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Bernkastel-Kues

town in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany

Architectural plans, a scale model, maps and brass measuring instruments
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionDec 9, 2025
Entity authorityQ155622 ↗
Source-derived summary

Bernkastel-Kues (German pronunciation: [ˌbɛʁnkastl̩ˈkuːs] ) is a town on the Middle Mosel in the Bernkastel-Wittlich district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is well-known for its winegrowing. The town is a state-recognized health resort (Erholungsort), seat of the Verbandsgemeinde of Bernkastel-Kues and birthplace of one of the most famous German polymaths, the medieval churchman and philosopher Nikolaus von Kues (Cusanus).

Geography

Location

Bernkastel-Kues lies in the Mosel valley, roughly 50 km (31 mi) from Trier. The greatest elevation is the Olymp (415 m above sea level), and the lowest point (107 m above sea level) lies on the Mosel's banks. The municipal area totals 23 657 101 m2, of which 7 815 899 m2 is used for agriculture, thereby making Bernkastel-Kues one of the Middle Moselle's biggest towns by land area.

Neighbouring municipalities

Clockwise from the north, these are Graach, Longkamp, Monzelfeld, Veldenz, Mülheim, Lieser, Maring-Noviand, Platten and Zeltingen-Rachtig.

Constituent communities

Bernkastel-Kues is subdivided into the four Stadtteile of Andel, Bernkastel, Kues and Wehlen. The former two lie on the Moselle's right bank, while the latter two are on the left. All together, 7,794 people live in all four centres (3,696 men, 4,098 women), of whom 268 – or 3.44% – are foreigners.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Bernkastel-Kues” is town in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Bernkastel-Kues, town and Rhineland-Palatinate, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewMost useful as a place-based finding aid connecting the present description to earlier jurisdictions, maps and built evidence. The current 201-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Bernkastel-Kues, town and Rhineland-Palatinate is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “town in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 9, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q155622. VIAF identifies the subject as 240339404. The Library of Congress control number is n85137178. Authority coordinates are 49.916, 7.069. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.

Critical limits

A single description cannot reconcile every naming convention, rebuilding phase or administrative transfer associated with a place. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.

Best used for
  • Historic place names
  • Jurisdictional context
  • Routes into maps and plans
Verify next

Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Bernkastel-Kues”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Bernkastel-Kues primary sources, Bernkastel-Kues archive and Bernkastel-Kues research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Bernkastel-Kues”?
  2. What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
  3. Which authority defined the place, boundary or structure at the relevant date?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Bernkastel-Kues” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.