Altenkirchen, Kusel

Altenkirchen () 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 Oberes Glantal, whose seat is in Schönenberg-Kübelberg.

Geography

Location

The municipality lies, like its neighbours Dittweiler and Frohnhofen, in the Kohlbach valley in the Western Palatinate. Altenkirchen lies at an elevation of some 285 m above sea level, partly in the Kohlbach valley itself and partly in the narrower valleys through which the tributary brooks flow, as well as on their slopes. Roughly a fourth of the municipal area is wooded. The farmland is made up in no small measure of cherry orchards. Some of the mountains in the area reach heights of more than 400 m (Hühnerkopf 441 m).

The municipal area measures 644 ha, of which 148 ha is wooded.

Neighbouring municipalities

Altenkirchen borders in the north on the municipality of Frohnhofen, in the east on the municipality of Ohmbach, in the south on the municipality of Dittweiler and in the west on the municipality of Breitenbach. Altenkirchen also meets the municipality of Krottelbach at a single point in the northeast.

Constituent communities

Also belonging to Altenkirchen are the outlying homesteads of Wilgenhof and Hainhof. There is also a ''Forsthaus'' (“forester’s house”) in the Ahlenwald (forest).

Municipality’s layout

The original settlement arose around the church, which stands about 150 m up from the brookside, as does likewise the built-up area, the original village core, around the church with its former graveyard. The important village streets with newer building along their extensions spread out in an almost starlike pattern from the church, Friedhofstraße (“Graveyard Street”, which leads to the new graveyard) running to the north, Breitenbacher Straße running to the west, Hohlstraße running to the south and Schillerstraße, set a bit to the south, running to the east. The rectory stands across the street from the church on Schillerstraße. The graveyard used today lies at the village's north end on the Kohlbach's right bank. On Schulstraße (“School Street”), which branches off from Schillerstraße to the south, stands the former schoolhouse from 1919, which currently is still used for primary school. Another, older, former schoolhouse from 1783 stands on Bergstraße, which branches off from Breitenbacher Straße to the northwest. This building was used by the Altenkirchen Mine Administration (''Altenkirchener Grubenverwaltung'') in the earlier half of the 19th century as the mine office, and is nowadays under private ownership. Yet another former schoolhouse, in which classes were held between 1820 and 1919, stands on Friedhofstraße. This building is now used as the town hall and the local history museum.

Besides the village street network, there is also the thoroughfare, Sankt Wendeler Straße ('' Landesstraße'' 335), which has newer buildings on it, and which runs along the Kohlbach's left bank.

History

Antiquity

In prehistoric times, there were already people in what is now Altenkirchen, bearing witness to which are archaeological finds from neighbouring municipalities. In Altenkirchen itself, a Stone Age blade was unearthed, which is now kept at Speyer. The whereabouts of a find consisting of Celtic coins unearthed in the 19th century are unfortunately unknown. The remnants of a villa rustica are to be found on the Schlossberg (mountain) near the slopes east of the village. In the several digs that have been undertaken there, coins have been found, as have a statuette (“Mercury of Altenkirchen”) and ceramic pieces. Builders who were doing conversion work on the church in 1978 discovered several examples of Roman spolia. Worthy of note is a stone with an inscription, which unfortunately can now barely be read. Also unearthed was the so-called ''Entenstein'' (“Duckstone”), a fragment of a relief with a naked man with a duck on his shoulders, walking behind whom is a bigger duck. Originally, these stones might have come from earlier, Roman buildings that once stood in the Altenkirchen area.

Middle Ages

Altenkirchen lay within the free Imperial Domain (''Reichsland'') around the town and castle of Kaiserslautern. When the village was founded is unknown, but what is known is that it belonged to the court of Kübelberg which, beginning in 1312, was taken over time and again by several secular lordships (the County of Sponheim, the County of Veldenz, Electoral Palatinate) as an Imperial pledged holding. According to the 1290 document in which Altenkirchen had its first documentary mention, the priest at the time, Father Theodoricus von Altenkirchen, stated to the Archbishopric of Mainz that the monks on the Remigiusberg had never in his time at Altenkirchen, nor in his time at Hirsau, ever paid taxes or any other tribute to the Archbishop of Mainz. The background to this statement is that the Remigiusberg and the ''Remigiusland'' were holdings of Reims, but under ecclesiastical organization, they belonged to the Archbishopric of Mainz. Beginning in 1437, the court of Kübelberg, and along with it the village of Altenkirchen, belonged to the Electoral Palatinate '' Oberamt'' of Kaiserslautern until the late 18th century.

Modern times

From the year 1542, a ''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 Altenkirchen has been preserved, according to which the successors of the then already late Junker Hans Blick von Lichtenberg from Bad Dürkheim, in the presence of, among others, the ''Landschreiber'' (in Electoral Palatinate, this was an official at the ''Oberamt'' level who had certain accounting and legal responsibilities), Job Weidenkopf from Lichtenberg Castle, held farming rights, and the ''Schultheiß'', Heinrich Korb von Kübelberg collected the fees. The ''Weistum'' mainly contains lists about the payments to be made by inhabitants of Altenkirchen and Frohnhofen. It also tells one that at this time, the village was held by the noble family Blick von Lichtenberg, whose members for centuries exercised patronage rights over the village. After the family died out in the early 17th century, the Lords of Günderode inherited their holdings. These passed eventually to the Barons of Fürstenwärter. Like all the villages in the area, Altenkirchen, too, suffered greatly from the effects of the harrowing Thirty Years' War, which, it is said, left Altenkirchen with only five families by the time it ended, whereas many local villages in the Kusel area had been utterly wiped out in the war. Newcomers to the area settled in Altenkirchen, thus building the population back up, but then came more war in the late 17th century as King Louis XIV's French troops swept across the land, leaving devastation behind them. Only in the early 18th century was there once again a steady rise in population. It was also at this time that emigration to America began. In 1779, the court of Kübelberg, and along with it the village of Altenkirchen, passed in the course of a territorial reorganization between Electoral Palatinate and the Duchy of Palatine Zweibrücken by way of exchange to the latter party for the villages of Duchroth and Oberhausen and part of the village of Niederkirchen, which until then had been held by Zweibrücken. This was also a transfer from the Electoral Palatinate ''Oberamt'' of Kaiserslautern to the Zweibrücken ''Oberamt'' of Homburg. Zweibrücken times, however, did not last very long, for the whole feudal system that had shaped life was swept away by the events of the French Revolution. In 1793, the first French Revolutionary troops appeared in the region, and in 1801, France annexed the lands on the Rhine’s left bank. French rule, too, was short-lived, lasting only until 1814. During this time, Altenkirchen lay in the ''Mairie'' (“Mayoralty”) of Waldmohr, the Canton of Waldmohr, the Arrondissement of Saarbrücken and the Department of Sarre, whose capital was at Trier.

Recent times

In 1814, the French withdrew from the German lands on the Rhine's left bank, and Altenkirchen was at first assigned to the Ottweiler district. After a transition period, the Bavarian ''Rheinkreis'' (“Rhine District”) came into being in 1816, which later was known as the Bavarian ''Rheinpfalz'' (“Rhenish Palatinate”). The administrative structures that had arisen in Napoleonic times were swept aside and Altenkirchen was then assigned to the ''Landkommissariat'' of Zweibrücken. In 1818, the village became the seat of its own ''Bürgermeisterei'' (“mayoralty”) to which Dittweiler and Frohnhofen (and at first also Breitenbach) also belonged, and which lay in the canton of Waldmohr and the ''Landkommissariat'' (later ''Bezirksamt'', and then ''Landkreis'', or district) of Homburg.

In 1848 and 1849, the Kohlbach valley, where Altenkirchen lies, hosted a centre of the Revolutionary movement, in which the schoolteacher Daniel Hirsch is worthy of mention for, among other things, having founded a popular association. After the First World War, the district of Homburg was grouped into the French- and British-ruled Saar Mandate, but the canton of Waldmohr remained in the Free State of Bavaria (the German monarchy had been overthrown, and Bavaria's last king had abdicated), and thus still within Germany. It belonged with a branch location of the administration, which existed until 1940, to the ''Bezirksamt'' (district) of Kusel. In 1940, the branch location of the administration was dissolved and also administratively merged with the district of Kusel. Only in the 1968 administrative and territorial reform in Rhineland-Palatinate was the ''Bürgermeisterei'' of Altenkirchen dissolved. Since 1972, the municipality has belonged to the ''Verbandsgemeinde'' of Schönenberg-Kübelberg.

Population development

Altenkirchen was a farming village and is today still known far and wide for its cherry growing. In the latter half of the 18th century, the first coalmines were opened (Carls-Fundgrube, Sankt-Paulsgrube and Maximiliansgrube). With mining came the opportunity for some villagers to work at the collieries. One prominent figure in the growth of the Altenkirchen coalmining industry was Johann Paul Weiß from Saxony, who, before his arrival in Altenkirchen, had been undertaking important activities in the Electoral Palatinate mining establishment, and he had even brought experienced miners from his homeland to the Palatinate. Thus, there was a gradual switchover from a farming village to a workers’ village, which even saw many inhabitants seeking mining work in the nearby Saarland. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, work at the pits came to an end in Altenkirchen itself, forcing almost all the local miners to commute elsewhere to work. Of course, there were opportunities in other lines of work, especially in the multifaceted handicraft industry. Population figures were already rising steeply during the 18th century, and rose threefold in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries. Also noted in that time was the high emigration to North America, especially to the US state of Ohio. With regard to religious affiliation, the inhabitants quite early on were all Evangelical. Even today, Catholic Christians and members of other denominations are in the minority.

The following table shows population development over the centuries for Altenkirchen, with some figures broken down by religious denomination:

Municipality’s name

Altenkirchen arose near an old church, so called because it somehow related to a “new church” somewhere. This explains its name (''alt'' means “old” in German and ''Kirche'' means “church”), but what is not thoroughly explained is just what was meant by this “new church”. Regional historian Ernst Christmann was convinced that this referred to the church at Ohmbach. Other regional historians, though, have put forth the churches at Breitenbach or Kübelberg as candidates. In 1290, Altenkirchen had its first documentary mention as ''Aldekierke''. Other mentions rendered the name ''Aldenkirchen'' (1372), ''Aldenkirch'' (1410), ''Allenkirchen'' (1480) or Altenkirchen (1601), the current form. The local dialectal form of the name is ''Ahlekerje''.

Vanished villages

Within Altenkirchen's current limits once lay two other villages, both of which vanished even before the Thirty Years' War. They were called Achtweiler and Staßweiler. The former lay southwest of Altenkirchen, while the latter lay northeast. Achtweiler was mentioned in a document in 1571, but all that now bears witness to Staßweiler's existence is rural cadastral toponyms.

Politics

Municipal council

The council is made up of 16 council members, who were elected by majority vote

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