Imagine How It Was - Zerf/Oberzerf

These photos are from Zerf and Oberzerf and were taken from 2001 to 2004.  None of us can step back in time to see the villages and the fields exactly as they were in the first half of the 19th century - except with our imaginations.  But today Mother Earth still produces the trees and grasses, insects and birds that flourished in the earlier times as well as the streams that helped sustain them.

Oberzef in spring

Fishing in the Mühlenbach

The old mill stone of Zerf

Zerf Pasture

Autumn in the  Zerf Hochwald

Village Structures that Hint of the Past

Photos by Kathy

An excursion with camera through Ockfen, Oberzerf, Irsch, and Beurig highlights a few of the old buildings.  Some hide their simple underpinnings, others show the original walls with the miscellaneous materials, mostly very poor, which kept the structures together until this day.

Ockfen farm building

Oberzerf wall to wall

Outskirts of Irsch

Variety of materials in this old Irsch building  

Barn door in Beurig, constructed in1833

The Fields of Oberzerf

Oberzerf is the birthplace of my great-great grandmother, today a village not much bigger than it was at the end of 1827 when she was born there.  It is about 8 miles from the city of Saarburg and 5 and one half miles from Irsch, the village of the man she would marry.  Thick forest land lies to the east and south, mostly out of my camera range as we drove along the highway.  Coming into town, there is a flowing stream and a small church, almost a chapel, at the top of a little hill.  The church built in the 1950s, the paved highway, and the automobiles parked here and there - these are a minor distraction from the setting of a village that is more than 1,000 years old.

Thickets still separate the tillable land.

The fields at the end of the harvest time

Catching a glimpse of the forest

The water of the Grossbach stream once powered the village mill

The main road to the small Catholic church

A remodeled barn house on the Hauptstrasse dates from 1848

Autumn along the Saar River

Driving from Oberzerf to Serrig on a lovely October day, we stopped to tramp along a path with an especially beautiful view of the Saar River.   It is said that the Crown Prince of Prussia visited the area and became a "Rhineland Romantic."  Perhaps he saw one of these views! 

An old path beside the modern highway

The beautiful Saar River on one side of the road; the rock embankment on the other

Autumn glimpses of the Saar

Seeing the river through wild seeds and berries

Golden Autumn along the Saar River

Wild Beauty

Bends in he Saar River near a quiet village