Schellweiler

Schellweiler 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

The municipality lies in the Bledesbach valley, which stretches from Schellweiler to Wahnwegen along the highway between Kusel and Glan-Münchweiler. The valley is also known locally as the ''Saubeeretal''. Forty-seven hectares of the municipal area's 431 ha is wooded. Schellweiler is a clump village. The bottom of the valley lies roughly 280 m above sea level, and the land rises upwards on three sides. Only to the north does it remain even. The most heavily built-up area is on the eastern slope on the brook's right bank, more than 300 m above sea level, at about the same elevation as the Autobahn A 62 (Kaiserslautern–Trier), which passes by. The built-up area reaches an elevation of about 320 m above sea level. The highest elevation within municipal limits is the top of the Kreuzberg at 402 m above sea level. The village's structure could already be seen in a village plan from 1807, which showed two threads of building development coming from the south on the slopes on both the river's left and right banks. Until 1980, this did not change. Up to 1939, building expansion could also be observed within the village. The most marked expansion came about after 1945, farther towards the slopes, but also northwards in the dale. The Petersgraben new building zone has been fully developed since 1996. All together, 60 new buildings, among them three built as multi-family dwellings, arose after the Second World War to make a total of roughly 160. Since 1985, Schellweiler has been recognized as a village renewal community. The former farming and working-class community has now become almost exclusively a residential community for commuters.

Neighbouring municipalities

Schellweiler borders in the north on the town of Kusel, in the northeast on the municipality of Haschbach am Remigiusberg, in the east on the municipality of Etschberg, in the south on the municipality of Hüffler, in the west on the municipality of Konken and in the northwest on the municipality of Ehweiler.

Constituent communities

Also belonging to Schellweiler is the outlying homestead of the Dellwieserhof.

Municipality’s layout

The construction of the Trier-Landstuhl Autobahn ( A 62) in 1970 brought with it a great drawback. It cut through the western half of Schellweiler's municipal area north to south for 1.8 km, thus bringing many villagers, and the dwellers of the Dellwieserhof, too, a great deal of noise pollution. There was yet another drawback: the Autobahn meant that the municipality could never spread out westwards. From 1980 to 1986, “classic” ''Flurbereinigung'' was undertaken, bringing along with it an ample network of country lanes. It was pleasing that the rural cadastral toponyms – field names – many of which were centuries old, were preserved after the ''Flurbereinigung''. Some of these refer to former owners (Hinter Peter Braunen Haus, Davidswiesen), to the crops planted there (''Bremmenfeld'', ''Bangert'' – originally ''Baumgarten'', meaning “forest nursery”), the lie of the land (''Dellwies'', which means “dent meadow”) or the soil's makeup (''Steinling'', ''Klopp'', both referring to stony ground). The ''Flurbereinigung'' also brought along with it the advantages of a fairground with a football pitch, a grilling pavilion and a landscaped pond in the middle of the village as recreational lands. This low-lying land in the dale had been a boggy patch of ground before, between the upper and lower village. Also worthy of mention is that the municipal area in the north and east, along the heights, is crossed by the so-called Roman road leading from Kusel to Herschweiler-Pettersheim.

History

Antiquity

An old road that runs by some 1.5 km east of the village is believed to have been a Roman road. Near this road in 1957, a Celtic grave was unearthed. Archaeological analysis revealed it to be a woman's grave from the time about 500 BC. The strip-field near the grave bears the name ''Heidenhübel'' (''Heiden'' shares an etymology and a meaning with “heathen”).

Middle Ages

In 1277, Schellweiler had its first documentary mention as ''Schulrebure''. Schellweiler lay in the ''Remigiusland'', which belonged from the Early Middle Ages to the Reformation first to the Bishopric of Reims and then later to the Abbey of Saint-Remi at Reims. From 1127 to 1444, the Counts of Veldenz held the ''Vogtei'' over this area. 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 whose sovereign area Schellweiler now found itself.

Modern times

In 1552, the County Palatine acquired the ''Remigiusland'' through purchase, and thus Schellweiler remained until 1797 a village in what was now the Duchy of Palatinate-Zweibrücken, belonging to the '' Oberamt'' of Lichtenberg and the ''Schultheißerei'' of Pfeffelbach. In the Thirty Years' War, Schellweiler was laid waste. In 1675 – the war had ended in 1648 – there were only three families with 25 persons, as against 18 families with 86 persons in 1609, well before the war broke out. The populace also had to suffer in the Franco-Dutch War under French occupation in 1675 and 1676. The same happened in the French Revolution and the ensuing Napoleonic times. In this later period of French rule between 1801 and 1814, Schellweiler belonged to the Canton of Kusel in the Arrondissement of Birkenfeld and the Department of Sarre.

Recent times

In 1816 under the Congress of Vienna, the Rhine’s left bank, and thereby Schellweiler too, were ceded to the Kingdom of Bavaria. Bavaria’s new exclave was thereupon subdivided into ''Landkommissariate'' (now ''Landkreise'', or districts). The ''Landkommissariate'' were further subdivided into cantons (''Kantonen''), and these were yet further subdivided into ''Bürgermeistereien'' (“mayoralties”). Beginning at this time, Schellweiler belonged to the ''Bürgermeisterei'' of Kusel, and has even remained in the now ''Verbandsgemeinde'' of Kusel, which was formed in 1972. Worthy of note among stories from the Second World War is the migration of four local families to Lorraine as part of a Nazi attempt to Germanize the region conquered by Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. In 1953, the belltower was installed on the schoolhouse roof. The populace was rather disturbed in 1953 and 1954 by the Americans’ shooting exercises right near the village, which resulted in damage to some houses. In 1955, a public bath was opened. From 1980 to 1986, Schellweiler undertook ''Flurbereinigung''. In 1989, the schoolhouse was converted into a village community centre. Misfortune befell Schellweiler in November 1994 when nine young people, among them three men born in Schellweiler, were killed when their van was crushed by an articulated transport truck at a construction site on the Autobahn while they were on their way to work. In 1995, Schellweiler placed second at the district level in the contest ''Unser Dorf soll schöner werden'' (“Our village should become lovelier”).

Population development

The oldest record dealing with Schellweiler's inhabitants themselves dates from 1480. Lordly taxation rolls that year listed 12 families in May and 13 at harvest time. This works out to roughly 50 to 55 inhabitants. The first detailed list of inhabitants, in the 1609 ecclesiastical Visitation protocol of the ''Oberamt'' of Lichtenberg, names 86 inhabitants in 18 families. On 31 December 1969, the 584 inhabitants’ age groups broke down thus:
*0—20: 33.60%
*20—60: 57.35%
*60—∞: 20.02%

There were population losses as a result of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), emigration to the United States between 1830 and 1900 (80 persons are known to have done this), both world wars (17 fallen in the First World War; 35 fallen and 20 missing in the Second World War) and falling birthrates and migration in the 1970s. Since the 1980s, however, there has been stronger population growth spurred by the village's proximity to the district seat of Kusel.

The following table shows population figures for Schellweiler over the ages:

Municipality’s name

Local historian Ernst Christmann's interpretation of the village's name, Schellweiler, was that it has nothing to do with either a bell (''Schelle'') or a hamlet (''Weiler''). The village's first documentary mention came in 1277 in a document from Remigiusberg Abbey, in which a ''Conradus dictus Busche de Schulrebure'' is named, that last word being the village's name then. Other names that Schellweiler has borne over the ages are ''Sullbure'' (1289), ''Scholwijlre'' (1290), ''Schilwiler'' (1446), ''Scelwillr'' (1458), ''Schelwilre'' (1460), ''Schelweiler'' (1587) and ''Schöllweiler'' (1677). As for the name's meaning, Christmann suggested the following: The ending ''—'' in the 1277 name is an old word for "building" or "house". The first part of the name is from Middle High German ', ', ', and has something to do with the Modern High German word '. Although this word's modern meaning is "balcony", it is meant to be understood as "loft". Thus, the name as a whole is to be taken to mean "house with a loft". Originally, the provost's tithe barn may have stood here. As the years went by and the name was no longer understood, the beginning of the name shifted to ''Schill—'' or ''Schell—''. Moreover, in imitation of many nearby placenames, the ending shifted to ''—weiler''.

Religion

According to the records in the Kusel Reformed Church's books, Schellweiler belonged to the Kusel church as early as 1567. From 1635 to 1640, records are missing owing to the devastation that the Thirty Years' War wrought upon Kusel and the surrounding municipalities. Beginning with the Reformation, the people were exclusively Protestant, and only about the turn of the 18th century were there once again Catholics living in Schellweiler. Living in the village in 1837 were 341 Protestants and 15 Catholics. In 1904, though, out of 126 inhabitants, only one was Catholic. This situation changed, however, especially after 1945, with immigration and intermarriage. Living in the village in 1996 were 454 Protestants and 62 Catholics. Originally, both denominations buried their dead in Kusel. Only in 1870 did Schellweiler open its own graveyard. By decree from the ecclesiastical polity in Speyer on 1 April 1956, the Evangelical congregation was split away from Kusel and assigned to the parish of Hüffler-Wahnwegen. There was some disquiet in Schellweiler over this new arrangement. Today there are fortnightly church services at the village community centre. Catholics attend church services in Hüffler and along with parishioners there belong to the parish of Kusel.

Politics

Municipal council

The council is made up of 12 council members, who were elected by majority vote

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