Location Breitscheid lies from 266 to 600 m above
sea level on the eastern slope of the
Westerwald range at the point shared by three
German states: Hesse,
Rhineland-Palatinate and
North Rhine-Westphalia. Erdbach, a constituent municipality, lies in an interesting place with regards to
Earth's history, in the eastern part of the Westerwald, near that range's highest peak, Fuchskauten (657 m).
Geology In the Erdbach area are noteworthy
limestone deposits from various
geological time periods. "Erdbach limestone" from Lower
Carboniferous times gave an era the name "Erdbachium". The Erdbach – the village's namesake brook – disappears into a
karst system, and does not appear again for 1.5 km where it can be seen in a
quarry. Not far from there, the "Homberg"
fossil reserve was instituted, which serves some university institutes from
Jena to the
Rhine as a research area. The older limestone formation near Breitscheid (main centre) stems from a
subtropical coral reef from the
Devonian period (mid-
Palaeozoic, 400,000,000 years ago). In the "stone chambers" of the Rolsbach valley, some gravesites from
Hallstatt times (about 550 BC) were unearthed in 1884. In
archaeology, there is a special burial ornament called an "Erdbach coil
torc" (
Erdbacher Wendelhalsring). It is also believed that
Neanderthal people once lived nearby, but this belief awaits further discovery.
Neighbouring municipalities Breitscheid borders in the north on the municipality of
Burbach (
Siegen-Wittgenstein district in North Rhine-Westphalia), and the towns of
Haiger and
Dillenburg, in the east on the town of
Herborn, in the south on the municipality of
Driedorf (all in the Lahn-Dill-Kreis), and in the west on the municipalities of
Willingen and
Liebenscheid (both in the
Westerwaldkreis in
Rhineland-Palatinate).
Constituent municipalities Aside from the main centre, which bears the same name as the whole, there are outlying centres called Erdbach, Gusternhain, Medenbach and Rabenscheid. The municipality came into being on 1 January 1977 as part of Hesse's municipal reforms. The constituent municipalities were formerly independent municipalities. ==Politics==