Einöllen is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a type of collective municipality – in the Kusel district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde Lauterecken-Wolfstein.
Geography
Location The municipality lies 6 km southeast of Lauterecken and 7 km east of Offenbach-Hundheim on Landesstraße 383. Einöllen is located on a mountain ridge between the Odenbach and Lauter valleys at elevations between 303 and 360 m above sea level. The highest elevation within municipal limits is the Sattelberg at 381 m above sea level. Wolfstein lies roughly 7 km away, while it is about 35 km to each of Kusel, Kaiserslautern and Idar-Oberstein. Kreisstraße 42 leads through the actual village core and onwards to the Ausbacherhof (an outlying hamlet of Reipoltskirchen) and Reipoltskirchen into the Odenbach valley, and to Rockenhausen and the Donnersberg. Running over the heights from Lauterecken is an old Roman road leading to Hohenöllen, near to that village's namesake Hohe Halde (“High Heap” or “High Dump”) with its famous view of the Lauterschleife (a tight bow in the river Lauter). Until just before the little wood known as the Harstholz, this Roman road forms the stretch of Landesstraße 383 that today runs through Einöllen. Then, at the so-called Hohe Dohl at the vorderer Weiher (“further pond”), it bends to the left, runs between the woods and the hinterer Weiher (“hinder pond”) and meets the other Roman road coming from Kaiserslautern and leading by way of Morbach and the Ausbacherhof to Meisenheim. Given the location between the two roads, the Harstholz was ideal for Roman settlements. Within the municipality's limits, from several springs lying towards the boundary with Relsberg, rises the Sulzbach, which in its upper reaches flows through what was once the village of Heinzweiler, and which downstream from Medard empties into the river Glan. Near the Harstholz rises the Breitbach, which empties into the river Lauter in Oberweiler-Tiefenbach. Einöllen's municipal area measures 571 ha, of which 80 ha is wooded.
Neighbouring municipalities Einöllen borders in the northeast on the municipality of Reipoltskirchen, in the southeast on the municipality of Relsberg, in the south on the town of Wolfstein, in the southwest on the municipality of Oberweiler-Tiefenbach and in the northwest on the municipality of Hohenöllen.
Constituent communities Also belonging to Einöllen are the outlying homesteads of Berghof and Hobstätterhof.Statistisches Landesamt Rheinland-Pfalz – Amtliches Verzeichnis der Gemeinden und Gemeindeteile , Seite 99 (PDF)
Municipality’s layout Serving as Einöllen's original anchor was its church, around which arose the first houses. The village spread out to both the east and the south. About 1900, the thoroughfares Landesstraße 383 and Kreisstraße 42 were each built up along both sides. A new building area was opened in the municipality's west beginning in 1970.
History
Antiquity The Einöllen area might have been settled as early as Roman times, and even somewhat earlier. In the Harstholz (wood) lie two (Dr. Hermann Gauch, who was a local, mentioned three) pre-Roman Celtic barrows. A stone sarcophagus found right nearby makes it clear that there were people here. At the Ohligrech (apparently a vulgar corruption of Ewige Quelle, meaning “Everlasting Spring”) in 1929, Dr. Hermann Gauch found several whetted stone axes from the New Stone Age. There could even be a link between the pre-Roman archaeological finds in Einöllen and the Roman villa unearthed between Reipoltskirchen and Hefersweiler in the Odenbach valley.
Middle Ages Einöllen originally belonged to the Counts of Veldenz, whose comital seat was at Meisenheim, and who had split away from the Nahegau Counts in the early 12th century. According to Veldenz documents from 1268 and 1387, the Ampt Honhelden (using the archaic spelling of Amt), along with the chapel estate of Einöllen as an annex was one of the Veldenzes’ two allodial holdings, the other being Waldgrehweiler, which at that time was known as Grebwilre (in Modern High German this would be Grafenweiler, meaning “Count’s Hamlet). In many cases, these allodial holdings served lords as summertime seats, as it were, cottages. Einöllen apparently held much importance to the Counts of Veldenz for its “lordly pond” (alongside winegrowing at the Wingertsberg or Herrenberg at Hohenöllen). Thus, the Counts of Veldenz apparently came to the vorderer Weiher and hinterer Weiher (“further pond” and “hinder pond”), whose names still crop up today as rural cadastral toponyms, and to the neighbouring wood, the Harstholz, to do their fishing and bird hunting. Einöllen belonged to the County Palatine of Zweibrücken as of 1444. A 1615 record mentions the “Weiher bey der Eich zu Ainot” (“pond near the oak at Einöllen”). The pond area lies on a Roman road.
An estate holder named Gauch also set up a church foundation in the Middle Ages, but this was finally wiped out in 1923 in the hyperinflation that then beset the Weimar Republic.
Modern times The Veldenzes seem to have bestowed their lordly allodial seat upon somebody else, for in 1432, Einöllen was a dower estate held by Sofie von Eich, who was Wilhelm Wolf von Sponheim's wife. He, in turn, was one of the owners of Castle Alt-Wolfstein (near Wolfstein). In 1595, according to records from Disibodenberg, tithing rights in Einöllen belonged to the Order of Saint John. In the 15th century, the Amt seat was moved and there then appeared the Amt or Gericht (court region) of Einöllen, which also took in Hohenöllen, Sulzbach (now Sulzhof, an outlying homestead of Hohenöllen), Oberweiler, Tiefenbach, Rossbach, Stahlhausen and Immetshausen. In 1768, Einöllen passed by way of the Selz-Hagenbach Exchange from the Oberamt of Meisenheim and the Duchy of Palatinate-Zweibrücken (to which the County of Veldenz had passed in 1444) to the Electorate of the Palatinate’s Amt of Wolfstein and Oberamt of Kaiserslautern.
Recent times After the French Revolution in 1789 and the subsequent French occupation that lasted until 1814, Einöllen belonged to the Canton of Wolfstein and the Department of Mont-Tonnerre (or Donnersberg in German). Around 1800, under Napoleonic French rule, Einöllen was fleetingly a mairie (“mayoralty”), as witnessed by Jakob Gauch, whom historic records describe as the municipal head, border stone minder and provisional mayor. From 1815 on, the village belonged to the Kingdom of Bavaria, within which it lay in the canton of Wolfstein in the Landkommissariat (later Bezirk, and later still Landkreis or “rural district”) of Kaiserslautern. In the 18th and 19th centuries, there was coalmining in Einöllen, as there was in neighbouring villages. In 1900, Einöllen became a self-administering Bürgermeisterei (“mayoralty”) within the Kusel district. In August 1923, as in Hohenöllen, Rossbach and Rutsweiler, emergency money (Notgeld) was issued in Einöllen to finance the installation of an electrical supply, with each note being signed by the then mayor, Welker, and his deputy, Wannenmacher. In the Second World War, the Americans marched into the village on 19 March 1945. After the war and the establishment of Germany's new political order, the village was part of the Kusel district in the then newly founded state of Rhineland-Palatinate. Beginning in 1969, in the course of administrative restructuring in the state, Verbandsgemeinden were founded. Einöllen belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Wolfstein.
Population development Mentioned in a 1544 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) was a Schultheiß named Hans Möller (or Müller). Other “old” names are Keller (1580) and Schmidt (1648), whereas the later influential family Gauch, which produced, among other people, a prominent Nazi academic and postwar Holocaust denier (Hermann Gauch), first crops up in Einöllen's history only about 1740. The earliest population figures for Einöllen come from a 1587 homage list. Named herein were 14 bowmen and 3 simple servants. All together, there were then some 90 persons living in the village. Striking is that even today there are many household or family names that are derived from feminine given names: Mahlches, (from Amalie), Gretches (from Margarete), Reles (from Aurelie), Rosas, Rosalies, Sennes (from Susanne), Settches (from Rosette). The women from whom these names were taken mostly lived alone in the village at the turn of the 20th century, while their husbands sought work far away, mostly as travelling musicians.
The following table shows population development over the centuries for Einöllen: Year 1787 1797 1837 1939 1946 1961 1971 1976 1986 1996 Total 185 238 432 557 618 557 578 566 519 525
Municipality’s name Einöllen was once known as Eynet (1432), or Einheit (1438). The latter form is worthy of note, not only because in Modern High German it means “unit” or “oneness”, but also because it is a form of Einod, an old word meaning “personal property”, here referring to the Veldenzes’ allodial holding. Beginning about 1550, however, especially in the Meisenheim visitation protocols, the village was called Ainot or Ainöt. Thereafter, the name seems to have assimilated somewhat to the neighbouring village's name, Hohenöllen, which evolved from Hoenhelden (Modern High German: hohe Halde, meaning “high heap” or “high dump”), eventually becoming today's Einöllen. Thus in 1438, the name had already become Eynhelden. In 1599, from a description of two estates, the Ingweilerhof and the Ausbacherhof, in the Speyer State Archive, the names Einod and Einölln were used side by side, as were Ainodt and Einellen in 1612 according to a record from Disibodenberg.
Religion