Eßweiler (, with a short E; also Essweiler) 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 roughly 25 km north of Kaiserslautern, 15 km east of Kusel and 4 km west of Wolfstein at the foot of the Königsberg, a mountain in the North Palatine Uplands. Eßweiler sits at an elevation of 260 to 280 m above sea level, and has also given the dale in which it lies its name, the Eßweiler Tal.
In the village itself, the two streams, the Breitenbach and the Jettenbach, flow together to form the Talbach, which is fed by the Steinbach about 100 m beyond the municipal limit, thereafter flowing down to Offenbach-Hundheim, where it empties into the Glan.
Found around Eßweiler are some of the district's highest mountains: the Königsberg (568 m), the Selberg (546 m), the Potschberg (498 m), the Bornberg (520 m) and the Herrmannsberg (536 m).
Eßweiler has 431 inhabitants and an area of 8.1 km2. Land under agricultural use amounts to 39.5%, while 13.9% is used for residential and transport purposes. Another 46.1% of the municipal area is wooded, and 0.5% is open water.Statistisches Landesamt Rheinland-Pfalz: Data for EßweilerLocation
Neighbouring municipalities Eßweiler borders in the north on the municipality of Oberweiler im Tal, in the northeast on the municipality of Aschbach, in the east on the municipality of Rutsweiler an der Lauter, in the southeast on the municipality of Rothselberg, in the south on the municipality of Jettenbach, in the southwest on the municipality of Bosenbach, in the west on the municipality of Elzweiler and in the northwest on the municipality of Horschbach. Eßweiler also meets the town of Wolfstein at a single point in the northeast.
Constituent communities Eßweiler has only one outlying centre, called the Schneeweiderhof (Hof means “estate” in German, and the name takes the definite article), lying some 3 km from the village at an elevation of about 500 m above sea level on the Bornberg. Its history is tightly bound with the stone quarries that were established there beginning in the 1870s. Between 1922 and 1924, the then owners of the quarries, Basalt-Actien-Gesellschaft (a company that is still in business today, based then, as now, in Linz am Rhein and known as Basalt AG for short), built a workers’ settlement for quarry employees, the Kolonie, out of basalt stones. The complex is still fairly well preserved.
Owing to the great number of schoolchildren (all together 25 of them in seven grades in 1952), a school was set up at the Kolonie in 1952 in a purpose-built building, thus sparing the children the daily walk to the village and back. The school was, however, dissolved in 1965 owing to school reform.Schultagebuch des Lehrers Egon Fickeisen Since the quarries were closed in 1970, the population figure on the Schneeweiderhof has been steadily shrinking; more and more flats are now unoccupied. On the other hand, the Schneeweiderhof is popular among hikers and daytrippers from the local area, if only to make a stop at the local inn.
Municipality’s layout Eßweiler owes its current shape mainly to the time that followed the Thirty Years' War. It was built as a linear village (by some definitions, a “thorpe”) stretching along Hauptstraße (also known today as Landesstraße 372). In the village core, where the Breitenbach and Jettenbach meet to form the Talbach, another road, Krämelstraße, branches off as Landesstraße 369 to Jettenbach and on towards Landstuhl. Also in the village core stands the Protestant church, built in 1865. Next to it were the old school building and the old village hall, which was renovated and expanded in the 1960s. As early as 1935, the former alte Schul (“old school”) was supplemented with a new school building on the road leading out of the village towards Oberweiler im Tal. The village core was given a makeover in the 1980s when a new village square was laid out. Eventually, in the years 1994–1997, a village community centre was built right on this square. Leading out of both the former and current village core is the street “Im Läppchen”, the part of which on the Talbach's right bank is known even today as the Judengasse (“Jews’ Lane”), a reference to the once important Jewish sector of the population in Eßweiler. Since the 1950s, the bridges leading across the brooks have been turned into culverts so that the crossing between the two highways – still known locally as a “bridge” – now bears little sign of its former shape. Branching off from Krämelstraße is a Kreisstraße that leads to the outlying centre of the Schneeweiderhof some 3 km away on the summit of the Bornberg. This road was expanded as Kreisstraße 31 in 1959 and renovated in 1994 and 1995. Until 1970, diorite was quarried at the Schneeweiderhof. The former quarry lands together with the Kolonie, a workers’ settlement for those who worked the quarries, built in 1923, may be described as an industrial monument. In 1988, the Kusel district began using the old quarries as the district dump. Just beyond the junction where the road branches off to the Schneeweiderhof, a new building development sprang up along Krämelstraße in the 1950s, which pushed the village's built-up area outwards towards Jettenbach. Work on a further building development, “Auf Herrmannsmauer”, began in 1980 on the road leading out of the village towards Oberweiler im Tal, above Landesstraße 372. Currently, the municipality is putting its efforts into yet another new building development in the field known as “Rödwies” on Rothenweg. According to the 1987 census, Eßweiler has 161 residential buildings with 195 dwellings. Somewhat more than one third of these buildings date from before 1900. On Eßweiler's outskirts, two Aussiedlerhöfe (outlying farming settlements), the Königsbergerhof (below the Königsberg) and the Lindenhof (on the road leading out of the village towards Jettenbach). Near the Lindenhof, in the part of the municipal area called “Altbach”, the municipality wants to open a commercial area.
In the late 1980s, the Christliches Jugenddorfwerk Deutschlands (CJD) acquired a sizeable property in the village core. After the original idea of running a training centre for ecological farming fell through, the two buildings served as a way station for Aussiedler from East European countries. The CJD has also meanwhile housed trainees.Municipality’s layout
History
Stone Age to Roman times Within both Eßweiler's and Rothselberg’s municipal limits, several Stone Age finds have been brought to light. Later, Celts settled here. They were forced out by Germanic tribes, who were in turn pushed out, over to the Rhine’s right bank, by the Romans. By the time the Gallic Wars ended locally, in 51 BC, the whole of the Rhine’s left bank was part of Roman Gaul. Unearthed in 1904, and bearing witness to Roman-Gaulish times, was a silver spoon decorated with doves, grapes and vine leaves and inscribed “Lucilianae vivas”. Its origin is Roman, from about the 4th century.Grünenwald L.: Urkunden und Bodenfunde zur Frühgeschichte der Pfalz, Palatina, Jg. 1926, S.212 The spoon is now to be found at the Historical Museum of the Palatinate (Historisches Museum der Pfalz) in Speyer, and is also early evidence of Christianity in the Palatinate (see Religion below). On the Trautmannsberg in 2002 and 2003, workers with the Office for Archaeological Monument Care (Amt für archäologische Denkmalpflege) undertook diggings to observe and preserve a Roman estate. Right next to the site, they unearthed ceramics and storage pits from pre-Celtic times (about 800 BC).Lanzer, Rudi: Bei Grabungen Reste römischer Villa frei gelegt, Die Rheinpfalz, 11. Januar 2003 Moreover, in the early 20th century on the Potschberg, the building remnants of a Roman mountain sanctuary were found. The Romans withdrew from the region about AD 400, and the Alemanni who settled after them were eventually driven out by the Franks under King Clovis I (466-511). The whole region was part of the Reichsland, which was at the king’s own disposal, giving rise to the name Königsland, still used today.Antiquity
Middle Ages Eßweiler most likely arose sometime between 600 and 800, which was the time when villages with names ending in —weiler came into being. In 1250 and 1296, Eßweiler had its first documentary mentions as Esewilre. Originally, the village lay not in the dale, but rather at the foot of the Königsberg, in what is now the field known as Kirchwiese. In earlier days, wall remnants were found. In the Middle Ages and Early Modern times, Eßweiler belonged to the Eßweiler Tal complex (Tal means “dale” or “valley”), a territorial unit comprising not only Eßweiler but also Oberweiler im Tal, Hinzweiler, Nerzweiler, Hundheim, Aschbach, Horschbach, Elzweiler and Hachenbach, all of which today lie within the Kusel district. A cleared area that included the greater part of the Eßweiler Tal was donated to Prüm Abbey in Prüm in the Eifel between 868 and 870.Rothenberger/Scherer/Stab/Keddigkeit: Pfälzische Geschichte Teil 1, Institut für pfälz. Geschichte und Volkskunde, Kaiserslautern, 2001, S. 114/115 The lordly seat was Hirsau, whose ancient church bears witness to this time. Later, the whole Dale was ruled by the Counts of Veldenz, who had split away from the Waldgraves. Their administrative seat was at first Nerzweiler; sometime between 1443 and 1477, it was moved to Hundheim.Dolch M.:Hundheim am Glan. Hintergründe eines Namenswechsels im hohen Mittelalter, Westricher Heimatblätter Jg. 20 (1989), S. 79 The Offenbach Monastery and the old Hirsau Church (Hirsauer Kirche, the ancient church mentioned above) give a clue that the Eßweiler Tal was originally a monastic Vogtei region. The record shows that in 1150, the estates in Aschbach, Hachenbach and Hirsau were donated to the Offenbach Monastery by Reinfried von Rüdesheim as a provost’s realm of Saint Vincent’s Abbey in Metz; the Archbishop of Mainz confirmed this donation in 1289. Hirsau was until the 16th century a parish covering the whole Dale. In the 12th century, the Eßweiler Tal passed to Count Emich von Schmidtburg, who is said to be the one who endowed the comital line of Veldenz. In 1393, the Dale passed as a Wittum (widow’s estate) to Margarete von Nassau, Count of Veldenz Friedrich III’s wife.