Gries () 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 Oberes Glantal, whose seat is in Schönenberg-Kübelberg.
Geography
Location The municipality lies at the edge of the North Palatine Uplands (part of the Saar-Nahe Uplands), on the south slope of the 314 m-high Schlossberg, which has an outstanding view, in the Western Palatinate. To the south lies the Ohmbach valley with its 10-18 ha Ohmbach Reservoir, and to the east, the river Glan has carved a prominent bend into the uplands. Gries lies in a gently sloping spot whose elevation ranges from 270 to 310 m above sea level. Northwest of the village is another high hill called the Löwenberg. East of the village at the municipal limit with the neighbouring municipality of Bruchmühlbach-Miesau (Ortsteil of Elschbach), the Ohmbach empties into the river Glan, which thence, going upstream, forms the said limit between the two municipalities. North of the village, almost all the way to the neighbouring village of Börsborn, lies the Lebecksmühle, where for centuries the waterwheel turned, and which later became a popular country public house, although nowadays it is a private house. Woods stretch out south of the village at the reservoir's shore, with a grove of sequoias, and also in the northern municipal area. Near the reservoir's shore stands a festival hall with a kiosk, and nearby is a grilling facility with a pavilion. The village is surrounded by a well-developed network of farm lanes, hiking trails and cycle paths. The municipal area measures 400 ha, of which 50 ha is wooded.Location
Neighbouring municipalities Gries borders in the north on the municipality of Börsborn, in the northeast on the municipality of Nanzdietschweiler, in the east on the municipality of Hütschenhausen, in the southeast on the municipality of Bruchmühlbach-Miesau (outlying centre of Elschbach, in the Kaiserslautern district), in the south on the municipality of Schönenberg-Kübelberg (outlying centre of Sand) and in the west on the municipality of Brücken.
Constituent communities Also belonging to Gries is the outlying homestead of Lebecksmühle.Constituent communities
Municipality’s layout The municipality of Gries is among the Kusel district's bigger villages. The oldest part of the built-up area arose along the middle part of what is today Hauptstraße (“Main Street”), which runs from the heights to the reservoir's west shore in a broad bow. Likewise older building is found on Triftstraße, with the old schoolhouse (now a community centre and clubhouse), on Schlossbergstraße, Friedhofstraße, Goethestraße, on the north side of Raiffeisenring and Bahnhofstraße. This last street's name means “Railway Station Street”, and indeed it does lead to the former railway station between Elschbach and Sand. The graveyard with its consecration hall and Protestant church (built in 1964) is framed by Raiffeisenring and Friedhofstraße. The Catholic youth centre, at which church services are also held once a week, stands in the village's north end on Sportplatzstraße. Stretching round the older parts of the village are areas with newer building, at the ends of Hauptstraße, on Schillerstraße, Schillerstraße and the south side of Raiffeisenring as well as in the Eckenfeld and the Rechental. In the Schlossberg's heights lies the sporting ground with its clubhouse.Municipality’s layout
History
Antiquity As long ago as prehistoric times, the vicinity was inhabited by man, bearing witness to which are barrows from the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. Archaeological finds made at digs long ago have today for the most part disappeared, although a few are still kept at the Museum des Historischen Vereins der Pfalz (Museum of the Historical Society of the Palatinate) in Speyer. There are no finds from Roman times that can be definitively linked to Gries, although there have been some in neighbouring municipal areas, foremost among these Miesau’s.Antiquity
Middle Ages From the contiguous Free Imperial Domain (freies Reichsland) around Castle Lautern, Frankish kings split certain areas away in the Early Middle Ages to donate them to both ecclesiastical and secular lordships. Great parts passed into the Salians’ ownership. In 737, Count Werner I from the Salian dynasty endowed the Hornbach Monastery, whose first abbot was Saint Pirmin. Werner furnished the monastery richly, giving it estates and lands, including the Münchweiler valley, which in turn included Gries. As a fief of the Hornbach Monastery with its hub at Glan-Münchweiler, all villages in the Münchweiler valley passed in 1323 first to the Raugraves in the Nahegau, and thereafter, in 1344, to the Archbishop of Trier and then to the Breidenborns.
Gries likely arose sometime around 1100. The name (as it was originally recorded) meant in Middle High German “gravelly, sandy ground”; the Modern High German word Grieß – pronounced the same way as “Gries” – still means “grit”, and is cognate with that English word.Etymology of “grit” The addition of (Modern High German: zum; meaning: “at the”) may be taken to mean that the locality was an outlying rural area belonging to another municipality. These were split apart from each other, perhaps in the course of the introduction of three-field crop rotation. As the nearest place that already existed at the time, it seems likely that once belonged to Kübelberg. Thought to have arisen at the same time as Gries are Sand (, “at the sand”, nowadays an outlying centre of Schönenberg-Kübelberg) and Miesau, even if different founding dates are given for each (these rest mainly on first documentary mentions, though). In 1383, Gries had its first documentary mention in the Breidenborn Cartulary. By the entry in this book, the municipalities of the Münchweiler Tal (an administrative entity belonging to Hornbach Monastery near Zweibrücken) swore an oath of loyalty to their new lady, Agnes von Neuenbaumberg. The village is, however, roughly 300 years older. Just when the village arose is, however, something that can hardly be determined today. It is only actually known that it existed in 1383.
In another document, for the first time persons from Gries are named, as Stefan Bauer reports in his book about Kübelberg. The date that he names is 10 August 1427, on which day a number of persons donated a plot of land to Johann von Breidenborn. The persons listed thereafter were from several villages, but two of them were Henne vom Grieß (Gries) and his wife Engel. In a 1461 Reichsland border description document, a man named Krich Glaz von Sant Nikolaus von Griß (Gries) is named, which reminds writer Ernst Christmann of a Bildstock near “Klaus Krieg’s” house.
The overlord in the Münchweiler Tal or the Amt of Münchweiler was Hornbach Monastery. This Benedictine monastery, the most important one west of the Rhine and south of the Nahe, did not administer its far-flung holdings all by itself. Rather, it enfeoffed various vassals with them. After the Raugraves of Altenbaumburg and Neuenbaumburg came the Breidenborns, and then the Mauchenheims. Finally, in the 15th century, the Counts of Leyen came into partial, and later full, ownership of Gries and the other villages in the Amt of Münchweiler (Glan-Münchweiler, Nanzweiler, Dietschweiler, Börsborn, Steinbach and Haschbach) through marriage. Jörg von der Leyen wed a daughter from the patriarchal Zweibrücken noble family of Mauchenheim. Since this house had a share in the ownership of Castle Blieskastel, Gries and the other villages in the Amt became part of the Oberamt of Blieskastel, and remained so for roughly 300 years, until the French Revolution.
Through Georg I von der Leyen's marriage to Eva von Mauchenheim in 1456, the House of Leyen came into ownership of holdings in the Bliesgau, and once it had taken charge of an inheritance in 1486, it also acquired ownership of a share in Blieskastel Castle. At the same time, Abbot Ulrich of the Hornbach Monastery granted Jörge von der Leyen, a Burgmann at Castle Lautern, the Münchweiler Tal. Their holdings included Gries and the other villages in the Amt of Münchweiler (Glan-Münchweiler, Nanzweiler, Dietschweiler, Börsborn, Steinbach and Haschbach). The Lords of Leyen came from the country around the lower Moselle and already resided at their castle near Gondorf on the Moselle. For the most part, they served the Archbishops of Trier, and Johann von der Leyen-Saffig was chosen as Archbishop in 1556. Besides the House of Leyen, their kin, the Mauchenheims, were also enfeoffed in turn with shares of the monastery's holdings in the Münchweiler Tal. As of 1533, though, it was only the family of the Barons and later Counts of Leyen.Middle Ages
Modern times The overlordship changed hands. It was taken over by the Dukes of Palatinate-Zweibrücken, who until this time had been Lord Protectors of Hornbach Monastery. Thereafter, the monastery itself was slowly forsaken by the monks in the course of the Reformation, until in the end, the last abbot, Johann Kinthausen, went as far as to get married and become Protestant. Because the Leyens retained the old beliefs – that is, Catholicism (after all, the family, whose roots were in Gondorf on the Moselle, had produced several Archbishops of both Trier and Mainz) – religious matters were very problematic, with disputes breaking out several times between them and the Dukes of Palatinate-Zweibrücken, who had embraced Protestantism. Often enough, these disagreements ended up before the Reichskammergericht in either Speyer or Wetzlar. Otherwise, relations between the Catholic House of Leyen and the Calvinist-oriented Duchy of Palatinate-Zweibrücken were generally good.
An exact account of the events during the Thirty Years' War is not known, although obviously the population would have been heavily decimated. Indeed, its utter extinction at that time cannot be ruled out. Names from the time before the war suddenly no longer appear in documents, suggesting that the village was repopulated. During French King Louis XIV's wars of conquest, it is likely that the village was destroyed once again, although this time without the great loss of population. As a result of the Nine Years' War (known in Germany as the Pfälzischer Erbfolgekrieg, or War of the Palatine Succession), the French under King Louis XIV occupied not only the Palatinate territories but also the Palatinate's many microstates, so that they were effectively the authority. For their part, the Dukes of Palatinate-Zweibrücken had married into the Swedish royal family, with their duchy consequently being ruled from Sweden for a time. The oldest map on which Gries appears (compiled in 1564 by the geometer Tilemann Stella), for instance, is to be found at the Swedish Imperial Archive in Stockholm. Over the centuries, the power structure would change often, with only Gries's local lords, the Counts (later Imperial Counts) of Leyen remaining the same, each holding the fief under his respective overlord. Until the French Revolution, the local ruling structure thus did not change again. Gries still belonged to the lordship of the House of Leyen, who as of 1773 resided in Blieskastel, whence they continued to expand their hereditary domain. Glan-Münchweiler became the main centre of a Leyen Unteramt to which Gries also belonged. After Count Franz Karl von der Leyen's death in 1775, his wife Marianne, who was popular among the people, took over the regency for their not yet grown son Philipp.
Recent times