (and from 1810 to the Grand Duchy of Baden). The village was divided into two states but had no border. Nationality was assigned based on specific inhabited houses, which means that a resident's citizenship could change with the purchase of a particular house. Around 1300, two-thirds of Kürnbach became a fief of the Counts of Katzenlnbogen. Engelhard von Liebenstein pledged the other part of the village to the Duchy of Württemberg in 1320. In 1479, the Counts of Katzenlnbogen were inherited by the Landgraves of Hesse. Kürnbach now belonged two-thirds to the county Hesse and one-third to the Duchy of Württemberg, forming a condominium. Individual cultivated land was assigned to one of the two dominions but could change these as well. Therefore, there were three different administrations, pertaining respectively to Hesse, Württemberg (later Baden) and the condominium as a whole. After the fractional division of land, the Hessian proportion came to the county Hesse-Darmstadt. With the peace of Schönbrunn, the…

Geography

The historic wine village of Kürnbach, known as the Black Riesling village in the Kraichgau hill country, is one of the few communities in Germany with a history of shared governance. It is located in the northwestern Stromberg-Heuchelberg Nature Park near Zabergäu in the valley Humsterbaches. The Humsterbach was dammed as a retention basin east of the village next to Schlosswiesensee. To the west, the landscape opens up to the typical cultivated hill country of Kraichgau, while to the east a large contiguous forest area of Stromberg-Heuchelberg nature park begins. The municipality of Kürnbach includes the Aussiedlerhöfe Heiligenäcker and the estates of Humstermühle, Klostermühe, and Rohrmühle.

Most-observed species

• Great Tit

  Parus major Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  1,959
• Eurasian Blackbird

  Turdus merula Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  1,797
• Eurasian Blue Tit

  Cyanistes caeruleus (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  1,718
• Common Buzzard

  Buteo buteo (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  1,696
• Carrion Crow

  Corvus corone Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  1,620
• Zoropsid spider

  Zoropsis spinimana (Dufour, 1820) · Arachnida
  1,471
• Common Wood-Pigeon

  Columba palumbus Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  1,418
• Common Chaffinch

  Fringilla coelebs Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  1,414

Most recent

• M 3.4 — 2022-10-16
  Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany
• M 4 — 2022-07-09
  2 km NNE of Grosselfingen, Germany
• M 4.1 — 2021-06-26
  2 km SE of Hœrdt, France
• M 3.6 — 2014-05-17
  2 km ESE of Pfungstadt, Germany
• M 2.5 — 2008-12-12
  2 km ESE of Nehren, Germany
• M 2.8 — 2008-11-25
  1 km S of Steinmauern, Germany