View from the boat leaving Beilstein
Finds from Frankish graves show that Beilstein was settled about AD 800. Beginning in 1268, the village was a fief held by the Lords of Braunshorn. Under Johann von Braunshorn (1299–1346), Beilstein was granted town privileges in 1309 by Heinrich VII and was fortified. In 1309, a Jewish community was founded, whose graveyard up above the castle still exists today. In 1310 the former parish church was endowed. After the family von Braunshorn died out, the fief passed in 1360 to the family von Winneburg. After the Electorate of Trier took over ownership of Beilstein in 1488, it enfeoffed the Imperial Counts of Metternich with the Lordship of Winneburg and Beilstein. In 1689 came the destruction of Castle Metternich (known as Die stolze Gemäuer, or “The Proud Walling”) by French troops. The Carmelite monastery was founded in 1636 (and dissolved in 1803). In 1691, the Carmelite monastery church’s foundation stones were laid; the church was completed in 1783. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the village’s appearance took on the shape that it still largely retains today. The Metternich lordship was swept away in 1794 when French Revolutionary troops occupied the region. In 1815 Beilstein was assigned to the Kingdom of Prussia at the Congress of Vienna. Since 1946, it has been part of the then newly founded state of Rhineland-Palatinate.