Kreimbach-Kaulbach

Kreimbach-Kaulbach 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'' Lauterecken-Wolfstein.

Geography

Location

The municipality lies on the river Lauter (also called the Waldlauter, to distinguish it from other rivers in German-speaking Europe named Lauter), southeast of the Königsberg in the North Palatine Uplands. Kreimbach lies on the river’s right bank at an elevation of some 198 m above sea level near where the namesake brook, the Kreimbach, flowing by from the northeast, empties into the Lauter. The flat lands before the slopes leading up the Kreimberg (390 m) and the Kreimbacher Kalmit (408 m) together with the Leisberghügel (hill) are broader than the Kaulbach floodplain on the left bank because the lower end of the Kreimbach cuts through them, coming from the east. The Kreimberg is “torn up” on its south side by a great hard-stone quarry covering some 44.4 ha. On the heights above the Kaulbach railway station, which has been out of service since late 2000, once lay within Kreimbach’s limits a smaller quarry, one that yielded sandstone, but this was given up even before the First World War. Another, bigger one was to be found on the Winterbach, which was shut down in the 1980s. It was from this pit that the stone for both the local churches was drawn, as well as for the old Kaulbach schoolhouse and, at least for a considerable amount of the work, for the reconstruction of Alexander's Church (') in Zweibrücken after the Second World War. Both Kreimbach’s and Kaulbach’s southern limits touch Kaiserslautern. Above the quarries north of the Kreimbach, spreading across a high plateau, is the Heidenburg (“ Castle”), a prehistoric refuge castle or fortified living area where a tall lookout tower also stands. Kaulbach lies on the lower reaches of its own namesake brook, the Kaulbach, on the Waldlauter’s left bank. The Waldlauter thus runs between both the main centres, flowing in a great bow as it passes. Kaulbach arose on a rather small floodplain between the mouth of the Kaulbach and the bank of the Lauter. The geological setting points to long forsaken quarries, a sandstone quarry south of the Kaulbach and to the west a melaphyre quarry. The sedimentary rock was used mainly for building houses, while the volcanic rock was mainly used for building roads and railways. The municipal area measures 904 ha, of which 434 ha is cropland and meadows, 5 ha is open water and 355 ha is wooded. Of the total, 372 ha is Kreimbach’s.

Neighbouring municipalities

Kreimbach-Kaulbach borders in the north on the town of Wolfstein, in the east on the municipality of Niederkirchen, in the southeast on the municipality of Olsbrücken, in the south on the municipality of Frankelbach, in the west on the municipality of Rothselberg and in the northwest on the municipality of Rutsweiler an der Lauter.

Constituent communities

Kreimbach-Kaulbach’s ''Ortsteile'' are, of course, Kreimbach and Kaulbach, but also belonging to Kreimbach-Kaulbach are the outlying homesteads of Wallackerhof and Palatia-Mälzerei. The latter’s name identifies it as a malthouse.

Municipality’s layout

Both the municipality’s constituent communities have generally grown together to form a single residential area, although the village still clearly bears the marks of the former separateness. The Kreimbach floodplain is a major living area, explaining why this “half” of the village has a greater population figure. The brook and the railway line, too, stand between the village’s two centres even today. There were once two railway stations, one in the north for Kreimbach and another in the south for Kaulbach. Since then, however, Deutsche Bahn AG has closed these two stations and built a single one for both centres. Unlike the railway, the through road cuts across the bow in the river Lauter and leads straight through the ''Ortsteil'' of Kaulbach. The floor of the dale lies at an elevation of roughly 200 m above sea level, while each end of the village, lying in side valleys, reach some 210 m above sea level. Each of the two centres still has its own village core, each one characterized by compact building made up of houses from the 19th century. While Kaulbach has opened two new building areas and is getting set to open a third, Kreimbach has only one small one. Given this, the two centres may eventually become more alike in size.

History

Antiquity

History has unfolded much the same way for the two constituent communities. Important for Kreimbach are Celtic and Roman times, roughly from 800 BC to AD 400. According to Ernst Christmann, the Celts built a refuge castle on the Kreimberg plateau for times of discord and war, with a stone ringwall standing as its main feature. Enemies thus had to fight hard, uphill. Preserved from this time are an animal figure and a lance tip, as well as urns from both early and late La Tène times, now kept at the historical Museum of the Palatinate in Speyer. From this time comes the name “Heidenburg” (“Heathen Mountain”) for the upper part of the Kreimberg. The Romans largely first took over the Celtic holding about 50 BC. Recalling their time in power is the Roman road. Only once the Romans found themselves more and more beset by Germanic tribes, foremost among these the Alemanni, did they undertake to expand the plateau fortifications in the latter half of the 3rd century with walls, gates, palisades and a watchtower. The Heidenburg is thus believed to be the former foundations of a Roman castrum. Building blocks (one with a centaur figure) from a way knocked through a wall in the dale and finds of stones in the Heidenburg area are of the same material and thereby confirm that the stone was quarried from the dale. In the 1990s, extensive archaeological digs were undertaken that unearthed many finds, such as pots (and potsherds) and coins on the Kreimberg plateau. The foundations that were brought to light were photographed, measured and mapped, only to be buried again to keep “collectors” from marring them. About the middle of the 4th century, likely after yet another Germanic invasion, the complex was destroyed. It may, however, of necessity have been repaired, at least partly, bearing witness to which are coins found there from the time about 400. The museum in Speyer keeps a complete smithy facility from the Heidenburg area with more than 40 tools. On the plateau’s west side, local history lovers built a small lookout tower in the 19th century out of scattered stones from the castle. It offers a view of the Lauter valley and the Königsberg-Selberg area. A club, the ''Heidenburgverein'', keeps the castle in order. Its financial foundation during hiking season is a small inn and a roofed dancing area. After the Romans withdrew, according to Christmann, the Huns swept through the region – it was the second time – and what they left behind was a land virtually bereft of people. Frankish settlers first came to the Lauter valley, after having occupied the Glan valley, beginning about 600. Permanent settlement, though, only goes back to sometime in the 9th to 11th centuries, according to Christmann, and then beginning on the Lauter’s left bank (Kaulbach), although this had already been the site of Saint Michael’s Chapel (''Michaelskapelle''), a meeting point for worshippers from all the places with names ending in ''—weiler'' up and down the river. From the left bank, the settlement spread out into farms laid out on the parts of the riverside flats over on the right bank that were not threatened by flooding. Professor Christmann himself found in his own home village, Kaulbach, the oldest signs yet of human habitation from the New Stone Age on the hill still known today as ''Staane Mann'' (dialectal German for “Stone Man”; it would be ''Steinerner Mann'' in Standard High German) in the form of three great remnant pieces of a menhir with an estimated age of between 3,000 and 4,000 years. Christmann supposes that the stones were broken up and then used to weight harrows. The people of this time, the “Great Stone People” or “Megalith People” (Christmann uses the German name ''Großsteinleute'', but with quotation marks) seem to have disappeared utterly, and nothing is otherwise known about them. After the Romans withdrew, the Germanic peoples left behind fell victim to the Huns. All those who were not killed fled. The land was emptied of people, which shows up in the archaeological gap between 400 and 500. Then came the land-seeking Frankish clans up from the Rhine through the Nahe, Glan and Lauter valleys.

Middle Ages

The Franks reached the Lauter valley in the 7th and 8th centuries, founding their “''—weiler'' villages”: Lohnweiler, Reckweiler, Oberweiler, Rutsweiler. Christmann puts Kaulbach’s beginnings sometime in the 9th to 11th centuries. According to him, the first settlement lay near the so-called Hanauer Hof (a name stemming from “Hagenau”, ''Hag'' meaning “wood” and the ending having the same root as the Modern German word ''Aue'' – “floodplain”), where a house stands today, named “Hof-Hannickels”. This ''Hof'' – “farm” or “estate”, that is to say – belonged to the Benedictine monastery founded in Offenbach in 1150. The local settlers – and earlier those from the local area – had a “Frankish-heathen” place of worship out of which later grew Saint Michael’s Chapel. All together, the two centres of Kreimbach and Kaulbach lay within the so-called ''Reichsland'' (“Imperial Land”) or ''Königsland'' (“King’s Land”) around Kaiserslautern for a long time, until, beginning in the 14th century it was pledged to a series of lordships, one after the other, with the two villages first passing to the County of Veldenz with the Prince-Archbishopric of Trier, although by the mid 15th century, they had become Electoral Palatinate holdings. These pledgings and further pledgings more or less match the ones that characterize Wolfstein’s history; it, after all, was the seat of an Electoral Palatinate ''Amt'' to which Kreimbach and Kaulbach also belonged. They also shared much of their history with their former court seat, Rothselberg. In 1309, Kreimbach had its first documentary mention, while Kaulbach had its in 1281.

Modern times

Over the next few centuries, Kreimbach’s and Kaulbach’s history unfolded in markedly dull fashion. Indeed, no chronicler noted anything that could be called spectacular. About the middle of the 16th century, the villages were pledged to the County of Sickingen, and then in the mid 17th century to the House of Palatinate-Simmern. By the mid 18th century, they belonged to Electoral Palatinate, and did until feudal times ended in the French Revolution. In the villages’ general upward development, there were from time to time great setbacks, such as the Thirty Years' War and French King Louis XIV’s wars of conquest, notably the Nine Years' War (known in Germany as the ''Pfälzischer Erbfolgekrieg'', or War of the Palatine Succession). Steady upward growth set in once again only in the early 18th century.

Recent times

At the time of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic annexation, Kreimbach and Kaulbach both belonged to the ''Mairie'' (“Mayoralty”) of Rothselberg, the Canton of Wolfstein, the Arrondissement of Kaiserslautern and the Department of Mont-Tonnerre (or Donnersberg in German), whose seat was at Mainz. After Napoleon’s defeat and the Congress of Vienna, yet another new territorial order came into force, which saw Kreimbach and Kaulbach grouped into the Kingdom of Bavaria as of 1816. Kaulbach now became the seat of a ''Bürgermeisterei'' (“mayoralty”), which was moved to Kreimbach in 1955. Both villages suffered casualties in both world wars. In the First World War, 17 men from Kreimbach fell, while Kaulbach lost 9. In the Second World War, 39 men from Kreimbach were killed, as were 25 from Kaulbach. The most difficult period of post-war development fell into Emil Schäfer’s, Otto Scheidt’s, Willi Gödtel’s and August Scheidt’s terms in the Kreimbach mayoral office, while the mayors over in Kaulbach, Ludwig Scheidt, Ernst Hemmer and Klaus Pfleger, faced much the same difficulties at that same time. Klaus Pfleger was later the mayor of the amalgamated municipality of Kreimbach-Kaulbach for 20 years, until 1989. He was forced by mayoral age limit to withdraw from office and was succeeded by Rudi Geiß, who served until 1999. They had significant support from municipal officials Otto Steinhauer and Karlheinz Egerer. On 7 June 1969, the ''Bürgermeisterei'' (“Mayoralty”) of Kreimbach was dissolved and the two hitherto self-administering municipalities of Kreimbach and Kaulbach were merged into one new one under the name Kreimbach-Kaulbach, an arrangement under which the two ''Ortsteile'' barely have any further administrative role.

Population development

Ernst Christmann drew from the 12 "tax chickens" from Kreimbach that had to be paid to New Wolfstein Castle in 1497 the conclusion that this meant that there were also 12 households there at the time. Being a village of roughly the same size, and assuming four persons to each household, Kaulbach would have had some 50 inhabitants around 1500. Around 1600, Kaulbach had 14 hearths and Kreimbach 15, according to Forest Master Vellmann’s description of the ''Amt'' of Wolfstein. Even 56 years after the Thirty Years' War, in 1684, Kreimbach’s population had still only reached half what it had been before the war. The same dire fate is assumed to have befallen Kaulbach, given that the village lay only just across the river Lauter from Kreimbach. A few lists of Kaulbach inhabitants liable to taxation show about ten for 1706, about fifteen for 1724 and about fifty for 1744. After a drop in population, it had reached back up to 32 by 1795 with some five persons in each family. Kreimbach had roughly 15 hearths (i.e. "households") in 1600. When farmland had become scarce and no longer yielded enough food for the growing population owing to the ongoing hereditary divisions with each generation, emigration began in the mid 18th century, first to the east, and then in the 19th century and the first few decades of the 20th to the west, to the United States. Many of the more recent ties to those abroad manifested themselves in the time of need after 1945 in the form of aid packages from the USA. Also worthy of mention is the ''Musikantentum'' – the travelling musician industry – that took hold in the region in the latter half of the 19th century, which saw men from the village – including Ernst Christmann’s own father – literally travel worldwide, even to China and Australia, plying their musical trade.

The following tables show population development over the centuries for Kreimbach-Kaulbach, with some figures broken down by religious denomination:

Kreimbach

The last two columns for Kreimbach show figures for Kreimbach-Kaulbach as a whole, after the two villages’ amalgamation.

Kaulbach

Figures for the time after 1961 are given in the Kreimbach table above.

Municipality’s names

Kreimbach

Professor Dr. Ernst Christmann traced the first syllable of the name back to a form of the German word ''Krähe'' (“crow”) that has been corrupted over the centuries. This particular kind of bird may have found fruitful nesting grounds along the deep Kreimbach valley with its moist and therefore food-rich riverbanks. Crows also stand as a charge in the municipal coat of arms. The following forms of the name are known from the past: ''Creynbach'' (1309), ''Kreyenbach'' (1389), ''Kreymbach'' (1457), ''Kreimbach'' (1597) and ''Crambach'' (1643). Since 1828, the only customary form has been Kreimbach.

Kaulbach

Professor Dr. Ernst Christmann declared that the melaphyre stone west of the village on the north side of the Kaulbach (brook) has the characteristic of weathering into ever rounder shapes, shedding one layer after another, rather like an onion. The villagers’ forebears called these rounded stones ''Kaulen'' or ''Kulen'', or later even ''Kugelen'' (resembling the modern German word for “ball” or “sphere”), thus giving the brook its name, a concept reinforced by many of these ''Kaulen'' being found on the brookbed. Kaulbach had its first documentary mention in 1281 as ''Culebach''. Other forms of the name are also known from the past: ''Kulbach'' (1345), ''Kullebach uff der Lauter'' (1446), ''Kaulenbach'' (1560), ''Coulbach'' (1580) and ''Kaulbach'' (1824).

Religion

The numeric breakdown of denominations after the merger of the two villages of Kreimbach and Kaulbach can only be expressed for the two ''Ortsteile'' together. According to older statistics, though, there was a great Evangelical majority in both villages, with a 10% Catholic minority in Kreimbach and a 20% one in Kaulbach. The Protestant church on the Kirchberg (“Church Hill”) in Kaulbach stands on the spot once occupied by a pre-Christian place of worship dedicated to Wōden, and later, before the Reformation, it was consecrated to Saint Michael (Wōden is widely identified with Michael). Still preserved is the churchtower, which has a peal of three bells. In the 15th century, the chapel, which by then had fallen into disrepair, was replaced with a small church. By 1862, though, the church, too, had fallen into disrepair and had to be closed. After years of avoiding the matter and of holding church services in a classroom, the church that still stands today was built, and it was consecrated on 15 March 1874. The villagers belonged mainly to the Lutheran Church before the Palatine Union, which saw that church unite with the Calvinists, and they were assigned to the ''Zweikirche'' near Wolfstein ( Rutsweiler). The seat of the Evangelical parish is nowadays at Rothselberg. Catholics still have to make a five-kilometre trip to Wolfstein to attend church, where indeed their parish seat has been since days of yore. In 1875 however, Pastor Philipp Hammer succeeded in having Saint Mary’s Chapel (''Marienkapelle'') built in the village out of his own personal resources. He also endowed one of the three bells. He is also buried next to the church. Each year on Visitation Day (2 July) and Nativity of Mary (8 September), there are pilgrimages in Kaulbach (see below). Kreimbach has never had its own church.

Politics

Municipal council

The council is made up of 12 council members, who were elected by proportional representation at the municipal election held on 7 June 2009, and the honorary mayor as chairman.

The municipal election held on 7 June 2009 yielded the following results:

The “WGs” are voters’ groups.

Mayor

Kreimbach-Kaulbach’s mayor is Werner Gillmann.

Coat of arms

The German blazon reads:

The municipality’s arms might in English heraldic language be described thus: Per fess argent dexter issuant from the line of partition a mount of three Or issuant from which a Roman watchtower masoned sable and roofed of the field with a deck of the second, sinister issuant from the line of partition a wolf rampant gules, and party per fess wavy gules three roundels of the first in fess and argent two crows displayed, beaks to chief, of the third.

Given Kreimbach-Kaulbach’s history of being two separate villages then thrust together, it is no surprise that it has a complicated heraldic history. Before the 1969 merger, Kreimbach bore arms with the Roman watchtower as the main charge, but it stood on a flat-topped green hill and had a wooden palisade around it in natural colour (“proper” in heraldry). The deck was also wooden in colour instead of gold. It also bore the two crows, but in sinister and dexter chief (that is, in the upper corners).

Before the merger, Kaulbach, too, bore its own arms. The blazon read as follows: ''Von Silber und Rot geteilt oben ein wachsender roter Wolf an einem aus dem linken Schildrand hervorbrechenden natürlichen Felsen anspringend, unten ein Schraglinkswellenbalken, belegt mit drei schwarzen Kugeln''. This might be rendered in English as: Per fess argent issuant from the line of partition a wolf rampant gules, his paws against a crag proper issuant from the line of partition and dexter, and gules a bend sinister wavy of the first charged with three roundels sable.” The “bend sinister wavy” (wavy slanted stripe) represents the brook, while the roundels are a reference to the ''Kaulen'', the rounded stones mentioned above. There had even once been an earlier coat of arms, albeit one never officially adopted. It bore the leaping wolf (a full view, not cut off at the waist) and the crag, with the wolf standing on green ground.

Kreimbach’s and Kaulbach’s old arms can all be seen at ''Heraldry of the World''.

After the amalgamation of Kreimbach and Kaulbach, a new “amalgamated” coat of arms was approved bearing charges from both former coats, which had themselves been approved less than a decade and a half earlier, in 1955 and 1956. The current coat’s composition groups together the wolf charge, the round melaphyre stones and the wave from the old Kaulbach arms, and from the old Kreimbach arms come the Roman castrum (without the palisade and partly in different tinctures) and the two crows.

Culture and sightseeing

Buildings

The following are listed buildings or sites in Rhineland-Palatinate’s Directory of Cultural Monuments:
* ''Herz-Maria-Wallfahrtskapelle'' (“Immaculate Heart of Mary Pilgrimage Chapel”), Kapellenweg 31/33 – stone-block building with sacristy and former pilgrims’ inn, 1875; Crucifix, Deacon Hammer’s grave (see below), stone altar and pulpit
* Protestant church, Bahnhofstraße 3a – Late Gothic quire tower, dendrochronologically dated to about 1490, Gothic Revival sandstone-block aisleless church, 1872–1874, architect Johann Schmeisser, Kusel; characterizes village’s appearance
* Lookout tower, north of the village – about 1900, with Roman spolia
* So-called ''Heidenburg'' (“Heathen Castle”) (monumental zone) – Celtic refuge castle and Late Roman heights settlement; Roman cut stones and relief stones, possibly from about AD 260 or later, cistern

Pilgrimage site

The historically separate village (now ''Ortsteil'') of Kaulbach is among the official pilgrimage sites of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Speyer. On the ''Kapellenberg'' (“Chapel Hill”) found there on Kapellenweg, the long-serving Wolfstein clergyman Philipp Hammer (see below), who was also a religious writer, endowed the church ''Maria Hilf'' (“Mary Help of Christians”) in 1875 with the royalties from his books, and he founded a pilgrimage. Dean Hammer, in his time a nationally famous speaker at great Catholic events, lies buried near the chapel. Now and then, his friend from seminary days, Bishop of Trier

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