Quirnbach/Pfalz () is an – a municipality belonging to a , a kind of collective municipality – in the Kusel district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde Oberes Glantal.
Geography
Location The municipality lies just west of Glan-Münchweiler in the Western Palatinate. Quirnbach lies at an elevation of 223 m above sea level and the outlying centre of Liebsthal at an elevation of 251 m above sea level in the valley of the Wehrbach, a side valley of the Henschbach. To the east, it is bordered by the Steinerner Mann (“Stone Man”; 329 m) and a ridge that runs farther to the valley's north end, to the Schindelberg (379 m) and the Dellmesrech (390 m). Guarding the west are the Kirchberg (349 m) and the heights of the Sangerhof (378 m). One particular reference point is the 390 m-long Henschbachtalbrücke (Henschbach Valley Bridge) on the way into Quirnbach. The municipal area measures 610 ha, of which 46 ha is wooded, 14 ha is taken up by the Autobahn and 8 ha is taken up by the outlying centre of Liebsthal.Location
Neighbouring municipalities Quirnbach borders in the north on the municipality of Rehweiler, in the southeast on the municipality of Glan-Münchweiler, in the south on the municipality of Henschtal, in the southwest on the municipality of Wahnwegen and in the northwest on the municipality of Hüffler.
Constituent communities Quirnbach's Ortsteile are Quirnbach and Liebsthal.
Municipality’s layout As early as the Middle Ages, Quirnbach's inhabitants settled at the lower end of the Wehrbach valley around the church. This was newly built in 1777 on the site where an old chapel had once stood. Next to it was built the school, which 120 years later served as the town hall. It now serves as a village community centre, used jointly by the municipality and the parish. On the way into the village in the Henschbach valley, standing at the former mill is an ancient limetree, which enjoys conservational protection. In the early 20th century, the through road leading to Herschweiler-Pettersheim was realigned to allow for a new residential area. It was here that the municipality opened up its first new residential area after 1950, called “Auf Löbsch”. Since the cattle markets kept shrinking, even the old marketplace lands were built up in the mid 1950s. In 1964, a new school was built on Trahweiler Weg, but this only served for eight years before falling victim to the axe of school reform. Located there now is a small business furnishing 8 to 10 jobs. In 1970, it became possible with the consequent freeing up of new land to build the new marketplace, complete with a market hall, and a playground. A football pitch was laid out for youth, thus sparing them the trip to the sporting ground out in the Altenwald (forest). A bigger new building zone, “Auf Dungen”, sprang up in 1997, and is still being expanded. Quirnbach's southern limit is the Henschbach. Beginning in the Middle Ages, this was also the border between Palatinate-Zweibrücken domain on the one side and House of Leyen domain on the other. To the east, the municipal area is sundered by the broad band of the Autobahn A 62 (Kaiserslautern–Trier) cutting right across it. To the north, the old Roman road is a “natural” boundary and to the west, parts of the municipal area reach into the Hodenbach valley. Agriculture nowadays plays only a minor part in Quirnbach's life, with only one farm run as the farmer's primary occupation, while three others are run as secondary occupations.Municipality’s layout
History
Antiquity Within Liebsthal's limits, a Stone Age hatchet was found, although its whereabouts are today unknown. Three Bronze Age or Stone Age barrows can also be found within Liebsthal's limits, only one of which is preserved in its original condition. Among the rubble heaps in Quirnbach may lie some prehistoric barrows, but most of these are likely indeed tailing heaps from the former mining industry here. The area was settled by the Romans in ancient times, as witnessed by many archaeological finds (however, these have only been made in the municipal areas of the neighbouring villages of Wahnwegen and Hüffler). Along the northern municipal limit runs what is known to be a Roman road that led from Waldmohr to Kusel.Antiquity After the fall of the Roman Empire, Frankish settlers came to the area.
Middle Ages Places with names ending in —bach (“—brook”) were founded beginning in the 9th century. In 1152, Quirnbach had its first documentary mention as Querenbach. According to the document in question, Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa acknowledged to Abbot Hugo of the Abbey of Saint-Remi his ownership of the Remigiusland. The document goes on to name every ecclesiastical place in the Remigiusland, one of which was Quirnbach, then known as Querenbach. The document's contents are preserved only in a 13th-century copy. Liebsthal had its first documentary mention as Lybestatt in 1349. In 1154, Quirnbach appeared as Kerembac in the Polyptichum (directory of holdings) kept by the Archishopric of Reims. Since the entries in this book deal with matters stretching back a great length of time, it could be that Quirnbach held some importance for Reims as far back as the Early Middle Ages as a village in the so-called Remigiusland. In the earlier half of the 12th century, the Counts of Veldenz took over the Remigiusland as a Vogtei, and thereafter these counts – and later the Dukes of Palatinate-Zweibrücken – were named as landed lords together with the Abbey of Saint-Remi. In this Veldenz time, the village gave a noble family its name. Named as members of this family were Konrad von Quirnbach (1152), Wolfram von Quirnbach (1196) and Ulrich von Quirnbach (1255), who was cathedral canon at Speyer and Abbot of Limburg. 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. Within this state, Quirnbach found itself within the Oberamt of Lichtenberg. Also in 1444, Quirnbach's market was first named when the Duke sent his court butcher there to buy livestock.Kellereirechnung des Oberamtes Lichtenberg 1444 The next record after that is found in the lordly wine cellars’ accounts from the Oberamt of Lichtenberg, which stated that at Saint Bartholomew's Market (Bartholomäusmarkt), three Fuder and two and a half Ohm (that is, roughly 3 150 L) of lordly wine had been tapped. Quirnbach's best known market, and the only one that is still held, is the Quirnbacher Pferdemarkt (“Horse Market”).
The little farming village of Liebsthal, which until 1975 was a self-administering municipality, was also in earlier times tightly bound with its bigger neighbour, Quirnbach. The village gets its name from the Lords of Liebsthal, who had been enfeoffed by the Counts of Veldenz. Their seat was at a now vanished hill castle, the Burg Liebsthal, on hilly land now called the Schlossberg – “Castle Mountain”.Middle Ages
Modern times Quirnbach kept its importance as a parish hub and a major market village throughout the Middle Ages. Even its place in the then dominant feudal structure did not change. Nonetheless, an end was put to any development time and again by the 16th century's wars (the Thirty Years' War and French King Louis XIV’s wars of conquest), particularly any population growth. Only in the 18th century did a continuous population growth once again set in, continuing until feudalism itself was swept away in the events of the French Revolution.Modern times
Recent times After France had annexed the German lands on the Rhine’s left bank, Quirnbach, now the seat of a mairie (“mayoralty”), lay in the Canton of Kusel, the Arrondissement of Birkenfeld and the Department of Sarre. Also belonging to the Mairie of Quirnbach were the villages of Hüffler, Wahnwegen, Liebsthal, Rehweiler, Trahweiler with Sangerhof and Frutzweiler. In 1814, the French were driven out, and after a transitional period, the Baierischer Rheinkreis (Bavarian Rhine District) was founded, which was later called the Rheinpfalz (Rhenish Palatinate). By any name, though, it was the territory on the Rhine that the Congress of Vienna awarded to the Kingdom of Bavaria. As of 1816, Quirnbach and Liebsthal lay within this new Bavarian exclave in the Canton of Kusel and the Landcommissariat of Kusel, with Quirnbach retaining its status as a mayoral seat, although the official term for this was now German instead of French: Bürgermeisterei. During the Palatine-Badish Uprising in 1849, Quirnbach played a special role through Mayor Jakob Munzinger's activities. Munzinger represented the Canton of Kusel in the Revolutionary Government in Kaiserslautern. In the mid 19th century, Quirnbach held the right to hold 24 markets each year. In 1877, for the first time, the horse market was held on Penance Day, the Wednesday before 23 November (this day is known in Germany as Buß- und Bettag, an Evangelical observance), for which 24,000 lots were sold throughout the Palatinate. Today, the horse market is only held on the second Wednesday in November, once again tied to a lottery. Territorial changes in the region came in the course of administrative restructuring in Rhineland-Palatinate beginning in 1968. It was only in 1972 that Quirnbach lost its function as a mayoral seat, which was now taken over by the then newly founded Verbandsgemeinde of Glan-Münchweiler. Meanwhile, Quirnbach and Liebsthal were both dissolved as municipalities.Recent times On 9 March 1975, the municipality of Quirnbach bei Kusel was newly formed out of these two dissolved municipalities,Amtliches Gemeindeverzeichnis 2006, Statistisches Landesamt Rheinland-Pfalz , Seite 193 (PDF) and on 1 May 1976, the name was changed to Quirnbach/Pfalz.Amtliches Gemeindeverzeichnis 2006, Statistisches Landesamt Rheinland-Pfalz , Seite 204 (PDF)
Population development About 1800, 500 people lived in Quirnbach proper while 160 lived in outlying Liebsthal. The population figures rose continually, albeit slowly, in the 19th century, only to sink somewhat towards the end of the century because of emigration and loss of population to the nearby Saarland. In the 20th century, there was once again considerable population growth, although the trend was not likely to have held. The village itself was a farming village with a few small craft businesses. Beginning in 1900, many villagers were employed at the mine or the ironworks. The village, though, was also blessed with a great number of inns because it was such an active market centre. In 1911, there were eleven of these, in a village whose population was roughly 450. With depletion of Saar collieries and the closure of ironworks there, many people from Quirnbach lost their jobs. Almost all farmers forsook their farms and found work with the Americans. Today, most people are employed in the Kaiserslautern area.
The following table shows population development over the centuries for Quirnbach, with some figures broken down by religious denomination, and including figures for the outlying centre of Liebsthal after 1961:Quirnbach’s population development Year 1825 1835 1871 1905 1939 1961 1997 2008 Total 322 406 446 442 459 486 569 558 Catholic 5 25 68 76 Evangelical 17 454 426 329 Jewish 9 – – – Other 7 75 153
The following table shows population development over the centuries for Liebsthal up to 1961, with some figures broken down by religious denomination:Liebsthal’s population development