Brücken (Pfalz) () 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 in the Ohmbach valley in the Western Palatinate. Near the village, the Ohmbach turns from its southerly direction of flow to a more southeasterly one where the valley floor also broadens out. Here it has an elevation of some 240 m above sea level, whereas the higher residential areas reach almost 300 m above sea level. The higher elevations within municipal limits, meanwhile, reach heights of some 380 m in the northeast and 320 m in the southeast. Also flowing through the municipal area in the southeast, near the small homestead of Paulengrund is the Kohlbach. The Neumühle, originally a gristmill and from the late 19th century until after the Second World War a diamond-cutting workshop, stands in the village's north in the Ohmbach valley, and the homestead of Fuchsgrund lies on the valley floor to the southeast. Wooded land stretches eastwards and northwards from the village, and is also found in the southwest. The galleries of former coalmines lie in the village's northeast on the Dammfeld and the Buchwiese (rural cadastral names), at the Schenkelberg (mountain) and in the Schleckenborn. The municipal area measures 811 ha, of which 166 ha is wooded.
Neighbouring municipalities Brücken borders in the north on the municipality of Steinbach am Glan, in the northeast on the municipality of Börsborn, in the east on the municipality of Gries, in the south on the municipality of Schönenberg-Kübelberg, in the west on the municipality of Dittweiler and in the northwest on the municipality of Ohmbach.
Constituent communities Also belonging to Brücken are the outlying homesteads of Paulengrund, Neumühle and Fuchsgrund.
Municipality’s layout The village stretches out along the bend in the Ohmbach on relatively even ground on the valley floor, and in the outskirts on roads that climb outwards in a star-shaped pattern. The main street is one of these, running from the upper Ohmbach valley through the middle of the village and then in a broad bow to the south going towards Schönenberg-Kübelberg. On this main street ("Hauptstraße") stands the schoolhouse, as does the Diamond-Cutting Museum (Diamantenschleifermuseum). In the northwest on the mountainside stands Saint Lawrence's Catholic Parish Church. Nearby lies the graveyard. The Evangelical parish church built in 1953 stands in the northeast on Straße Zum Krämel (a road). Old farmhouses of the type Quereinhaus type (a combination residential and commercial house divided for these two purposes down the middle, perpendicularly to the street) are still to be found in the village core. The outer residential areas are otherwise characterized by houses, mostly newer single-family dwellings. A major sport field has been laid out in the Karstwald (forest) southeast of the village on the road going towards Schönenberg.
History
Antiquity As early as prehistoric times, the area around the village was inhabited by mankind, bearing witness to which are various finds from both Brücken itself and almost every neighbouring municipality. In the woods east of Brücken, at least according to a listing in the documents at the Office for Prehistory and Protohistory (Amt für Vor- und Frühgeschichte) in Speyer, is a prehistoric barrow with a diameter of some nine metres and a height of 70 cm. Nevertheless, there is no longer any sign of it on the ground. Much clearer are traces left by the Romans. In 1928, while ploughing over the heights near the Paulengrund in the field named "Auf der Burg", a farmer discovered some wall remnants of a Gallo-Roman villa rustica. This was temporarily unearthed so that it could be surveyed. According to statements made by earlier inhabitants, it is likely that in the early 20th century a vault with urns was unearthed. Later attempts at digging, though, yielded no such result. According to information from writer Tilemann Stella, in his time (17th century), A Roman stone, found within Brücken's limits, was known, showing on one side the goddess Minerva and on the other side the god Vulcan. Also, reports from the 19th century mention that a coin was found within Brücken's limits, but this has since been lost.
Middle Ages The village of Brücken belonged from the time of its founding to the free Imperial Domain (Reichsland) around the town and castle of Kaiserslautern and the Amt and court district of Kübelberg in this domain. This Amt of Kübelberg, beginning in 1312, was taken over in succession by a whole series of secular lordships as an Imperial pledged holding, passing first to the Counts of Sponheim and in 1375 to Electoral Palatinate, and then in 1378 back to Sponheim, only to pass once again to Electoral Palatinate in 1437. Sometime before 1333 – the exact date is unknown – Brücken had its first documentary mention in 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 Glan-Münchweiler in which the boundaries of the landhold held by the Hornbach Monastery in the Münchweiler Tal (dale) were outlined, in both German and Latin. According to this description, the boundary came from a now vanished village called Wanrneshoben, ran round the Steinberg to Bartenvogt (a ford near Waldmohr) "…und darnach durch die mitten zwischen bruckhen bis gehn Brenheim" ("…and thereafter through the middle between Brücken and up until Brenheim"). The corresponding Latin text reads "…et tunc per medium inter Brugel et usque Berinheim". Brenheim (Berinheim, Breitenheim) is a former village, but in connection with this matter, nothing is clear. Writer Dieter Zenglein is of the opinion that the naming of Bruckhen and Brugel (another name used for the place in the Weistum) is likely to have nothing to do with the village of Brücken, but rather with named rural areas (common in Germany even now). It may be that Brücken was named in even older documents in connection with the Hornbach Monastery. Nevertheless, it is quite unclear whether Brücken in the Ohmbach valley is meant. A 1372 document says that Johann von Wilenstein pledged taxes owed him and his holdings "in the estate at Brücken in Obenbach parishes" to his brother-in-law Frank von Wendelsheim. It is, however, certain that this refers to Brücken in the Oster valley. Otherwise, the village’s history is the same as that experienced by the whole Amt of Kübelberg. In the Late Middle Ages, the first of a series of Huberbücher (literally "books of farmers who work a whole Hube, a land area roughly equivalent to the English oxgang) was published by the Knights of Mauchenheim, who as vassals of the Counts Palatine of Zweibrücken and Electoral Palatinate were enfeoffed with holdings in the Amt of Kübelberg.
Modern times Further lists of Huber appeared in the 16th century, as did holding directories from the Wörschweiler Monastery. A comprehensive description by Electoral Palatinate Master Forester Vellmann comes from 1600. There was no great change in the arrangement of rulers in Early Modern Times. The Plague and the Thirty Years' War brought the village horror and death. "When in the autumn of 1635 the Imperial formations withdrew from Lorraine to the Rhine, they received orders to burn the villages on the army road down. Our village, too, was apparently overrun by troops in this year. The inhabitants were displaced, murdered or driven out, unless they had already fled sometime earlier." As if to confirm this, the taxation rolls thereafter showed hardly any entries, and towards the end of this harrowing war, and even for a few years after the Peace of Westphalia (1648), Brücken was a ghost village. It was 1656 before anyone – only two people – ever lived in the village again, and there then followed a sparse repopulation. French King Louis XIV’s wars of conquest, though, led to more hardship, destruction and loss of life. Only after the Treaty of Ryswick (1697) was there any effort aimed at repopulating the village. This was promoted by the Electoral Palatinate lord and brought newcomers from Switzerland, the Tyrol and even France to the region. The population figures rose swiftly in every village in the Amt of Kübelberg, including Brücken. Among these newcomers were also many Catholics, whereas earlier, from the beginning of the Reformation, only the faith according to Martin Luther had been tolerated.
Under the 1779 Treaty of Schwetzingen, Electoral Palatinate traded the court district of Kübelberg, and thereby Brücken, for the villages of Duchroth and Oberhausen and part of the village of Niederkirchen, all formerly belonging to the Duchy of Palatinate-Zweibrücken. Brücken was thereby also transferred from the Electoral Palatinate Oberamt of Kaiserslautern to the Zweibrücken Oberamt of Homburg and to the Schultheißerei of Waldmohr. One year before the exchange, the Electoral Palatinate geographer Goswin Widder described the village of Brücken for his four-volume work Geographische Beschreibung der Kurpfalz ("Geographical Description of Electoral Palatinate"), which only came out in 1788. Because of the territorial swap, Brücken could no longer be listed in the work, though the foreseen text has been preserved in manuscript.
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