Rehweiler 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 of Oberes Glantal.
Geography
Location The municipality lies in the Western Palatinate at a broadening of the Glan valley near the mouths of two brooks that empty into the Glan, the Rödelbach from the left and the Dorfbach from the right, roughly 210 m above sea level, while the settled parts of the flanking slopes reach some 300 m above sea level. The municipality's highest point, in the municipal area's far west, is 357 m above sea level. Near this peak runs the Autobahn A 62 (Kaiserslautern–Trier) for about one kilometre through the municipal area. Two continuous woodlands lie to the village's east (Bannbusch) and west (Brandenbusch). The municipal area measures 673 ha, of which 167 ha is wooded.Rehweiler’s location
Neighbouring municipalities Rehweiler borders in the north on the municipality of Theisbergstegen, in the northeast on the municipality of Matzenbach, in the east on the municipality of Niedermohr, in the south on the municipality of Glan-Münchweiler, in the southwest on the municipality of Quirnbach, in the west on the municipality of Hüffler and in the northwest on the municipality of Etschberg.
Constituent communities Rehweiler's Ortsteile are Rehweiler (on the Glan's left bank) and Reichartsweiler (on the Glan's right bank). Although the merger took place 400 years ago, the two centres are even today clearly distinguished from each other.Constituent communities
Municipality’s layout Rehweiler's two formerly separate parts, the former municipality of Reichartsweiler and the original Rehweiler, can still be made out separately even today. Reichartsweiler lies at the crossroads formed by the thoroughfare known as Hauptstraße (“Main Street”; Bundesstraße 423), and, to each side of this, Glanstraße and Steinrissstraße (“Stone Cleft Street”), both of which run parallel to the Dorfbach down to its mouth. A further street, named Hahnböschel, branches off Hauptstraße north of this crossing at the mountainside. The houses in the original Rehweiler, too, cluster around a crossroads, this one formed by Kuselbergstraße and Quirnbacher Straße running north-south, and Rödelbachstraße and Glanstraße on the river's left bank. While Kuselbergstraße towards its north end climbs up the mountain slope, branching off it in a straight line down in the valley is Eisenbacher-Straße. Not only the Glan, but the railway line, too, splits the two centres. The railway station stands in the village's south end, separated from the former Rehweiler Mühle (mill) by the railway embankment. The former school stands on the Glan's right bank near the bridge. From the older buildings in both the old villages, it can be seen that both are former farming villages. Among the many original farmhouses, one has even been preserved that has a crow-stepped gable. New building zones stretch mainly at the ends of the village in the east and the northwest on Kuselbergweg (street).Municipality’s layout
History
Antiquity Bearing witness to early human habitation in what is now Rehweiler is an archaeological find made in 1938: While destroying a barrow from La Tène times (about 400 BC) inside the Reichsarbeitsdienst camp (now SpVgg Rehweiler-Matzenbach's sporting ground), a human skeleton, a narrow-necked bottle and four heavily oxidized bronze armrings were found by the resident Nazis. These are now kept at the Historisches Museum der Pfalz (“Historical Museum of the Palatinate”) in Speyer. Rehweiler was also settled in Roman times. This is known from the stone found in 1790 up from the village in the Brandenbösch, which bore a Roman inscription that ran as follows: DEOMER. C. SEX. COTTIUSTASG. IL. LVSVS.L.M. (“To the god Mercury, C. Sextus Cottius…”). Furthermore, more than 20 Roman copper coins were found along with this stone. These Gallo-Roman finds were stored by Charles II August, Duke of Zweibrücken in his cabinet of rarities at Karlsberg Castle, his palatial country seat near Homburg, now in the Saarland. Unfortunately, this palace was burnt down in 1793 by French Revolutionary troops, and the Rehweiler finds seem to have been lost as a result. It is likely that there is still a Gallo-Roman estate – a so-called villa rustica – lying somewhere within Rehweiler's limits, waiting to be discovered.Rehweiler's ancient history
Middle Ages The villages of Leidenstall, Reichartsweiler and Rehweiler may have arisen in the expansion phase of the later Frankish colonization during the 10th century, but it is impossible to pinpoint exact founding dates. Whenever it happened, it can be assumed that Reichartsweiler and Rehweiler arose at the same time, and also that they originally formed a single village. The former may well have been the older of the two, and it seems to have got its name from an early settler named Richard. The vanished village of Kengerhausen may have been somewhat less old than the others. With the exception of Reichartsweiler, the villages lay in the so-called Remigiusland, the territory held by the Bishopric of Reims around Kusel and Altenglan, which in 952 was transferred into the ownership of the Abbey of Saint-Remi in Reims. Only Reichartsweiler lay outside this Remigiusland in the free Imperial domain of Kaiserslautern. In 1112, Count Emich's son, named Gerlach, from the Nahegau took over several Vogteien (security functions) over various lands held by ecclesiastical lordships (Mainz, Worms, Verdun, Reims), and out of these, together with some lands already under his own ownership in the Nahegau, he founded the so-called County of Veldenz, named after the Episcopal-Verdun holding around Schloss Veldenz on the river Moselle. Gerlach, who through this deed had become Count Gerlach I of Veldenz, had four successors who also bore the name Gerlach (the last of these, Gerlach V of the Older Line of the Counts of Veldenz, died in 1259). Some 200 years before this County of Veldenz was founded, Rehweiler and its neighbouring villages had already arisen. However, only under the Counts of the Newer County of Veldenz (1270-1444) did these villages’ names begin appearing in documents. Leidenstall was first in 1270. From this document the reader learns that Count Heinrich I of Veldenz, the founder of the newer comital line, sold the villages of Ysenbach (Eisenbach) and Leidenstall to the Count of Zweibrücken, and also that he ordered the Schultheiß in Kusel to pay interest on this in the amount of seven solidi in Trier funds to the provost at the Remigiusberg. According to a document dated 62 years later (1332) referring to Rewilir (Rehweiler), Kunigunde, who was the Kusel Schultheiß Ruso's widow, was allowed the tithes from the villages of Eisenbach and Rehweiler that the provost at the Remigiusberg had awarded to the mayor, even after her husband's death.
Only a few years after this first documentary mention of Rehweiler, Reichhartsweiler, the village across the Glan likewise passed to the County of Veldenz, and through a pledge of the free Imperial Ämter of Deinsberg (Theisbergstegen) and Reichenbach, to Count Georg I of Veldenz, who had succeeded Heinrich of Geroldseck. The exact year when this pledge was made is unknown, although it is, of course, known that it happened before 1347, when Georg I, perhaps, as the Landvogt of Speyer, the mightiest of all the Counts of Veldenz, died. While Rehweiler and the two other villages were now, as before, part of the Schultheißerei of Kusel, Reichartsweiler stayed with the pledged Ämter, which were later united into one Amt, the Reichenbacher Amt. The oldest surviving document that names Reichartsweiler dates from 1393, when Count Friedrich of Veldenz, the last count of the newer Veldenz line, set forth for his wife Margaretha a Wittum with income from the villages of Gimsbach, Bettenhausen and Reichartsweiler. 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. All the villages that now lie within Rehweiler's limits then lay within this duchy, possibly including Kengerhausen and Leidenstall, but it is unknown when these two villages vanished. Thus, Rehweiler and the two now vanished villages still lay within the Remigiusland, in the Oberamt of Lichtenberg and the Schultheißerei of Pfeffelbach, but Reichartsweiler found itself in the Amt of Reichenbach.Rehweiler's mediaeval history
Modern times In 1543, Duke Wolfgang of Zweibrücken transferred lands to his uncle Ruprecht to found his own county palatine. These were the Ämter of Veldenz, Lauterecken, Jettenbach and Reichenbach, and later also Lützelstein in Alsace. This new county palatine bore the name Palatinate-Veldenz, and later also Palatinate-Veldenz-Lützelstein. It thus arose that Reichartsweiler found itself within this new county palatine with the residence town of Lauterecken. However, Wolfgang's successor Johannes I concluded a treaty on 14 August 1600 with Ruprecht's successor Georg Hans (Jerrihans) whereby, among other things, the villages of Haschbach and Stegen passed from Palatinate-Zweibrücken to Palatinate-Veldenz, against which Palatinate-Veldenz ceded the village of Reichartsweiler to Palatinate-Zweibrücken. At the same time, Rehweiler and its neighbouring village across the Glan, Reichartsweiler, were merged into a common village structure under the name Rehweiler. The name Reichartsweiler slowly disappeared from official documents, although church books kept mentioning it right up until 1700. According to the 1609 Church Visitation protocols of the Amt of Baumholder, 136 persons – 91 in Reichartsweiler and 45 in Rehweiler – were living in the united village at that time. Soon thereafter, though, came the Thirty Years' War, which struck Rehweiler very badly, as it did every other village in the area. While Rehweiler could still claim nine families, many other nearby villages were quite empty of people. Migration to the area helped raise the population levels, but French King Louis XIV's wars of conquest brought new hardship.Rehweiler’s historyRehweiler's modern history
Recent times Beginning in 1797, the Palatinate belonged to France, and Rehweiler belonged to the Mairie (“Mayoralty”) of Quirnbach, the Canton of Kusel, the Arrondissement of Birkenfeld and the Department of Sarre (whose capital was Trier). The mairie, at least, persisted even after Napoleonic French rule ended with the Battle of Waterloo and the Congress of Vienna, but it was now called the Bürgermeisterei of Quirnbach, although this literally means in German the same thing as the older, French term. In 1817, the Bürgermeisterei of Quirnbach passed to the Kingdom of Bavaria. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Nazi Party (NSDAP) became quite popular in Rehweiler. In the 1928 Reichstag elections, 1.7% of the local votes went to Adolf Hitler’s party, but by the 1930 Reichstag elections, this had grown to 12.3%. By the time of the 1933 Reichstag elections, after Hitler had already seized power, local support for the Nazis had swollen to 77.0%. Hitler's success in these elections paved the way for his Enabling Act of 1933 (Ermächtigungsgesetz), thus starting the Third Reich in earnest. The Mayoralty of Quirnbach lasted until administrative restructuring in Rhineland-Palatinate in 1972, when it was finally dissolved, and Rehweiler was grouped into the newly founded Verbandsgemeinde of Glan-Münchweiler.Recent times
Population development