Kreimbach-Kaulbach 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 on the river Lauter (also called the Waldlauter, to distinguish it from other rivers in German-speaking Europe named Lauter), southeast of the Königsberg in the North Palatine Uplands. Kreimbach lies on the river's right bank at an elevation of some 198 m above sea level near where the namesake brook, the Kreimbach, flowing by from the northeast, empties into the Lauter. The flat lands before the slopes leading up the Kreimberg (390 m) and the Kreimbacher Kalmit (408 m) together with the Leisberghügel (hill) are broader than the Kaulbach floodplain on the left bank because the lower end of the Kreimbach cuts through them, coming from the east. The Kreimberg is "torn up" on its south side by a great hard-stone quarry covering some 44.4 ha. On the heights above the Kaulbach railway station, which has been out of service since late 2000, once lay within Kreimbach's limits a smaller quarry, one that yielded sandstone, but this was given up even before the First World War. Another, bigger one was to be found on the Winterbach, which was shut down in the 1980s. It was from this pit that the stone for both the local churches was drawn, as well as for the old Kaulbach schoolhouse and, at least for a considerable amount of the work, for the reconstruction of Alexander's Church () in Zweibrücken after the Second World War. Both Kreimbach's and Kaulbach's southern limits touch Kaiserslautern. Above the quarries north of the Kreimbach, spreading across a high plateau, is the Heidenburg (" Castle"), a prehistoric refuge castle or fortified living area where a tall lookout tower also stands. Kaulbach lies on the lower reaches of its own namesake brook, the Kaulbach, on the Waldlauter's left bank. The Waldlauter thus runs between both the main centres, flowing in a great bow as it passes. Kaulbach arose on a rather small floodplain between the mouth of the Kaulbach and the bank of the Lauter. The geological setting points to long forsaken quarries, a sandstone quarry south of the Kaulbach and to the west a melaphyre quarry. The sedimentary rock was used mainly for building houses, while the volcanic rock was mainly used for building roads and railways. The municipal area measures 904 ha, of which 434 ha is cropland and meadows, 5 ha is open water and 355 ha is wooded. Of the total, 372 ha is Kreimbach's.Location
Neighbouring municipalities Kreimbach-Kaulbach borders in the north on the town of Wolfstein, in the east on the municipality of Niederkirchen, in the southeast on the municipality of Olsbrücken, in the south on the municipality of Frankelbach, in the west on the municipality of Rothselberg and in the northwest on the municipality of Rutsweiler an der Lauter.
Constituent communities Kreimbach-Kaulbach's Ortsteile are, of course, Kreimbach and Kaulbach, but also belonging to Kreimbach-Kaulbach are the outlying homesteads of Wallackerhof and Palatia-Mälzerei. The latter's name identifies it as a malthouse.Constituent communities
Municipality's layout Both the municipality's constituent communities have generally grown together to form a single residential area, although the village still clearly bears the marks of the former separateness. The Kreimbach floodplain is a major living area, explaining why this "half" of the village has a greater population figure. The brook and the railway line, too, stand between the village's two centres even today. There were once two railway stations, one in the north for Kreimbach and another in the south for Kaulbach. Since then, however, Deutsche Bahn AG has closed these two stations and built a single one for both centres. Unlike the railway, the through road cuts across the bow in the river Lauter and leads straight through the Ortsteil of Kaulbach. The floor of the dale lies at an elevation of roughly 200 m above sea level, while each end of the village, lying in side valleys, reach some 210 m above sea level. Each of the two centres still has its own village core, each one characterized by compact building made up of houses from the 19th century. While Kaulbach has opened two new building areas and is getting set to open a third, Kreimbach has only one small one. Given this, the two centres may eventually become more alike in size.Municipality’s layout
History
Antiquity History has unfolded much the same way for the two constituent communities. Important for Kreimbach are Celtic and Roman times, roughly from 800 BC to AD 400. According to Ernst Christmann, the Celts built a refuge castle on the Kreimberg plateau for times of discord and war, with a stone ringwall standing as its main feature. Enemies thus had to fight hard, uphill. Preserved from this time are an animal figure and a lance tip, as well as urns from both early and late La Tène times, now kept at the historical Museum of the Palatinate in Speyer. From this time comes the name "Heidenburg" ("Heathen Mountain") for the upper part of the Kreimberg. The Romans largely first took over the Celtic holding about 50 BC. Recalling their time in power is the Roman road. Only once the Romans found themselves more and more beset by Germanic tribes, foremost among these the Alemanni, did they undertake to expand the plateau fortifications in the latter half of the 3rd century with walls, gates, palisades and a watchtower. The Heidenburg is thus believed to be the former foundations of a Roman castrum.Kreimbach-Kaulbach’s history Building blocks (one with a centaur figure) from a way knocked through a wall in the dale and finds of stones in the Heidenburg area are of the same material and thereby confirm that the stone was quarried from the dale. In the 1990s, extensive archaeological digs were undertaken that unearthed many finds, such as pots (and potsherds) and coins on the Kreimberg plateau. The foundations that were brought to light were photographed, measured and mapped, only to be buried again to keep "collectors" from marring them. About the middle of the 4th century, likely after yet another Germanic invasion, the complex was destroyed. It may, however, of necessity have been repaired, at least partly, bearing witness to which are coins found there from the time about 400. The museum in Speyer keeps a complete smithy facility from the Heidenburg area with more than 40 tools. On the plateau's west side, local history lovers built a small lookout tower in the 19th century out of scattered stones from the castle. It offers a view of the Lauter valley and the Königsberg-Selberg area. A club, the Heidenburgverein, keeps the castle in order. Its financial foundation during hiking season is a small inn and a roofed dancing area. After the Romans withdrew, according to Christmann, the Huns swept through the region – it was the second time – and what they left behind was a land virtually bereft of people. Frankish settlers first came to the Lauter valley, after having occupied the Glan valley, beginning about 600. Permanent settlement, though, only goes back to sometime in the 9th to 11th centuries, according to Christmann, and then beginning on the Lauter's left bank (Kaulbach), although this had already been the site of Saint Michael's Chapel (Michaelskapelle), a meeting point for worshippers from all the places with names ending in —weiler up and down the river. From the left bank, the settlement spread out into farms laid out on the parts of the riverside flats over on the right bank that were not threatened by flooding. Professor Christmann himself found in his own home village, Kaulbach, the oldest signs yet of human habitation from the New Stone Age on the hill still known today as Staane Mann (dialectal German for "Stone Man"; it would be Steinerner Mann in Standard High German) in the form of three great remnant pieces of a menhir with an estimated age of between 3,000 and 4,000 years. Christmann supposes that the stones were broken up and then used to weight harrows. The people of this time, the "Great Stone People" or "Megalith People" (Christmann uses the German name Großsteinleute, but with quotation marks) seem to have disappeared utterly, and nothing is otherwise known about them. After the Romans withdrew, the Germanic peoples left behind fell victim to the Huns. All those who were not killed fled. The land was emptied of people, which shows up in the archaeological gap between 400 and 500. Then came the land-seeking Frankish clans up from the Rhine through the Nahe, Glan and Lauter valleys.Antiquity
Middle Ages The Franks reached the Lauter valley in the 7th and 8th centuries, founding their "—weiler villages": Lohnweiler, Reckweiler, Oberweiler, Rutsweiler. Christmann puts Kaulbach's beginnings sometime in the 9th to 11th centuries. According to him, the first settlement lay near the so-called Hanauer Hof (a name stemming from "Hagenau", Hag meaning "wood" and the ending having the same root as the Modern German word Aue – "floodplain"), where a house stands today, named "Hof-Hannickels". This Hof – "farm" or "estate", that is to say – belonged to the Benedictine monastery founded in Offenbach in 1150. The local settlers – and earlier those from the local area – had a "Frankish-heathen" place of worship out of which later grew Saint Michael's Chapel. All together, the two centres of Kreimbach and Kaulbach lay within the so-called Reichsland ("Imperial Land") or Königsland ("King's Land") around Kaiserslautern for a long time, until, beginning in the 14th century it was pledged to a series of lordships, one after the other, with the two villages first passing to the County of Veldenz with the Prince-Archbishopric of Trier, although by the mid 15th century, they had become Electoral Palatinate holdings. These pledgings and further pledgings more or less match the ones that characterize Wolfstein's history; it, after all, was the seat of an Electoral Palatinate Amt to which Kreimbach and Kaulbach also belonged.Middle Ages They also shared much of their history with their former court seat, Rothselberg. In 1309, Kreimbach had its first documentary mention, while Kaulbach had its in 1281.Kaulbach’s first documentary mention
Modern times Over the next few centuries, Kreimbach's and Kaulbach's history unfolded in markedly dull fashion. Indeed, no chronicler noted anything that could be called spectacular. About the middle of the 16th century, the villages were pledged to the County of Sickingen, and then in the mid 17th century to the House of Palatinate-Simmern. By the mid 18th century, they belonged to Electoral Palatinate, and did until feudal times ended in the French Revolution. In the villages' general upward development, there were from time to time great setbacks, such as the Thirty Years' War and French King Louis XIV's wars of conquest, notably the Nine Years' War (known in Germany as the Pfälzischer Erbfolgekrieg, or War of the Palatine Succession). Steady upward growth set in once again only in the early 18th century.Modern times
Recent times