Föckelberg 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 of Kusel-Altenglan, whose seat is in Kusel.
Geography
Location The municipality lies in the Western Palatinate between roughly 400 and 450 m above sea level. Indeed, within Föckelberg's limits is found a peak of 562.5 m on the road leading from Mühlbach (an Ortsteil of Altenglan) to Neunkirchen and onwards round the peak to Gimsbach. This is the Potzberg, upon which stands the 35 m-tall Potzberg Tower. The distance to the Potzberg from the village is roughly 1 km as the crow flies and 2 km by road. From the village itself, there is an outstanding view of the mountainous countryside east of the Potzberg. Föckelberg shares the Wildpark Potzberg (game park) with Neunkirchen am Potzberg. The municipal area measures 209 ha, of which 95 ha is wooded and roughly 3 ha is settled.Location
Neighbouring municipalities Föckelberg borders in the north on the municipality of Bosenbach, in the east on the municipality of Niederstaufenbach, in the southeast on the municipality of Oberstaufenbach, in the south on the municipality of Neunkirchen am Potzberg, in the west on the municipality of Rutsweiler am Glan and in the northwest on the municipality of Altenglan.
Constituent communities Also belonging to Föckelberg is the outlying homestead of Potzberghotel.Constituent communities
Municipality’s layout Föckelberg is a linear village – by some definitions, a “thorpe” – with a loose built-up area; from the Middle Ages onwards, it was a village characterized purely by agriculture. The homesteads stood either side of the road. When many quicksilver mines opened around the Potzberg's peak in the latter half of the 18th century, workers also settled in Föckelberg, and the population figure rose noticeably. Nevertheless, the built-up area did not expand appreciably, for the miners built their houses between the homesteads that were already standing. There has never been a church in Föckelberg. Of all the public buildings, only the former schoolhouse, which has been converted into a village community centre, is worthy of note. The graveyard lies in the village's south end at the side of the road that leads to Neunkirchen am Potzberg. The village sporting ground lies almost at the end of the road that runs up to the Potzberg's peak.Municipality’s layout
History
Antiquity Without a doubt, the area around Föckelberg was already settled in prehistoric times. Today, however, archaeologists can no longer tell, short of conducting digs, which of the many mounds on the Potzberg are Celtic barrows and which are tailing heaps from the former mining industry. Experts do not even agree on whether there are indeed barrows among these mounds. In Roman times, too, the area around Föckelberg was settled, bearing witness to which are some archaeological finds from that time made in the neighbouring village of Neunkirchen.Antiquity
Middle Ages Just when Föckelberg first arose as a village cannot be determined today. Places with names ending in —berg only arose, going by what is commonly known, quite late, often only in the 10th century. According to old border descriptions of the Remigiusland, the village lay outside the Reims holdings in the Westrich, an historic region that encompasses areas in both Germany and France, and thus in the Free Imperial Domain (Reichsland) in the broad area surrounding the Royal Castle Lautern. This Reichsland was pledged from Imperial power to territorial princes during the reigns of Emperors Ludwig IV (“the Bavarian”; 1314–1347) and Karl IV (1346-1378). Thus, all villages in the Amt of Reichenbach passed in 1345 as an Imperial pledge to Count Georg I of Veldenz. Even though Föckelberg's first documentary mention would not come until 1397, this certainly included Föckelberg, for it had existed for a few centuries already before its first mention. The Imperial pledge was never redeemed by the Holy Roman Empire, and so all these villages, along with Föckelberg, remained under the Counts of Veldenz. In 1444, Frederick III, Count of Veldenz, the last from the Hohengeroldseck family to rule the county, died without a male heir; the county passed to his son-in-law Stephen, Count Palatine of Simmern-Zweibrücken (son of Rupert, King of Germany), widower of Frederick's daughter, Anna of Veldenz. Stephen, combining his lands, created the new County Palatine of Zweibrücken, which in the fullness of time came to be known as the Duchy of Palatinate-Zweibrücken.Middle Ages
Modern times Like all villages in the area, Föckelberg, too, saw a great deal of suffering in the 17th century's wars, namely the Thirty Years' War and French King Louis XIV’s wars of conquest. Details of the misfortunes wrought upon Föckelberg itself in these wars are unknown, but something does survive from that time: a Huberweistum (a Huber was a farmer who owned a whole hide of land, while a Weistum – cognate with English wisdom – was a legal pronouncement issued by men learned in law in the Middle Ages and early modern times) from the municipality of Föckelberg. The Föckelberg Weistum was set down in writing in 1671. The first part deals with the redefinition of the hides (fields) within municipal limits, and then the document goes on to lay down the rules of conduct for the farmers. It was presented to the farmers each year on Saint Thomas's Day (then 21 December) on the occasion of the walking of the fields. In 1543, Wolfgang, Count Palatine of Zweibrücken, transferred to his uncle and former regent Rupert holdings so that he could found his own county palatine. Belonging to this were Veldenz on the Moselle, the Ämter of Lauterecken and Reichenbach, the Remigiusberg and later also Lützelstein (now called La Petite-Pierre) in Alsace. The residence town was at first Lauterecken. The line of the Counts Palatine of Veldenz-Lauterecken-Lützelstein died out in 1694, and the County Palatine of Veldenz passed in 1717, after disagreements between Electoral Palatinate and Palatinate-Zweibrücken, to Electoral Palatinate, although this was only made permanent in 1733 by the Mannheim Treaty of Succession. In line with this development, Föckelberg belonged from 1344 to 1444 to the old County of Veldenz, from 1444 to 1543 to the Duchy of Palatinate-Zweibrücken, from 1543 to 1694 to the new County Palatine of Veldenz, and beginning in 1733 to Electoral Palatinate. In 1788, Föckelberg was mentioned in Goswin Widder's Geographische Beschreybung der Kurpfalz (“Geographical Description of Electoral Palatinate”). This says, among other things: “Föckelberg is a midsize village at the Potzberg. … The population of this village is made up of 39 families, 176 souls, the buildings of 30 private and 3 common houses, the municipal area of 501 Morgen in cropfields, 110 Morgen in meadows and 406 Morgen in woodland. Found on the Potzberg is a quicksilver mine, called Elisabethengrube, from which in the year 1477, 2,520 pounds of quicksilver was mined.” The “common houses” to which Widder referred (gemeine Häuser in the original German text) may have been buildings available for use to all villagers, for instance, the herdsman's house or the bakehouse. Electoral Palatinate rule came to an end when French Revolutionary troops marched into Germany in the late 18th century.Modern times
Recent times The Revolutionary troops occupied the German lands on the Rhine’s left bank and annexed them to France. After a thorough territorial reorganization in 1801, Föckelberg belonged to the Mairie (“Mayoralty”) of Neunkirchen, the Canton of Wolfstein, the Arrondissement of Kaiserslautern and the Department of Mont-Tonnerre (or Donnersberg in German), whose seat was at Mainz. In the Bavarian time that followed, beginning in 1816, the village belonged within the Bayerischer Rheinkreis (the bulk of the Palatinate that the Congress of Vienna had awarded to the Kingdom of Bavaria) to the Landkommissariat of Kusel, the canton of Wolfstein and the Bürgermeisterei (“Mayoralty”) of Neunkirchen.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Nazi Party (NSDAP) had variable fortunes in Föckelberg. In the 1928 Reichstag elections, 37.1% of the local votes went to Adolf Hitler’s party (as against the national average of 2.6%German Federal Election results, 1928) while only 1.8% went to the Communists (as against the national average of 10.6%German Federal Election results, 1928). By the time of the 1933 Reichstag elections, after Hitler had already seized power, local support for the Nazis had shrunk to 23.0% while the Communists’ share of the vote had risen greatly to 22.1%. The Nazis nevertheless prevailed in the end, and Hitler's success in these elections paved the way for his Enabling Act of 1933 (Ermächtigungsgesetz), thus starting the Third Reich in earnest. Among other things, Hitler banned the Communist Party of Germany.
Only after the Second World War was there another territorial reorganization. The Palatinate was now grouped into the then newly founded state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The Bürgermeisterei of Neunkirchen, though, remained in force until the 1968 administrative restructuring in Rhineland-Palatinate. After its dissolution, Föckelberg became an Ortsgemeinde within the Verbandsgemeinde of Altenglan.Recent times
Population development Originally it was first and foremost farmers and forestry workers who lived in Föckelberg, and for a while also miners who worked the Potzberg's quicksilver mines. Only for the time since the late 18th century are population figures available. These show that in a span of less than 50 years (1788 to 1825), the population grew more than twofold. This growth arose not only from natural growth, but also from a change in economic conditions, namely the expansion of mercury mining on the Potzberg. This mining expansion might partly explain the peak in Föckelberg's population of 444 in 1905, although by that time, most of the mines on the mountain had been shut down. This, of course, led to shrinking population figures right up until the years following the Second World War. The newer rise in population since 1960 can be ascribed to the village's relatively favourable location near the centres of Kusel and Kaiserslautern. Nevertheless, a stagnation in population growth may now be noted. Over time, the original commercial relationships have changed utterly. There are nowadays only a few agricultural operations still in business in Föckelberg, and all are worked as secondary occupations, and this has even brought about a turnover in population, with long established families’ younger members moving away and new families moving into Föckelberg. Most members of the workforce must seek work elsewhere, such as in towns like Kaiserslautern and Kusel.
The following table shows population development over the centuries for Föckelberg:Föckelberg’s population development Year 1788 1825 1835 1871 1905 1939 1950 1961 1970 1978 1988 2003 Total 176 373 433 417 444 379 375 401 430 406 426 396
Municipality’s name In 1397, Föckelberg had its first documentary mention as Fockelnberg. Other names that the village has borne over time are Feckelnberg (1460), Fuckelnberg (1483) and Feckelburg (1571). The name used today first showed up in 1788 in Goswin Widder's writings and became current in the 19th century. According to researchers Dolch and Greule, the name means “Fockilo’s settlement” or “Fockilo’s field”, making no apparent reference to the placename ending —berg, which means “mountain” in German.Municipality’s name
Vanished villages No vanished villages are known to have lain within Föckelberg's current limits, but Goswin Widder, writing in 1788, mentioned a Wüsthube (roughly, a hide of land where a village once stood), but he did not elaborate.Vanished villages
Religion