Schönenberg-Kübelberg 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 Oberes Glantal, and is its seat. The municipality was formed on 7 June 1969 in the course of administrative restructuring in Rhineland-Palatinate out of the former municipalities and outlying centres of Schönenberg, Kübelberg, Schmittweiler and Sand.Amtliches Gemeindeverzeichnis 2006, Statistisches Landesamt Rheinland-Pfalz , Seite 195 (PDF) The centres have melded together since then and now stand as an economic hub for the southern Kusel district. By population, Schönenberg-Kübelberg is the Kusel district's biggest municipality.Municipal population statistics It is also a state-recognized tourism community.“Anerkannte Fremdenverkehrsgemeinde”
Geography
Location The municipality of Schönenberg-Kübelberg lies in the Western Palatinate near the boundary with the Saarland some 15 km south of Kusel, and 10 km northeast of Homburg. The two Ortsteile lie at the edge of the Landstuhler Bruch (a hollow). Kübelberg on the long mountain ridge south of the Klingbach runs seamlessly into Schönenberg to the east, while Schönenberg also melds without a break with the outlying centre of Sand. Within the municipality, the land rises from 241 m above sea level at the edge of the brook up to 264 m near the church in Kübelberg. Outside the built-up area, the highest elevations in the municipal area reach some 300 m above sea level in the Steinwald and Peterswald (forests).Schönenberg-Kübelberg’s location
Neighbouring municipalities Schönenberg-Kübelberg borders in the north on the municipality of Brücken, in the northeast on the municipality of Gries, in the east on the municipality of Bruchmühlbach-Miesau, in the south on the municipality of Waldmohr, in the west on the municipality of Dunzweiler and in the northwest on the municipality of Dittweiler.
Constituent communities Schönenberg-Kübelberg's Ortsteile are Schönenberg, Kübelberg, Schmittweiler and Sand. Also belonging to Schönenberg-Kübelberg are the outlying homesteads of Heidhof, Elmerthof and Klingenmühle.Constituent communities
Municipality’s layout In each of the two biggest centres, the old village core can still be made out today. For Kübelberg this lies in the area of the Catholic church, west of Bundesstraße 423, and for Schönenberg east of this thoroughfare on the road branching off towards Sand. South of this road stand the village hall, which houses both the municipal and Verbandsgemeinde administration, and the Evangelical church. What were once two linear villages (by some definitions, "thorpes") have grown together, along with the outlying centre of Sand, and have also spread in every direction, southwards, particularly to the railway line, in the east end also over the railway. The central school building with a Realschule and a Hauptschule stands north of the village in the Kohlbach valley. The primary school, which is still used today, stands on Pestalozzistraße (named after an educator, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi) in Kübelberg. Near the railway line south of Schönenberg spreads a major sporting facility.Municipality’s layout
History
Antiquity By prehistoric times, the area that is now Schönenberg-Kübelberg was already settled, as witnessed by archaeological finds within the municipal area and in neighbouring ones. A heavily damaged stone axe was found within municipal limits, and is now kept at Speyer. Several groups of barrows dating from the Iron Age are to be found in the Peterswald, south of the village. Noteworthy are two finds that were unearthed and described as early as the 19th century, a fibula and a bronze armring. Actual Roman finds have not been found within Schönenberg-Kübelberg's municipal limits, but quite a few artefacts have been unearthed in the surrounding area.Antiquity
Middle Ages In 956, Kübelberg had its first documentary mention as Cheuilunbahc, while Schönenberg had its first documentary mention in 1419. All the centres that today make up Schönenberg-Kübelberg once lay within the (originally free) Imperial Domain (Reichsland) around the Castle Lautern, which during the 10th century was for a while held by the Bishopric of Worms. It is, however, unclear whether all these centres had already arisen at the time when this area held the status of Imperial Domain. It is certain that the Amt seat was there, namely Kübelberg, and the village of Sand was there, too. Kübelberg lay next to a castle that served as the seat of an Amt within the Imperial Domain. It is likely that this castle vanished before the Middle Ages were over. In some houses on Schmittweiler Straße in Kübelberg, sparse remnants of the castle can still be made out. In the 13th century the castle belonged to the ring of fortifications in the broad area surrounding Castle Kaiserslautern. The area, now known as the Court of Kübelberg (Gericht Kübelberg), was repeatedly pledged by the Empire beginning in 1312 to various lordships, lastly to the Counts of Sponheim, under whose lordship it passed to Electoral Palatinate in 1437, which itself had already taken over the Amt of Kaiserslautern as an Imperial pledge as early as 1375. The Court of Kübelberg thus now belonged within the Electoral Palatinate to the Oberamt of Kaiserslautern. The village of Schönenberg shared this turn of events within the Amt (or Court) of Kübelberg, although there may have been the odd divergence; these, however, are not always verifiable. For instance, after the first documentary mention in 1419, the Junker of Breidenborn, as lords of the neighbouring Amt of Münchweiler, counted the Schultheiß Heinecze von Schonenberg among their subjects. In a further Breidenbach document from the 15th century, other names of inhabitants of Schönenberg were mentioned. Schönenberg must therefore have belonged, at least for a time, to the Amt of Münchweiler, and must thus also have been held by the Hornbach Monastery. A 1456 Weistum (cognate with English wisdom, this was a legal pronouncement issued by men learned in law in the Middle Ages and early modern times) from the Court of Kübelberg has been preserved as a faithful copy.Middle Ages
Modern times A further preserved Weistum comes from the year 1554. Even in the description of the Ämter of Zweibrücken and Kirkel by Tilemann Stella, a Renaissance-era academic, Kübelberg is mentioned, as Kibelnberg. In 1600, the Electoral Palatinate forest superintendent Velmann described the whole area of the Court of Kübelberg, also mentioning subjects’ names in his writing, which began with a description of Schönenberg's municipal area. All the municipal area's particularities were noted, including the five ponds, which all belonged to the subjects. Following this was a description of Kübelberg's municipal area, noting its three ponds, although these ones belonged to the "heirs". During the Thirty Years' War, the villages of the Amt of Kübelberg, too, suffered serious hardship and misery. In 1635, during the siege of the Amt town of Kaiserslautern, Imperial troops, in many cases Croats, marched through the land, plundering, robbing and murdering. The villagers fled into the woods or sought shelter in small towns that belonged to Electoral Palatinate, like Wolfstein. The land was depopulated both by war and by the Plague. According to local historian Ernst Christmann, a whole swath of land including the villages of Kübelberg, Schönenberg, Sand, Elschbach and Schmittweiler lay for decades desolate. Slowly, the population figures built themselves back up with villagers who had been driven out returning to their homes, and also with others migrating to the area, although French King Louis XIV's wars brought the people further havoc. Only with the Treaty of Ryswick, which put an end to the Nine Years' War (known in Germany as the Pfälzischer Erbfolgekrieg, or War of the Palatine Succession), did a lasting peace set in. French migrants may well have been arriving even during the wars with the French, but at this time, it was mainly migrants from Switzerland. The population grew so quickly that emigration, mostly to the Americas, began to grow, too. In 1744, Schönenberg once again got a market, after the former Kübelberg Market had been put to an end by the Thirty Years' War. In 1779, a territorial swap resulted in a new political arrangement when Electoral Palatinate agreed to exchange its Amt of Kübelberg with twelve villages (Kübelberg, Schönenberg, Sand, Brücken, Ohmbach, Schmittweiler, Dittweiler, Frohnhofen, Altenkirchen, Ober-Miesau, Nieder-Miesau and Elschbach) and six mills for the villages of Duchroth and Oberhausen and part of the village of Niederkirchen in the Odenbach valley, all of which had hitherto belonged to the Dukes of Palatine Zweibrücken. From this time there also survives a description of the villages in the Amt. The short Zweibrücken interlude lasted until the outbreak of the French Revolution, during which the Amt of Kübelberg was transferred from the Oberamt of Kaiserslautern into the Oberamt of Homburg. The duke who ruled at that time, Charles II August, who had had himself a fairytale castle built in Homburg, was said to be the very model of a princely despot. He awarded himself the title "Admiral" and had a ship built – on the Neuwoog (a pond) in the Peterswald, now part of Schönenberg-Kübelberg. After little time, this ship ran aground and rotted. The Duke also forbade his subjects the use of the Peterswald so that he could use it as his hunting ground. For their part, the subjects registered their displeasure at this by chasing away any lordly lumberjacks that they found.Modern times
Recent times The first French Revolutionary troops showed up in the area in 1793. France annexed the Rhine’s left bank in 1801. Schönenberg became the seat of a mairie ("mayoralty") to which also belonged the villages of Brücken, Gries, Kübelberg, Sand and Schmittweiler. Schönenberg and Kübelberg both lay in the Canton of Waldmohr in the Arrondissement of Saarbrücken and the Department of Sarre. In 1814, the French withdrew from the Rhine's left bank. After a transitional period, the Bavarian Rheinkreis – an exclave of the Kingdom of Bavaria – was founded in 1816. This was later called the Rheinpfalz ("Rhenish Palatinate"). The administrative entities that had come into being during French Revolutionary and later Napoleonic times were retained and Schönenberg became the seat of a Bürgermeisterei ("mayoralty") in the Canton of Waldmohr in the Landkommissariat of Homburg, although the seat actually shifted from place to place over the next century, according to where the mayor lived. After the First World War, the victorious powers grouped the Bezirksamt of Homburg into the autonomous Saar area, but not the Canton of Waldmohr, to which Schönenberg and Kübelberg both belonged. This stayed with the newly formed Free State of Bavaria – the Kaiser had been overthrown and so had the Bavarian king – and thereby with Weimar Germany. The canton belonged to the Bezirksamt of Kusel with an administrative branch of its own, which it retained until 1940, whereafter the Canton of Waldmohr was administered directly from Kusel. In 1969, Schönenberg, Kübelberg, Sand and Schmittweiler merged to form a new municipality with the name Schönenberg-Kübelberg. In the course of administrative restructuring in Rhineland-Palatinate, Schönenberg-Kübelberg became the seat of a Verbandsgemeinde in 1971.Recent times
Population development