Hüffler 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.
Geography
Location Hüffler is a linear village – by some definitions, a “thorpe” – that lies in the Bledesbach valley (Standard High German name: Bledesbachtal; locally customary name: Saubeeredaal or Saubeeretal) along Landesstraße (State Road) 360 and one other, parallel road. One road links Kusel with Glan-Münchweiler. Running almost parallel to the village is the Autobahn A 62 (Kaiserslautern–Trier). The elevation on the valley floor is 310 m above sea level. This rises to either side of the village. The highest hill is the Dillmeßrech or Dilmersrech at 390 m above sea level. At its highest point, the Autobahn A 62 (Kaiserslautern–Trier) cuts through the hill. To the village’s west, the land rises up to a height of 370 m. The woodlands stretch mainly along the slopes on the Bledesbach’s right bank.Location
Neighbouring municipalities Hüffler borders in the north on the municipality of Schellweiler, in the northeast on the municipality of Etschberg, in the southeast on the municipalities of Rehweiler and Quirnbach, in the southwest on the municipality of Wahnwegen and in the northwest on the municipality of Konken.
Municipality’s layout Hüffler’s municipal area, which is not very big, sustained great losses with the building of the Autobahn in the years 1938-1941 and 1966-1970. On the other hand, the work unearthed many fossils from early geological formations. The drawback was that this involved the eastern part of the municipal area being utterly split off from the rest, making it very difficult to reach. From 1974 to 1979, the Cultural Office undertook a classic Flurbereinigung, as part of which the Bledesbach and the Kehlbach were graded, and their banks were reinforced with hard stone. Rural cadastral names were not changed as a result of the work. The pattern of the built-up area can be recognized even in the original cadastral survey undertaken in 1849. Then, properties stood only along the highway on the brook’s right bank (Kirchenstraße and Hauptstraße) and on a parallel way beyond the brook (Alte Straße). In the time that followed, both areas grew in length, cross-links were built and there was further expansion mainly towards the west. Between the two world wars, the built-up area expanded very little. Hüffler’s greatest expansion came after currency reform in 1948. Many gaps in the built-up area were filled in and new building developments were laid out: Schulstraße, Mauerstraße, Flurstraße, Am Bäumchen. The two village churches stand at each end of Kirchstraße (fittingly enough, “Church Street”), the Catholic one at the south end and the Evangelical at the north. The graveyard lies west of the village up a laneway off Mauerstraße. The school built in 1966 stands on Schulstraße (also fittingly, “School Street”), likewise to the west. In the north of Hüffler’s outlying countryside, a rural road leads to the sporting ground in the cadastral area called the Isaak, or Isak. The village is today mainly a residential community for commuters.Municipality’s layout
History
Antiquity Even before the First World War, amateur archaeologists recovered two bronze rings from a barrow from Hallstatt times. Their whereabouts is today, however, unknown. Likewise at this time, a cremation grave field was supposedly destroyed. While digging in the field known as “Heidenhübel”, round, funnel-shaped pits filled with ash, stones and other material were unearthed, believed to be dwelling places of people who lived in the New Stone Age. During excavations for the Autobahn, Roman graves were found along the old Roman road, which had a breadth of up to 12 m and ran for some 400 m on the hills east of the village. A closed bronze ring measuring 7 cm across was found by archaeologist Josef Engels in 1967 next to the Roman road at the Autobahn building site. Roman coins were also found during the Autobahn’s construction along this Roman road, which itself was built in Gallo-Roman times.Antiquity Celts, and later also Romans, may have been the first settlers. Moreover, in 1930, five barrows from pre-Roman times were found.
Middle Ages As early as 1127, the monks from Reims built a Benedictine collegiate foundation on the nearby Remigiusberg hill (368 m) near Kusel, which made the Remigiusberg into the ecclesiastical hub of the whole Remigiusland. The name “Hüffler” had its first documentary mention in the foundation’s cartulary in 1305, when a freeman named Konradi from Hüffler, as Schöffe (roughly “lay jurist”) in an agreement that a knight from the Wadenau Estate (Dennweiler-Frohnbach) had concluded for the foundation’s benefit, was named as a witness. In this time, Hüffler belonged to the Provostry of Remigiusberg, an affiliated monastery of the Bishop’s Church in Reims. The Reims holdings were taken over as a Vogtei in the mid 12th century by the Counts of Veldenz. The Counts of Veldenz built Castle Lichtenberg near Kusel about 1214 and made that the seat of their lordly might. In 1444, the County of Veldenz met its end when Count Friedrich III of Veldenz died without a male heir. His daughter Anna wed King Ruprecht’s son Count Palatine Stephan. By uniting his own Palatine holdings with the now otherwise heirless County of Veldenz – his wife had inherited the county, but not her father’s title – and by redeeming the hitherto pledged County of Zweibrücken, Stephan founded a new County Palatine, as whose comital residence he chose the town of Zweibrücken: the County Palatine – later Duchy – of Palatinate-Zweibrücken.Middle Ages
Modern times It was during Zweibrücken times that Hüffler suffered under the Thirty Years' War and French King Louis XIV’s wars of conquest. After the Thirty Years' War, Hüffler was empty. The people had fled before the soldiers’ advance, and some only began coming back twenty years later. Only with newcomers in the 18th century was there once again strong population growth. Hüffler belonged then to the Schultheißerei of Pfeffelbach in the Zweibrücken Oberamt of Lichtenberg.Modern times
Recent times The Dukes of Zweibrücken were ousted in the time of the French Revolution, about 1794. France annexed the Palatinate in 1798 and held it until 1814. Hüffler belonged to the Mairie (“Mayoralty”) of Quirnbach, the Canton of Kusel and the Department of Sarre. It was at about this time that coal mining began in Hüffler at two pits: “Am Berg” and “Auf der Hube”. The seam was about 30 cm thick. The coal itself, however, could not have been of very high quality, for it had a rather high water content. Beginning in 1816, Hüffler belonged within the Kingdom of Bavaria to the Bürgermeisterei (“Mayoralty”) of Quirnbach in the Landcommissariat (later Bezirksamt and then Landkreis or district) of Kusel in the Rheinkreis. On 1 April 1818, as a result of the Congress of Vienna, a state commission was formed in what was now called the Rheinkreis (Bavaria’s new exclave on the Rhine’s left bank). This is held to be the hour of the Kusel district’s birth, and Hüffler has belonged to this district ever since. Smaller administrative units were also established. In Hüffler’s case, as in many others, villages were grouped together and had joint municipal administration and mayoral offices. Since 1946, Hüffler has been part of the then newly founded state of Rhineland-Palatinate. After the Second World War, the self-administering municipality of Hüffler remained at first in the Bürgermeisterei of Quirnbach, but in the course of administrative restructuring in Rhineland-Palatinate, which saw the formation of bigger local administrative units, it passed to the Verbandsgemeinde of Glan-Münchweiler in 1972, once the district’s Verbandsgemeinden had been founded.Recent times
Population development The oldest record about inhabitants in Hüffler comes from 1480. Living then in the village were eleven people who were liable to taxation. According to a 1609 ecclesiastical protocol, Hüffler then had 85 inhabitants in 18 families, 47 of them children. In 1688, thus 40 years after the Thirty Years' War had ended, only seven families were counted. In 1693 it was still seven families. By 1704, this had risen slightly to nine. Emigration came mainly in the 19th century; about 70 to 80 persons went to the United States. In the First World War, 15 soldiers from Hüffler fell; in the Second World War, 54 fell or went missing. From 1950, the population figures rose steadily, but in more recent years, they seem to have been stagnating.
The following table shows population development over the centuries for Hüffler, with some figures broken down by religious denomination:Hüffler’s population development Year 1802 1836 1867 1950 1958 1966 1984 1997 2008 Total 358 390 472 505 559 568 586 587 596 Evangelical 328 349 469 456 418 405 Catholic 30 41 90 112 109 125 none 33 52 no answer 27 14
Municipality’s name The name Hüffler first crops up in a 1305 document from the Remigiusberg Monastery, which has been handed down to the present in a cartulary. It deals with a donation from a Knight of Wadenau, and also mentions a Schöffe (roughly “lay jurist”) named Konrad von Hufflers. Further mentions are: Hiffelers (1446), Huffelers (1460), Hüfflers (1587), Hüffler (1790). There have been various attempts to interpret the name. Supposedly, the village was founded on one of the Remigiusberg monks’ Hufen, a Hufe or Hube being an area of land comparable to an oxgang, or a rural, settled place made up of worked cropland together with the attendant farmstead. The name Hüffweiler has also come up here and there, but only in 18th century documents, never in any very old ones. Researcher Ernst Christmann spoke of a settlement near rose hip shrubs (Hagebuttensträucher in German), while Dolch and Greule trace the village’s name back to the personal name Hüffelin.Municipality’s name
Vanished villages A centre named Rintzweiler or Rindsweiler (both pronounced the same way) once lay south of Hüffler. In 1439, it had its first documentary mention as Runtzwiler, relayed to the present day as a copy in a 17th-century Veldenz cartulary. In 1609, Rintzweiler had 83 inhabitants. The name Rintzweiler appears likewise in original documents from the 14th and 16th centuries, but by the 17th century, it appears no more. Quite likely, the village was wiped out in the Thirty Years' War.Vanished villages Today, a new building zone bears the name Am Rindschweiler Berg to commemorate this vanished village.
Religion Records in the Kusel Reformed (Calvinist) church register say that the inhabitants of the municipality of Hüffler belonged beginning about 1567 to the church in Kusel. Family records were also kept in this register from this time. The actual books are now to be found at the Protestant Church Archive in Speyer. From 1868, the villages of Hüffler and Wahnwegen together had their own vicariate, which in 1948 was broadened to become a self-administering parish. In 1875 and 1876, the Protestant church in Hüffler was built; it was consecrated on 22 October 1876. Since then, Schellweiler’s Protestants have also joined the parish of Hüffler. Hüffler’s, Schellweiler’s and Wahnwegen’s Catholics founded a branch community of Saint Giles’s Church (Ägidiuskirche) in Kusel in 1958. In early August 1957, the church built by Catholics with contributions from the United States was consecrated by Bishop Markus Emanuel in Speyer. The Catholic Church of Mary Queen of Heaven (Kirche Maria Königin) stands on a hill at the village’s southern end. It was built by architect Franz Schöberl in 1975-1976. Currently, besides some 5% of the population with no religion and adherents of other faiths, 75% of the population is Evangelical and 20% is Catholic.Religion
Politics
Municipal council