The municipality lies in neither the Hunsrück nor the Palatinate, but rather near the boundary with the Saarland in the Nahe valley in the Upper Nahe Uplands, part of the Saar-Nahe Hills. The countryside and the municipality itself are characterized by the Hoppstädt Nahe valley, a broad floodplain with vast meadowlands and wooded mountain slopes on both sides. These mountains are known as the Hoppstädter Berg and the Weiersbacher Berg. Lying higher up are great cropfields. Many parts of the Nahe valley between Hoppstädten-Weiersbach and Idar-Oberstein have been left in their natural state and, accordingly, in 1991, parts of it were declared a scenic conservation area.
Constituent communities
Hoppstädten-Weiersbach's Ortsteile are Hoppstädten, Weiersbach and Neubrücke.
History
In the Middle Ages, the villages of Weiersbach and Hoppstädten, along with Leitzweiler, Heimbach and Freisen, belonged to the lordship of Werdenstein. It was a sideline of the Lords of Oberstein who first named themselves Werdenstein, after the lordship. Jakob von Eberstein married the daughter who held hereditary rights, and about 1550 he built the castle that bore the same name. It stood between the municipality's two main centres and had been completely dismantled by the early 19th century. In the outlying centre of Neubrücke in 1944 and 1945, the Hinzert concentration camp maintained a satellite camp. Also at Neubrücke, on a 44-hectare lot, the United States Army set up its 98th General Hospital in 1952. The emergency and reserve hospital had at its disposal 1,000 beds and various medical departments for, among others, surgery, dentistry, orthopaedics, radiology, rehabilitation and ophthalmology. A complete hospital train was kept standing by at all times. In 1994, the hospital was closed. The hospital's former lands now house the Environmental Campus Birkenfeld, a branch of the Trier University of Applied Sciences. The municipality of Hoppstädten-Weiersbach was newly formed on 7 June 1969 from the two dissolved municipalities of Hoppstädten and Weiersbach.
Politics
Municipal council
The council is made up of 20 council members, who were elected by proportional representation at the municipal election held on 25 May 2014, and the honorary mayor as chairman. The municipal election held on 25 May 2014 yielded the following results:
SPD
CDU
WGR
Total
2014
7
10
3
20 seats
2009
6
11
3
20 seats
2004
5
13
2
20 seats
Mayor
Hoppstädten-Weiersbach's mayor is Welf Fiedler, and his deputies are Edmund Schulz, Jörg Schunath and Günter Decker.
The municipality's arms might be described thus: Per fess sable issuant from the line of partition a demilion Or armed, langued and crowned gules, and argent a pale wavy azure between a wheel spoked of four, the rim couped between the two uppermost spokes of the third and the hub surmounted by the blade of a sword palewise of the first the hilt and pommel of the third, and a factory of the third with five windows and a door of the first. The arms are a fusion of both Hoppstädten's and Weiersbach's former arms from the time before the 1969 merger.
Culture and sightseeing
Buildings
The following are listed buildings or sites in Rhineland-Palatinate’s Directory of Cultural Monuments:
Rhein-Nahe-Bahnrailway bridge – four-arch sandstone bridge over the Steinaubach, 1880
Jewish graveyard, east of the village on the slope of the Eborner Berg – 168 gravestones, 1770 to 1958; on the older part of the graveyard sandstone tomb slabs with fragments of Hebrew inscriptions preserved; biggest Jewish graveyard in the broader area
Weiersbach
Saint Mark'sCatholic Parish Church, in Bleiderdingen – aisleless church 1738/1739, lengthening and west tower 1862; Gothic quire, before 1235; décor
In Bleiderdingen/corner of Auf dem Sand – wayside cross, Station cross, marked 1847
Roadbridge, between Hoppstädten and Bleiderdingen – three-arch sandstone quarrystone bridge over the Nahe
Economy and infrastructure
Transport
Hoppstädten-Weiersbach lies on the AutobahnA 62 near the Birkenfeld interchange, and also on the Nahe Valley Railway, which here runs concurrently with the important Saarbrücken-Mainz link. There is a regional railway station in the municipality, Neubrücke station, and a further halt called Hoppstädten-Weiersbach in Hoppstädten. Between the municipality's two main centres of Hoppstädten and Weiersbach lies the Hoppstädten-Weiersbach Special Airfield. Hoppstädten-Weiersbach is the location of the Landessammelstelle für radioaktive Abfälle of the Rhineland-Palatinate State Office for the Environment, Water Management and Trade Supervision.
