Nußbach (or Nussbach) 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 Nußbach lies in the valley of the like-named brook, the Nußbach (“Nutbrook”), which empties into the Odenbach some two kilometres downstream from the village, in the North Palatine Uplands. It sits at an elevation of some 200 m above sea level, although outlying elevations within municipal limits reach heights of almost 450 m above sea level (Galgenkopf 305 m, Flettersberg 366 m, Erlenberg 399 m, Anzenthaler Hüberl 420 m, Sohlberg 433 m, Roßberg 448 m). The road that runs by, Landesstraße 386, links the Odenbach valley with the Alsenz valley. The municipal area measures 811 ha, of which roughly 36 ha is settled and 105 ha is wooded.Location
Neighbouring municipalities Nußbach borders in the north on the municipality of Waldgrehweiler, in the northeast on the municipality of Bisterschied, in the east on the municipality of Teschenmoschel, in the southeast on the municipality of Rathskirchen, in the south on the municipality of Hefersweiler, in the southwest on the municipality of Reipoltskirchen and in the northwest on the municipality of Becherbach.
Municipality’s layout Nußbach is a clump village lying on a broadening of the dale in the area of the so-called Dorfbach (“Village Brook”), which flows by from the Roßberg (“Steed Mountain”) and here empties into the Nußbach. The built-up area stretches almost exclusively along the Nußbach's right bank, and reaches its greatest concentration where Bachstraße, a road running alongside the Dorfbach, meets Hauptstraße (“Main Street”), which runs alongside the Nußbach. Within the village, a few architecturally noteworthy buildings are to be found. The interesting Evangelical village church was built in the Art Nouveau style in 1911–1912 to plans by Nuremberg architect Dünnbier. Across the street stands a house built in the same style. Particularly worthy of mention is the Laubenhaus or Haus Wildanger at Bachstraße 2, built as a timber-frame house. Since March 2002, it has served as the local history museum, called the Alte-Welt-Museum. Also held to be of special interest among buildings are farmhouses built as three-side estates (open at one side, bordered by buildings on the other three) or corner estates and a belltower at the former graveyard. Both the sporting ground and the new graveyard lie in the village's northwest. Nußbach is today said to be a “residential community with rural character and emergent tourism”.Municipality’s layout
History
Antiquity There have been no reports of any archaeological finds within Nußbach's limits from the Stone Age, the Bronze Age or the Iron Age. This is not to say that the area was not settled in prehistoric times, however. In Gallo-Roman times, there were certainly settlements in the area around what is now Nußbach. A Roman road led over the nearby Roßberg, on whose peak – albeit outside Nußbach's limits in the neighbouring municipality of Becherbach – and near Gangloff (a constituent community of Becherbach), Viergöttersteine (“four-god stones”, pedestals on which a Jupiter Column was customarily stood) have been unearthed. These are now kept at the Historical Museum of the Palatinate (Historisches Museum der Pfalz) in Speyer.Antiquity
Middle Ages An exact time in history when Nußbach was founded cannot be reckoned with any exactitude. It is likely that the village arose in the Early Middle Ages, perhaps in the 9th or 10th century. Nußbach originally lay in the Nahegau and thus later passed into the Rhinegraves’ and Raugraves’ ownership, making the village's history comparable to that experienced by other villages throughout the former Amt of Grumbach. Hence, Nußbach belonged as of 1140 to the Waldgraviate and beginning in 1263 to the Lordship of Dhaun-Grumbach. In 1309, Nußbach had its first documentary mention. The Rhinegraves Georg and Konrad documented their parents’ bequest of a regular income from Nußbach to the Otterberg Monastery.Nußbach’s history In 1443, Waldgrave Friedrich at Dun and Rhinegrave at the Stone (Wildgraf Friedrich zu Dun und Rheingraf zum Stein) pledged the villages around Grumbach and also the farther-flung villages of Nußbach and Bosenbach to Count Palatine Stephan of Zweibrücken and his then still living father-in-law Count Friedrich III of Veldenz. This pledge was repeated in 1447, although this time by Rhinegrave Gottfried to Duke Stephan of Palatinate-Zweibrücken (the same Stephan; Count Friedrich III by now had died). As part of the deal, Rhinegrave Gottfried reserved the right to by the territory back. It was Rhinegrave Johann zu Salm who actually exercised this option in 1477 when Duke Ludwig “the Black” resided at Zweibrücken. At this time, the provostry of Offenbach am Glan was endowed with rights in Nußbach. The monastery had to perform transport services for the Duchy of Palatinate-Zweibrücken. This duty was abolished in 1536 against a payment of 13 Malter of grain, half corn (wheat or rye) and half oats, to Duke Wolfgang of Zweibrücken. The village of Nußbach had to come up with this grain. The agreement was renewed in 1543. In 1553, Waldgrave and Rhinegrave Philipp Franz traded Nußbach, together with Schönau and half of Rudolphskirchen for Hochstetten in the Alsenz valley in the Imperial county of Reipoltskirchen under the then Baron Johann II. Thereafter, Nußbach's history was tightly bound to the Imperial county's.Middle Ages This lordship belonged to the Upper Rhenish Circle.
Modern times Baron Johann II, who had been Franz von Sickingen’s contemporary, died in 1568. In the time that followed, tight bonds were forged with other counties through marriage, particularly with Leiningen-Westerburg through Johann’s daughter-in-law Amalia’s second marriage. The Imperial county, and thereby Nußbach, too, became Reformed. Through all the changes that characterized the Imperial county’s history during the 17th and 18th centuries, Nußbach always remained with the “core” Imperial county with its centre of Reipoltskirchen and thereby shared the same history as the other villages of Rathskirchen, Reichsthal, Hefersweiler, Relsberg, Morbach, Finkenbach-Gersweiler, Schönborn, Dörnbach and half of Rudolphskirchen until the lordship was dissolved in the course of the French Revolution. During this time, these villages were held wholly or partly by the following lordships: The County of Leiningen-Westerburg, the Lordship of Löwenhaupt, the Barons of Hillesheim, the Lordship of Manderscheid-Kell and the Palatinate (through Karoline von Isenburg, Elector Karl-Theodor's natural daughter).Modern times
Recent times In 1793, French Revolutionary troops first occupied the Imperial county, along with Nußbach. The lordly holdings were absorbed into the French First Republic’s national property. Nußbach thereby belonged between 1801 and 1814 to France, administratively to the Mairie (“Mayoralty”) of Becherbach, the Canton of Lauterecken, the Arrondissement of Kaiserslautern and the Department of Mont-Tonnerre (or Donnersberg in German). In the regional new order laid out after the time of French rule by the Congress of Vienna, the village passed to the Kingdom of Bavaria, for the Palatinate had become an exclave of that state. Within this bayerischer Rheinkreis (“Bavarian Rhine District”), Nußbach at first belonged to the Bürgermeisterei (“Mayoralty”) of Becherbach, but later became the seat of its own Bürgermeisterei in the Canton of Lauterecken and the Landkommissariat of Kusel. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Nazi Party (NSDAP) became quite popular in Nußbach. In the 1928 Reichstag elections, none of the local votes went to Adolf Hitler’s party, but by the 1930 Reichstag elections, this had grown to 8.8%. By the time of the 1933 Reichstag elections, after Hitler had already seized power, local support for the Nazis had swollen to 39.7%. Hitler's success in these elections paved the way for his Enabling Act of 1933 (Ermächtigungsgesetz), thus starting the Third Reich in earnest. After the Second World War, Nußbach was grouped into the then newly founded state of Rhineland-Palatinate. In the course of administrative restructuring in 1968, the Bürgermeisterei was dissolved. Since 1972, Nußbach has belonged as an Ortsgemeinde to the Verbandsgemeinde of Wolfstein in the Kusel district.Recent times
Population development In earlier times, most of Nußbach's inhabitants earned their living at agriculture. Since then, however, there has been a great shift in the local economy, and the whole workforce is now employed in other occupations. Most of them must commute elsewhere to their jobs, mainly to Kaiserslautern, Wolfstein, Lauterecken and Meisenheim. Even in these earlier times, though, there were other ways to earn a livelihood. There were the crafts, and also the mines and quarries. There were once also Jews living in the village, who enhanced the craft businesses and trade. Since days of yore, Nußbach has had more inhabitants than the neighbouring former lordly seat of Reipoltskirchen. From the early 19th century onwards, Nußbach had between 500 and 600 inhabitants. Before the First World War, great population growth set in, but this did not continue after the war. Whereas most of the Kusel district's villages saw their population levels fall after the Second World War, even after ethnic Germans driven out of Germany's former eastern territories had come to settle, in Nußbach, further population growth set in, fostered by the village's relative proximity to the regional hub, Kaiserslautern.
The following table shows population development since Napoleonic times for Nußbach, with some figures broken down by religious denomination:Nußbach’s population development Year 1802 1825 1835 1871 1905 1939 1961 1998 2007 Total 353 525 546 599 709 582 672 747 619 Catholic 93 131 160 Lutheran 252 – – Reformed 49 – – Evangelical – 279 512 Jewish 4 15 – NB: The 1818 Palatine Union saw the Lutheran and Reformed Churches unite into the Evangelical Church.
Municipality’s name The name is made up of the first syllable, Nuß—, which means “nut” (but originally “walnut tree”). To the word Nuß—, the element —bach (German for “brook”) was added, and the name might originally have been given a settlement that arose at a walnut tree. Older forms of the name are Nußbach (1309, in a 1360 copy) and Noßbach (1391).Municipality’s name
Religion