Oberalben 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 Oberalben lies beyond the heights on the Glan's left bank in a hollow over which towers the mountain massif known as the Steinerner Mann on the upper reaches of the Kuralb (also called the Kaueralb, and upstream from Oberalben, the Stegbach), which roughly 3 km farther northwards, at an elevation of 253 m above sea level empties into the Totenalb, itself a tributary to the Steinalb that empties into the Glan near Niederalben. Oberalben itself lies at an elevation of roughly 310 m above sea level about in the middle of a rather narrow municipal area stretching from north to south. A 180-hectare piece of land that even now is counted as part of Oberalben's municipal area was incorporated into the Baumholder Troop Drilling Ground when that was established by the Nazis in 1938. Indeed, the municipal area's greatest elevation is held to be the 460 m-high Steinerner Mann, now within the Baumholder Troop Drilling Ground. The outlying centre of Mayweilerhof in the municipal area's southeast stretches just under the 400 m mark in the uppermost reaches of the Blaubach, a stream that flows down into the Kuselbach. The highest elevation on the plateau west of the Mayweilerhof on the so-called Römerstraße (Roman road) lies just over the 400 m mark. Likewise reaching farther up than 400 m are a few peaks bordering the narrow Kuralb valley. The municipal area measures 563 ha, of which 108 ha is wooded.Location
Neighbouring municipalities Oberalben borders in the north on the Baumholder Troop Drilling Ground, in the east on the municipality of Ulmet, in the southeast on the municipality of Erdesbach, in the south on the municipality of Blaubach, in the southwest on the municipality of Körborn and in the west on the municipality of Dennweiler-Frohnbach. Part of the Baumholder Troop Drilling Ground just to the north is the former municipal area of the now vanished village of Erzweiler in the Birkenfeld district. This is now considered nominally part of Baumholder.
Municipality's layout The biggest part of the village of Oberalben stretches along the through road, called Hauptstraße ("Main Street") on the Kuralb's right bank parallel to the stream's course from west to east. On the way into the village, coming from the east, the former schoolhouse, now the village community centre, can be seen to the right of the road. Farther on into the village core stands the Auswanderermuseum ("Emigrants' Museum"), and farther still, stretching along the right side of the road and the brook is the sporting ground. Only a few houses still stand over on the left bank. Beyond this point, the road leads to the neighbouring village of Dennweiler-Frohnbach. In the village centre, near the Auswanderermuseum, a street branches off to the south, Gehöllweg. Another street branches off between the Auswanderermuseum and the sporting ground, but to the north, Kloppweg. The graveyard lies in the village's east end south of the through road. The houses at the Mayweilerhof all stand on the road that leads from Oberalben to Blaubach and Kusel, and indeed also on the watershed between the Kuralb and the Blaubach. Both Oberalben's and the Mayweilerhof's built-up areas clearly show that they were pure farming villages in bygone days.Municipality's layout
History
Antiquity On the Steinerner Mann, now within the Baumholder Troop Drilling Ground, it is likely that as early as the 19th century a prehistoric times burying ground was found. Today these graves have vanished utterly. It is highly likely that the name "Steinerner Mann" (meaning "Stone Man") for this prominent mountain comb refers to a prehistoric stone pillar, a menhir. Furthermore, prehistoric archaeological finds have been unearthed in all the bordering municipal areas. The road leading over the plateau between the Mayweilerhof and Körborn is supposedly originally an old Roman road. There have also been many Gallo-Roman finds in the area around the village, although none has been brought to light in Oberalben itself.Antiquity
Middle Ages Both Oberalben and Mayweiler (the former village that once lay near where the Mayweilerhof now lies) were founded as far back as the Early Middle Ages, though exact knowledge about when each was founded is lacking. At the time of first documentary mention in a 12th-century document, both villages are known to have been a few centuries old already. According to the document in question, which was issued by King Conrad III of Germany in 1149, a ministerialis of the Church of Reims named Albert from Kusel, possibly a ministerialis from the newly founded monastery on the Remigiusberg, had forcibly taken ownership of three monasterial holdings, namely Villa Milvillre (Mayweiler), Herceberch (Herschberg) and Habbach (Habach, now a constituent community of Eppelborn). It furthermore says that Albert also seized a fief that had been given back to Reims by the knight Sir Hardwin, and that lay near Alben, and had thereby disturbed the Church's independence. The original of this document was lost to the ravages of the Second World War. The text, set down in Conrad III's Diplomata, is taken from a copy. Both villages lay in the so-called Remigiusland, which at about the same time as Oberalben's and Meyweiler's first documentary mention was taken over by the Counts of Veldenz as a Vogtei. The villages lay moreover in the north of this territory. A 1355 border description in a Grenzscheidweistum (a Weistum – cognate with English wisdom – was a legal pronouncement issued by men learned in law in the Middle Ages and early modern times; this one described how a border [Grenze] was to divide [scheiden] the Remigiusland from its neighbour) makes it clear that the local area was a border zone by mentioning the local stream, and also a local, now vanished, village: "Es beginnt an dem Bronnen der Frohnbach die Kuralbe hinab nach Ertzweiler. ..." The two villages themselves are not named, only the brooks. It is believed that the one named here as the Frohnbach is the brook now known as the Stegbach. The village's administration in the Middle Ages was split between the Schultheißerei of Baumholder, which held the lesser portion, and the Amt of Ulmet, which held the greater, in the County of Veldenz, and then later in the Duchy of Palatinate-Zweibrücken. Also important is the mention of both villages in a 1364 document from the Counts of Veldenz as Albin and Minewijlre. At that time, Heinrich of Veldenz, who later became Count Heinrich III of Veldenz, lived together with his young wife Lauretta of Sponheim at Lichtenberg Castle. All villages that then belonged to the Veldenz Amt of Altenglan-Brücken had to pay tribute to this young comital couple. Accordingly, Count Heinrich II had a document drawn up that listed every village in what was then the Unteramt of Altenglan, including these two, which remained with the County of Veldenz until 1444, when it met its end once 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, within which Oberalben and Mayweiler found themselves in the Unteramt of Ulmet and the Oberamt of Lichtenberg.Middle Ages
Modern times Both Oberalben and Mayweiler now shared a history with the County Palatine of Zweibrücken until this state was swept away in the events of the French Revolution. In 1570/1571, the Zweibrücken official Johannes Schlemmer described the Amt and Gericht (court district) of Baumholder and mentioned Oberalben as then having 12 houses, two of which stood on the Kuralb's left bank, thus putting them in the Amt of Baumholder. Mayweiler was given up as a village sometime around the year 1580, and for almost the next 200 years was not settled. Oberalben did not meet with the same fate. Although during the Thirty Years' War after 1632, nearly all the villages in the Glan valley were empty of people for ten years, a few people in Oberalben managed to survive this grim time, bearing witness to which are birth records in the Ulmet church register. Even so, newcomers came to settle here, too, as they did throughout the depopulated regions after the war, but then came French King Louis XIV's wars of conquest, which led to yet more devastation and loss of life. Living in Oberalben and Frohnbach together in 1675 were eight families, and in 1688 (forty years after the Thirty Years' War ended) there were nine. Both these villages were burnt down in the years that followed. In the earlier decades of the 18th century, though, the population grew quickly, but even without war's ravages, the village suffered a great horror in 1750, when a great fire left only three houses unscathed. The Mayweilerhof, a rural estate, was founded by the Duchy in 1762 (or 1764, according to another source), though not on Mayweiler's former site on the meadowlands of the upper Blaubach, but rather in the same place where it lies today, stretching southwards from the Kuralb-Blaubach watershed. Today it belongs to Oberalben. At first, this new centre was made up of a single homestead in Erbbestand (a uniquely German landhold arrangement in which ownership rights and usage rights were separated; this is forbidden by law in modern Germany), and it became apparent that its cropland and grazing land was quite fertile throughout.Modern times
Recent times