Within Woppenroth's municipal limits, tools from the
New Stone Age have been discovered. Since 1945,
bronze jewellery (bracelets and rings), along with clay pots, have been found in
barrows dating from between 1600 and 1200 BC. “Woppenroth” is a “clearing name”, a reference to its placename ending
—roth, which comes from the same root as the
German verb
roden, meaning “clear”. This ending and its variants
—rode and
—rath mainly mark places whose founding dates back to the time when the
Franks took over the land. This is underscored by the village's location in the Hunsrück's dry, high plateaux, where the land is easier to work. The moister valleys were settled later. In 1269, Woppenroth had its first documentary mention. In the document itself,
Waldgrave Emich of Kyrburg (a
castle near
Kirn, now in ruins) transferred the village for 100 Trier pounds to Wilhelm of
Schmidtburg (another now ruined castle, this one between Kirn and
Rhaunen; for more on the area's history, see
Simmern). Beginning in 1794, Woppenroth lay under
French rule. In 1815 it was assigned to the Kingdom of
Prussia at the
Congress of Vienna. In 1822, Prussia assigned it to the
Rhine Province. Since 1946, it has been part of the then newly founded
state of
Rhineland-Palatinate. The villages of Kaffeld and Blickersau near Woppenroth both vanished long ago. The former was destroyed in 1399 in the
Nassau feud. The latter, which lay on the Hahnenbach, and whose municipal area is now shared by Woppenroth and
Hausen, had already fallen into ruins by 1469, but arose once again, albeit for only a few years, in the 19th century. About the ruin known as the
Hellkirch standing 60 m up above the Hahnenbach valley not much is known, not even whether, as its name implies, it actually was a church. This is nonetheless believed likely – it may have been a
chapel – and its
architecture – 1.5 m-thick walls, inside wall length 4.5 m, rectangular room inside – suggests a great age. Its name may come from the
Middle High German helde, meaning a hill with steep slopes.
Hell is known to have been a dialectal word used on into the 20th century for steep mountain slopes.
Church In 1913, work was begun on the new church, which still stands today, to replace the old one, which had become too small, and which later served as a Raiffeisen storehouse. The new church was used beginning in 1920, although it was not consecrated until 1926. The two bronze bells, which had already seen service in the old church beginning in 1889, and one of which supposedly came from the
Hellkirch, were seized for war requirements in the
First World War and have been replaced with
steel bells. Two hundred and twenty-nine Woppenrothers are
Evangelical. The Woppenroth Evangelical parish was transferred from the Trier church district to the Simmern-Trarbach church district in 1976, and has been parochially tied to
Dickenschied,
Rohrbach and
Womrath ever since. ==Politics==