Haschbach am Remigiusberg 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 a hollow on the upper reaches of the Haschbach at the western foot of the Remigiusberg hill in the Western Palatinate, roughly 4 km southeast of Kusel. To the east lies the river Glan, into which the Haschbach flows. The municipality's elevation is roughly 260 m above sea level.Haschbach am Remigiusberg’s location The heights around the municipal area reach 375 m above sea level at the Langenberg to the west and 368 m above sea level at the Remigiusberg, which with its church and Michelsburg castle ruin is said to be a landmark of the Westrich, a historic region that encompasses areas in both Germany and France. Found mainly in the Remigiusberg area are great melaphyre quarries. The municipal area measures 402 ha, of which 14.6 ha is built up and 83 ha is wooded.Location
Neighbouring municipalities Haschbach am Remigiusberg borders in the north the municipality of Rammelsbach, in the east on the municipality of Theisbergstegen, in the south on the municipality of Etschberg, in the southwest on the municipality of Schellweiler and in the west on the town of Kusel. Haschbach am Remigiusberg also meets the municipality of Altenglan at a single point in the northeast.
Constituent communities Also belonging to Haschbach am Remigiusberg is the outlying homestead of Remigiusberg.Constituent communities
Municipality’s layout Running through Haschbach is Hauptstraße (“Main Street”), which leads from Kusel to Theisbergstegen. The built-up area spreads up towards the Remigiusberg northeast of this street, while to the southwest it does likewise up towards the Langenberg. Besides the farmhouses with single roof ridges that are typical of the Westrich, there are also many simple workers’ houses. New building zones are found mainly in the south and west. The old church and castle ruin on the Remigiusberg as well as the Potzberg farther to the east offer a view over the village. Standing on the road leading to the Remigiusberg is a small country chapel from the late 19th century. The sporting ground lies towards the northwest, right at the municipal boundary with Kusel. On the road to Rammelsbach, outside the built-up area, lies the graveyard.Municipality’s layout
History
Antiquity The land both nearer Haschbach and somewhat farther away was settled in the late New Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age and Roman times, bearing witness to which are archaeological finds from all the surrounding municipalities. In Haschbach itself, down from the village, going towards Theisbergstegen, early work on a quarry on both sides of the road unearthed an urn-grave burying ground, which likely dates from La Tène times.Antiquity
Middle Ages Haschbach lay in the so-called Remigiusland, and likely arose in the 11th century, and thus some 100 years before the first documentary mention from 1149. An exact year of founding, though, cannot be determined. The Remigiusland was originally part of the Imperial Domain (Reichsland) around Kaiserslautern, but was split away from it about AD 590 and likely given by Frankish King Childebert II to Bishop Egidius of Reims as a donation. A story that already appeared in the Archbishopric's history books in the Middle Ages that had King Clovis I making the donation to Bishop Remigius (Saint Remigius) himself is now no longer accepted by historians. In 952, the Bishopric of Reims transferred its holdings around Kusel – the Remigiusland – to the Abbey of Saint-Remi, also in Reims. In 1112, Count Gerlach I, whose father was a count from the Nahegau, founded the new County of Veldenz, also belonging to which, as a Vogtei, was the Remigiusland. At this time, monks from Reims, who in all likelihood had considered the town of Kusel their base since the Remigiusland was founded, may even have built the Monastery on the Remigiusberg. The monastery had its first documentary mention in 1127. Before it was founded, nobles from a neighbouring region had unlawfully built on the mountain a castle, which against a payment of compensation was now torn down. The original Latin text reads: “utili et salubri consilio sibi posterisque providentes eundem montem licet suum munitionem pretio redemerunt et destructo castro monasterium sibi cum claustralibus officinis ibidem construxerunt,…”. One of the invaders, likely a knight named Albert, himself ruefully joined the monastery. Tensions between the provosts at the Saint-Remi branch monastery on the Remigiusberg and the Counts of Veldenz arose soon after the monastery's founding and lasted centuries. According to the 1149 document that also mentions the name of the village of Haschbach for the first time (as Habbach), a delegation from the Abbey of Saint-Remi and the branch monastery on the Remigiusberg complained to King Conrad III about disputes between the Counts of Veldenz and the monastery. King Conrad issued a legal pronouncement in the monastery's favour, but this was never quite brought into force. Four of Count Gerlach's successors likewise bore the name Gerlach. Gerlach V died in 1259 after taking part in a mission to Castile, leaving behind a young daughter named Agnes. Serving as Agnes's regent was Count Heinrich of Zweibrücken, who was her grandfather and her late father's father-in-law. To safeguard the County of Veldenz, Count Heinrich had several castles built, thus flouting the monks at the Remigiusberg and also the Michelsburg, the castle right next to the monastery. In various Veldenz documents, the Michelsburg is mentioned. In 1387 and 1390, Count Friedrich II of Veldenz acknowledged that he had been enfeoffed with, among other things, Sant Michelsberg by Count Palatine Ruprecht the Elder. A similar thing was acknowledged in 1437 by Count Friedrich III of Veldenz with regard to his overlord Count Palatine Ludwig. This feudal arrangement shows that the Counts of Veldenz did not hold their fief directly from the king, but rather through the Electors Palatine who served as their overlords. Count Friedrich III was the last from the Hohengeroldseck family to rule Veldenz - that male line died out with him in 1444, and the county passed to his son-in-law Stephen, Count Palatine of Simmern-Zweibrücken (son of Rupert, King of Germany), widower of Frederick's daughter, Anna of Veldenz. Stephen, combining his lands, created the new County Palatine of Zweibrücken, which in the fullness of time came to be known as the Duchy of Palatinate-Zweibrücken. Stephen chose the town of Zweibrücken as comital residence.Middle Ages
Modern times The Counts Palatine (Dukes) of Zweibrücken introduced the Reformation according to Martin Luther’s teachings to their subjects beginning in 1523, and in 1588, John I, Count Palatine of Zweibrücken forced his subjects to convert to John Calvin’s Reformed teachings (Calvinism). In 1543, Wolfgang, Count Palatine of Zweibrücken gave the County of Veldenz to his uncle and former regent, Rupert. During his regency, Rupert had resided at the castle on the Remigiusberg, the Michelsburg, which was forthwith swallowed into his new county's domain. The by now Lutheran church once belonging to the monastery, which had suffered dissolution in the time of the Reformation, served the princely family of Palatinate-Veldenz as a burying place. The village of Haschbach itself at first remained with the Duchy of Zweibrücken, but nevertheless likewise ended up with the newer County of Veldenz under the terms of the Recess of Meisenheim, proclaimed on 1 August 1600. As Lehmann wrote in 1867, “In August however, our Prince established two agreements with Georg Hannsen’s son, Count Palatine Georg Gustav of Veldenz; in the first, he transferred to the said count the mills at Mühlbach and Oberstaufenbach, two woods named Hochwald and Steinchen, then the villages of Hasbach (Haschbach) and Stegen, as well as many serfs and certain tithes, against which he (the Prince) received his share of Alsenz, the village of Reichartsweiler, the Veldenz share of the tithes in the Stolzenberg Valley along with many serfs.” The Thirty Years' War and French King Louis XIV's wars of conquest exacted great losses, and for a while, the village would have been almost empty of people. Newcomers boosted the population figures. The later Veldenz line died out with Count Palatine Leopold Ludwig's death in 1694. There then ensued a dispute over the succession between Palatinate-Zweibrücken and Electoral Palatinate, which was settled in the latter's favour by the 1731 Treaty of Marburg. Under its terms, the village of Haschbach along with the castle and the church were held by Electoral Palatinate until the country was occupied by French Revolutionary troops. During the 18th century, having been mentioned as early as 1590, the Remigiusberg Estate lay below the monastery and the castle, held by the House of Remigiusberg, that is, the Counts Palatine of Veldenz-Lichtenstein and from 1731 the Prince-Electors of the Palatinate. Bit by bit, not always without displeasure, the estate was given to various other landholders. In the time of the French Revolution, the French authorities seized all Electoral holdings as national property. The estate was sold to private buyers, but nevertheless did not last much longer: the original cadastral survey done in Bavarian times, not many years later, described it as a ruin.Modern times
Recent times During the time of annexation of the German lands on the Rhine’s left bank by France, Haschbach belonged within the French First Republic – and then later within the First French Empire under Napoleon – to the Department of Sarre, the Arrondissement of Birkenfeld, the Canton of Kusel and the Mairie (“Mayoralty”) of Quirnbach. After the French were driven out, Haschbach then belonged within the Kingdom of Bavaria (to which the Congress of Vienna had awarded the Palatinate) to the Landkommissariat (district) and Canton of Kusel, and to a Bürgermeisterei (“mayoralty”) whose name changed according to where the mayor lived – sometimes in Godelhausen and sometimes in Theisbergstegen (the former is today a constituent community of the latter).
“From Theisbergstegen, through a narrow, wooded mountain gap we reach the hamlet of Haschbach, whose broadly strewn homesteads gleam with bright red tile roofs over the plateau, over which, towards the east the mountain ridge already described looms.”
Thus did Franz Xaver Remling report on a visit to the Remigiusberg in 1850. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the NSDAP (Nazi Party) was becoming quite popular in Haschbach. In the 1928 Reichstag elections, only 0.6% of the local votes went to Adolf Hitler’s party, but by the 1930 Reichstag elections, this had grown to 11.3%. By the time of the 1933 Reichstag elections, after Hitler had already seized power, local support for the Nazis had swollen to 31.7%. Hitler’s success in these elections paved the way for his Enabling Act of 1933 (Ermächtigungsgesetz), thus starting the Third Reich in earnest. Once the state of Rhineland-Palatinate had been founded after the Second World War and the Palatinate had been split away from Bavaria, the broader territorial arrangements did not change at first, although from 1945 to 1949, Haschbach was itself seat of the mayoralty. Only with administrative restructuring in 1968 did Haschbach pass as an Ortsgemeinde to the newly founded Verbandsgemeinde of Kusel, with effect from 1972.Recent times In 1959, the municipality’s name, which hitherto had been simply Haschbach, was lengthened to the current form, Haschbach am Remigiusberg, to avoid confusion with Haschbach am Glan, an outlying centre of Henschtal, which lies nearby, in the same district.
Population development