Abtweiler is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Bad Kreuznach district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Meisenheim, whose seat is in the like-named town.
Geography
Location Abtweiler lies in the Naheland, a small part of the North Palatine Uplands between the rivers Nahe and Glan up a side valley of the Glan. It is a linear village (by some definitions, a “thorpe”) in the south of the district, and lies on the left side of the lower Glan valley. It lies between Meisenheim and Bad Sobernheim. The countryside is mainly characterized by cropfields and woodland, along with some meadow orchards.Location
Land use As at 31 December 2012, the various uses of Abtweiler's 5.76 km² of land broke down thus:Land use Use % Agriculture 70.8 Woodland 23.1 Open water 0.1 Built-up/Transport 6.0 Other 0
Neighbouring municipalities Abtweiler borders in the north on the town of Bad Sobernheim on the river Nahe, in the east on the municipality of Rehborn, in the south on the municipality of Raumbach and in the west on the municipality of Lauschied.
Constituent communities Also belonging to Abtweiler are the outlying homesteads of Hühnerhof (also called “Hienerhof” or “Hingelshof”)Hühnerhof and Sankt Antoniushof (also called “Danteshof”).Sankt Antoniushof
Geology
Pennsylvanian and Rotliegend in the Saar–Nahe Basin As one of the biggest intermontane Late Variscan basins, the Saar–Nahe Basin formed in the transitional time between Namurian and Westphalian in the Pennsylvanian subperiod roughly 317,000,000 years ago. What lies at the surface of it today comprises an area of only some 100 by 40 kilometres. Indeed, the basin itself is actually only part of a much greater formation, in broad areas overlain with newer deposits, called the Lorraine-Saar-Nahe-Hesse Trough. In Rhineland-Palatinate, outcrops of Permian-Carboniferous rock can be found in the northern Palatinate and the Nahe Uplands (where Abtweiler lies), stretching over to the Bingen-Alzey area. In its central area, the basin has thick Permian-Carboniferous sedimentary and volcanic rock (thus igneous) deposits up to 8 km thick, of which roughly 4.5 km comes from the Pennsylvanian and more than 3 km comes from the Rotliegend.Geology
Developmental phases In the early time of its active development, from the Pennsylvanian on into the Lower Rotliegend (Glan Subgroup, Meisenheim Formation), fluviolacustrine sedimentation conditions prevailed in the Saar–Nahe Basin. The basin lay, according to palaeomagnetic investigation, just north of the equator in the tropics at this time, so that under warm and moist climatic conditions, the lacustrine deposits especially, with their heavy amounts of organic remnants, ended up forming many coal seams, especially in the Pennsylvanian. Towards the end of the Rotliegend (Disibodenberg Formation), the extensive, at times basinwide lakes were filled in by advancing deltas, and by the end of the Glan Subgroup (beginning with the Oberkirchen Formation), the predominant deposit conditions were fluvial in what were now dry-warm climatic conditions. Along with its attendant, sometimes heavy, intrusive and effusive-extrusive magmatism – involving lavas and tuffs being pushed up, their place taken by both acidic and basic intrusions – it lasted until the middle of the Nahe Subgroup, when it came to an end with the quartzite conglomerate deposition found in the Wadern Formation. Preserved today from the last phase of the Permian-Carboniferous sedimentation in the Saar–Nahe Basin are the Standenbühl Formation's alluvial-fan and dry-lake (playa) sediments, represented by the Kreuznach Formation's fluvial-aeolian sandstones found regionally on the basin's northwest edge near Bad Kreuznach.
The Glan Subgroup – the characteristic deposition phase around Abtweiler The Glan Subgroup comprises a period in the Saar–Nahe Basin’s developmental history characterized by a manifold shift back and forth between fluvial and lacustrine deposition conditions. Lithostratigraphically dividing this time’s geological deposits, which are several thousand metres deep in this continental basin, is often problematic. Particular difficulties arise with the ordering of the minerals in the so-called “edge facies” on the basin's northwest edge. The deposits around Abtweiler are mainly grouped into this time. They comprise mainly the Jeckenbach Subformation, the Odernheim Subformation, the Disibodenberg Formation, the Oberkirchen Formation and the Thallichtenberg Formation, along with deposits in the dales of Quaternary origin.
The Jeckenbach Subformation The Jeckenbach Subformation's deposits (mainly silty minerals), part of the Meisenheim Formation, which in turn belongs to the Glan Subgroup, are found mainly south of Abtweiler (around Castle Raumberg). This great subformation's lithostratigraphical division is based on several almost basinwide sandstone and lake sediment horizons. To be named here are the Meisenheim Bed, the Breitenheim Bed and the Jeckenbach Bed as well as the Hoof seams. Atzbach (1980) puts the thickness in this type region near Jeckenbach west of Meisenheim at 600 m.
The Odernheim Subformation In the Odernheim Subformation, too – the uppermost section of the Meisenheim Formation – silty minerals predominate. Those deposits are found mainly south of Abtweiler, near the village's outskirts. The subformation begins with a moderately to coarsely sandy, and in many places detritus-bearing, horizon, Bed R-5. It is capped off by the dark mudstones in the Humberg Bed. Meyer and Schnabel (1988) put the Odernheim am Glan type region's thickness at 155 m. The subformation contains several indicative horizons that are important for lithostratigraphic classification in wide areas of the Saar–Nahe Basin. Foremost among these are fluvial-deltaic, coarsely clastic horizons as well as lacustrine deposits with dark mudstones. To be named here are the Rehborn, Odernheim, Kappeln and Humberg Beds, layered into which are many, mostly thin limestone and cinder tuff horizons.
The Disibodenberg Formation The Disibodenberg Formation's deposits are found mainly east and west of Abtweiler. They furthermore form the Sankt Antoniushof's geological foundation. During the time of the Disibodenberg Formation, named after the old Disibodenberg Monastery on the Nahe north of Odernheim am Glan, the long relatively uniform sedimentation conditions in the Saar–Nahe Basin now changed. Vast, deep lakes no longer existed. Now prevalent was a fluvial-limnic or deltaic environment. Consequently, the more than 200-metre-thick entity was made up mostly of an alternating sequence of grey siltstones and fine sandstones. Also still cropping up, albeit seldom, were dark mudstone inclusions from local lakes. Within the Disibodenberg Formation, no cross-regionally meaningful indicative lithostratigraphic horizons can be identified. The formation's bottom limit is defined as the Humberg Bed's upper limit. The formation ends on the base of the first, red, conglomeratic layer, which itself is grouped with the later Oberkirchen Formation.
The Oberkirchen Formation The Oberkirchen Formation's sediments are markedly distinguished from the strata both above and below them. They can be found north and northwest of Abtweiler, towards the Hühnerhof. Prevailing here are beds of red to grey-red, coarsely sandy to conglomeratic arkoses up to several metres thick. Interstratified therein are horizons of reddish fine sandstone and to some extent also grey siltstones and claystones. These fine-grained horizons are mostly only thinly developed. The arkoses, which exist as detritus (particularly vein quartz, quartzite, lydite, metamorphic rocks and volcanic rocks) as well as bits more than a centimetre across, almost always containing weathered feldspars, are deposits in channels of a many-branched river system that flowed across the Saar–Nahe Basin from southwest to northeast. The fine-grained sediments mainly represent floodplain and horseshoe lake deposits. The Oberkirchen Formation, named after an outlying centre of the municipality of Freisen in the Saarland, contains minerals that are exposed in the Saar–Nahe Basin on both sides of the Palatine Saddle from southwest to northeast.
The Thallichtenberg Formation The facies and distribution of the Thallichtenberg Formation, named after Thallichtenberg, were investigated by Konrad in 1969 on the Palatine Saddle's southeast flank. The deposits, mainly made up of grey and red fine-grained sediments (fine sandstone, claystones and siltstones) from a fluvial floodplain environment of the Thallichtenberg Formation, can be found north and northwest of Abtweiler, towards the Hühnerhof. Cropping up locally are lacustrine deposits, some with biogenic limestone horizons, and coarse, fluvial layers. While thicknesses of up to 260 m are reached in the basin's southwest, this entity to the northeast is very much thinner.
The Nahe Subgroup The onset of volcanism within the basin, the beginning of the volcanic synrift phase, was also the foundation of the Nahe Subgroup. At the same time, under semiarid conditions, fluvial-alluvial sedimentation conditions were dominant in the Saar–Nahe Basin which, according to Stollhofen (1991), was brought about by a marked drop in the rate of subsidence. The minerals deposited in this phase of the basin's development are grouped into the Donnersberg Formation, whereas all the Nahe Subgroup's subsequent formations are assigned to the basin's post-rift phase. It was mainly thermal subsidence and sediment compaction that took place. The area of sedimentation sometimes reaches beyond the bounds of the active basin edges. The Donnersberg Formation's deposits are the Freisen layers (red, light grey and detritus-bearing arkoses and sandstones, as well as red-purple to green claystones with sporadic tuff inclusions) present south of the Hühnerhof and the andesites found under the Hühnerhof itself (Nappe II – gabbroporphyritic partly with very big inclusions of plagioclase, clinopyroxenes and viridescent olivines in partly intersertally, partly intergranularly structured ground masses).
History
Abtweiler in the 12th century In 1128, Abtweiler had its first documentary mention as Abwilre- in pago Nachgowe (Nahegau) in a document from Mainz for the monastery at the Disibodenberg. According to this, Archbishop of Mainz Ruthard (1089-1109) had donated to the monks an estate in Hene (now the outlying centre of Hühnerhof) and four Morgen of vineyards, which were rented. The other outlying centre, the Sankt Antoniushof, had already had its first documentary mention, in 1107.Abtweiler in the 12th century
Abtweiler in the 14th century A record from 1333 stating that the Hühnerhof in Hene had to make a contribution to the building of a chapel in Apwilre. Also, the forest then belonged jointly to the villages of Abtweiler and Staudernheim. Thus, at this time, Abtweiler had its own chapel, which belonged to the greater parish on the Disibodenberg. The Late Gothic building that still stands today dates from the 15th century. In 1338, the people from Apwilre had to deliver wood to build a bridge across the Nahe near Staudernheim. Another record from 1342 tells the reader that “Hegene und Apwilre” were parochially united with Saint Nicholas’s Parish Church (Pfarrkirche St. Nikolaus) “auf dem Berge” (“on the mountain”, that is to say, the Disibodenberg).Abtweiler in the 14th century
Abtweiler in the 15th to 18th centuries