Adenbach is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Kusel district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde Lauterecken-Wolfstein.
Geography
Location The municipality lies in the Odenbach valley in the North Palatine Uplands in the Western Palatinate.
The municipal area measures 294 ha, of which 20 ha is wooded and 10 ha is settled.Location
Neighbouring municipalities Adenbach borders in the northwest and north on the municipality of Odenbach, in the east and southeast on the municipality of Becherbach, in the south on the municipality of Ginsweiler and in the southwest on the municipality of Cronenberg.
Constituent communities Adenbach's Ortsteile are the main village site, also called Adenbach, and the outlying homesteads of Brühlerhof, Langwiesenhof, Bornweiderhof and Brucherhof.Constituent communities
Municipality’s layout On the east side of the north–south thoroughfare, the houses stand cheek by jowl, forming here and on several sidestreets a small clump village. The new building area west of the village centre, though, is marked by looser construction along a street that runs beyond the brook, parallel to the thoroughfare. The Aussiedlerhöfe – the farming homesteads mentioned as outlying Ortsteile above – lie in the south of the municipal area. A new graveyard was established in 1988 on the brook's left bank.Municipality’s layout
History
Antiquity According to a writer named Wendel (who wrote a village chronicle), a Bronze Age axe was found within Adenbach's limits as early as the 19th century, although this has since been lost. The local area was therefore already settled in the Bronze Age, as it apparently also was later, in the Iron Age. During the construction of the Aussiedlerhof Brühlerhof, a rectangular pit was found with dark earth containing burnt matter, and with cremated remains. Grave goods included a fragment of a bronze fibula, an iron axe with a helve hole, a tureen-shaped thrown vessel, two dishes with curved rims and a heavily damaged dish with a thickened rim.
The Romans, too, left behind traces in what is now Adenbach. As early as 1839, a farmer found an 8 cm-tall Minerva statuette, which is now kept at the Historisches Museum der Pfalz (“Historical Museum of the Palatinate”) in Speyer. In 1957, remnants of a villa rustica were found by a farmer when his plough struck the foundation.Antiquity
Middle Ages Adenbach lay originally in the territory of the Counts of the Nahegau, from whom the new noble family of the Counts of Veldenz branched off about 1127. To a great extent, these counts acted as Schutzvögte – roughly “protectors” – over ecclesiastical holdings, namely those around Bad Sobernheim and Odernheim am Glan belonging to the Archbishopric of Mainz, those around Baumholder and Medard belonging to the Bishopric of Verdun, those around Obermoschel belonging to the Bishopric of Worms and the Remigiusland around Kusel belonging to the Archbishopric of Reims. Adenbach lay within this new County of Veldenz and was later repeatedly wholly or partly granted as a fief to comital vassals. In 1379, Adenbach had its first documentary mention in a document from the County of Veldenz, in which the knight Mohr von Sötern acknowledged that he had been enfeoffed by his lordship Junker Friedrich, Count at Veldenz, with holdings in the villages of Heinzenhausen, Lohnweiler, Lauterecken, Medard, Roth, Schwanden (a now vanished village near Medard), Obersulzbach, Niedersulzbach, Ginsweiler, Mannweiler (a now vanished village) and Odenbach and in the town of Meisenheim. This was a first documentary mention not only for Adenbach (Odenbach), but also for Ginsweiler, Mannweiler and the two Sulzbachs (now Sulzbachtal). Junker Friedrich was Count Friedrich II of the younger line of the Counts of Veldenz. In a similar deposition from 1380, a knight named Gerhard von Alsenz likewise acknowledged receipt of holdings from Count Friedrich II, namely a share of Castle Odenbach and also “interest” from various villages, among them Adenbach, Mannweiler and Ginsweiler. From a 1415 document comes word that Friedrich III, the last count in the line (he died in 1444 without a male heir), took Syfryd vom Obirnstein (Siegfried von Oberstein) as a vassal. He enfeoffed his new man with many holdings and income rights, even with shares in Castle Odenbach and lands in several villages, among them Adenbach and the now vanished village of Mannweiler.Middle Ages
Modern times The Counts Palatine (Dukes) of Zweibrücken introduced the Reformation as early as 1537. According to the 1609 Visitation, there were 15 families living in the village. The 17th century was largely marked by wars, such as the Thirty Years' War and French King Louis XIV's wars of conquest. The somewhat remote villages suffered all the more from hunger and sickness. The grimmest hardships began in 1635. In general, an unimaginable brutalization of morals came over people. From that time comes a report according to which two men from Adenbach, with their wives’ help, beat a man from Odenbach in the countryside and took his livestock from the pasture. In 1645, five Swedes came to Adenbach and stole, with two local men's help, cows, horses and sheep, all of which they took away, never to be seen again, and that after having spent the night in the village and incurred considerable costs. By the time the Thirty Years' War ended, the number of families in the village had shrunk to five. Still available today is a 1629 list of holdings and taxes in Adenbach, which was still owned by the Lords of Oberstein. All that is known from the time of Louis XIV's wars is lists of contributions. In the time that followed, population figures rose quickly, partly as a result of immigration. In the course of the 18th century, though, there was extensive emigration. That century also saw repeated disputes between Adenbach and neighbouring villages over grazing rights. A comprehensive village régime from 1717, contained in which is a considerably older Weistum (a Weistum – cognate with English wisdom – was a legal pronouncement issued by men learned in law in the Middle Ages and early modern times), remained preserved for Adenbach. As in many of the Northern Palatinate's other villages, a coal mine and a chalk mine were opened in Adenbach.Modern times All around the village, remnants of pits may still be found, where coal was once mined.
Recent times During the time of the French Revolution and Napoleonic times, France had annexed the German lands on the Rhine’s left bank, and all the borders of the now abolished feudal states had been swept away. Under this new arrangement, Adenbach was a village in the Mairie (“Mayoralty”) of Becherbach in the Canton of Lauterecken in the Arrondissement of Kaiserslautern in the Department of Mont-Tonnerre (or Donnersberg in German). After the united Prussian, Russian and Austrian troops had emerged victorious over Napoleon, Blücher crossed the Rhine on New Year's Night 1814, and the French withdrew from their annexed German lands. Adenbach passed in 1816 to the Kingdom of Bavaria after the Congress of Vienna had awarded the Palatinate – which was now to be known as the Bavarian Rheinkreis – to that state. Adenbach thereafter belonged to the Bürgermeisterei (“Mayoralty”) of Odenbach in the Canton of Lauterecken and the Landkommissariat of Kusel. At the time of the Palatine Uprising in 1849, the municipality refused to recruit soldiers or support the freedom movement. A contribution of 40 Gulden, which municipal council eventually approved, did not have to be paid, for the uprising had in the meantime collapsed. When the state of Rhineland-Palatinate was founded and the Palatinate was split away from Bavaria after the Second World War, existing territorial arrangements were otherwise unchanged at first. Only in the course of administrative restructuring in Rhineland-Palatinate in 1968 did Adenbach pass to the then newly founded Verbandsgemeinde of Lauterecken, with effect from 1 January 1972.Recent times
Population development The village remains to this day rurally structured. The greater part of the population worked until the Second World War at agriculture. Alongside farmers were craftsmen. Agriculture employs very few nowadays. Most members of the workforce seek their livelihoods outside the village. Adenbach is thus a rural residential community. It was in the Late Middle Ages very small, but had grown by the time of the Thirty Years' War, only to see its population shrink drastically in the wake of that war.. During the 18th and 19th centuries, strong growth once again began, only to fall off once more in the decades following the Second World War. Currently, too, a slight fall in population is noticeable. Already by 1994, some 27% of the population was aged 60 or over.
The following table shows population development over the centuries for Adenbach, with some figures broken down by religious denomination:Adenbach’s population development Year 1609 1656 1764 1825 1905 1939 1945 1961 1999 2007 2010 Total ~55 ~20 95 197 225 218 224 191 185 182 174 Catholic 61 30 Evangelical 164 151 Other – 10
Municipality’s name Sources yield at least two stories about how Adenbach got its name: According to one, the name Adenbach is derived from the name of the brook that flows through the village, the Odenbach, which was once named the Adolfsbach.Adenbach’s history According to another, the village was originally a very small settlement on the brook, a farm belonging to somebody named “Ado”. The name Adenbach in its current form first cropped up in the 1379 document (first documentary mention) mentioned above, and the following year the name was recorded as Adinbach and in 1483 as Alt-Adenbach. It was Adenbach once again in 1490.Municipality’s name
Vanished villages In the south of Adenbach's municipal area, most likely near the strip field called Brunnenrech, once lay a village named Mannweiler. By the late 16th century, it was no longer being named in documents and is thought to have vanished even before the Thirty Years' War. Mannweiler might have been an early Frankish founding, possibly described as “Manno’s Hamlet” (according to Dolch and Greule) or “Mannifrit’s Hamlet” (according to Wendel; the placename ending —weiler is German for “hamlet”). Mannweiler had its first documentary mention in 1379.Vanished villages
Religion