Aschbach () 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 north side of the Königsberg, a mountain in the North Palatine Uplands, in the narrow valley of the like-named brook, the Aschbach, some 260 m above sea level. The Aschbach rises on the north slope of the Hahnenkopf, a lesser peak in the Königsberg group, and flows northnorthwestwards towards the Glan. The elevations around the village reach more than 500 m above sea level in the Königsberg area, but otherwise between 300 and 400 m above sea level elsewhere. These are some selected local peaks: Hahnenkopf 535 m Leienberg 524 m Steinchen 435 m Rodlingsberg 315 m
The municipal area measures 446 ha, of which 18 ha is settled and 80 ha is wooded.Location
Neighbouring municipalities Aschbach borders in the north on the municipality of Offenbach-Hundheim, in the east on the town of Wolfstein, in the south on the municipality of Eßweiler, in the southwest on the municipality of Oberweiler im Tal, in the west on the municipality of Hinzweiler and in the northwest on the municipality of Nerzweiler. Aschbach also meets the municipalities of Lohnweiler and Rutsweiler an der Lauter at single points in the northeast and southeast respectively.
Municipality's layout The village lies mainly as a street village – by some definitions, a thorpe – along Landesstraße 368, which links the Eßweiler Tal (dale) with the Lauter valley and crosses the Aschbach valley. Branching from this thoroughfare are several streets, mostly southwards. The oldest part of the built-up area can be found in the area at the bridge across the Aschbach. Most of the buildings come from the 19th century and the earlier half of the 20th century. Newer building characterizes the village's west end, especially. The first schoolhouse (Hauptstraße 5) was built in 1789, while a further one with two classrooms was built at the turn of the 20th century. The graveyard lies on a sidestreet in the village's east.Municipality's layout
History
Antiquity The prehistoric archaeological finds from the Aschbach area are among the most important in the Kusel district. As early as 1884 to 1886, Regional Engineer Göring from Kaiserslautern had three barrows opened up. Many objects of worship and everyday use were unearthed, four neckrings, about 15 armrings, six footrings, several rings, many bronze pieces, urn shards and flint arrowheads. An exact itemization of the finds was compiled long ago by Fritz Kleinschmidt. The barrows dated from the Bronze Age, about 1500 BC. Also unearthed by archaeologists was an ironworks next to the path between the hiking car park and Kreuzfeld, south of the former baryte quarry. Other finds from early historical times, namely from Roman times, came to light between Aschbach and Nerzweiler, with what was supposedly the foundations of a Roman bath with six rooms.Antiquity
Middle Ages Aschbach shares a great deal of its mediaeval history with all other villages in the Eßweiler Tal (dale), for in many ways, they together form a unit. Besides Aschbach itself, these were Hundheim (Neuenglan), Hachenbach, Hinzweiler, Nerzweiler, Horschbach, Oberweiler, Elzweiler, Eßweiler and the now vanished villages of Letzweiler, Niederaschbach, Nörweiler, Mittelhofen, Zeizelbach, Füllhof, Neideck and Lanzweiler. It is certain that these villages lay within the Free Imperial Domain around the Royal Castle Lautern. In the 9th century, likely not long before 870, the noble lord Hererich was enfeoffed with the Eßweiler Tal and shortly before his death, he bequeathed it to Prüm Abbey. The ecclesiastical hub of this area was at first the Hirsauer Kirche, a church near Hundheim, which at this time still bore the name Glena or Glan, or possibly Neuenglan (Nieuwen Glena), in contrast to Altenglan (Gleni). This Glena became the seat of a Hund, which, despite the word's meaning in Modern High German ("dog"), was actually an official with an administrative function over the whole dale for the actual owners. Thus, the administrative seat of Glan at the place where the brook emptied into the river Glan now acquired the name Hundheim.
In 1150, the Edelfreier Reinfried founded the Offenbach Monastery together with a kinswoman named Mathilde. The founders transferred the small monastery at Offenbach together with the holdings that they had bequeathed to it to Saint Vincent's Abbey in Metz. Among these holdings was one owned by Reinfried in Aschbach, explaining why the village, along with others, was named in the founding document. From a document made out about 1200, the reader gathers that Emmerich von Löwenstein received from the Counts of Zweibrücken as a fief for service rendered one third of the tithes at Aschbach. In 1377, two inhabitants of Ober Aspach, among many other guarantors, vouched for the nobleman Gerhard von Lauterecken, who swore an oath of loyalty to the Count of Veldenz together with his wife and sons Henne and Heinzmann on pain of having to pay one thousand Gulden if the oath were ever broken. The two men in question were Dyle Baltzen's son Godel and a man named Gerhard.
Even before 1222, Prüm Abbey lost its holdings in the Glan valley, although the circumstances under which this happened are unknown. After this time, the only feudal lords named are the fourteen who exercised special rights in the Eßweiler Tal and who were entitled to draw a share of the tithes, namely: Junker Mühlenstein von Grumbach as the Rhinegraves' vassal; The County Palatine of Zweibrücken; Offenbach Monastery; Remigiusberg Monastery; Tholey Abbey; Enkenbach Convent; The Sulzbach Knights of Saint John Commandry; The Church of Zweibrücken; The Church of Sankt Julian; The Church of Hinzweiler; The Stangenjunker of Lauterecken; The family Blick von Lichtenberg; The Lords of Mauchenheim; The Lords of Mickelheim.
Obviously the feudal lords kept different administrative seats. The Waldgraves and Rhinegraves of Kyrburg,Aschbach's history as holders of high jurisdiction, were overlords to the Lords of Mühlenstein (later Cratz von Scharfenstein) at the Hirsauer Kirche and at the Springeburg (castle). The Counts of Veldenz, as lords of the dale's "poor people" (as of 1444 the Counts Palatine of Zweibrücken), chose Nerzweiler as their seat. Nerzweiler was always named in documents between 1350 and 1446 as the seat of the Nerzweiler Amt. Indeed, in the 14th century, as witnessed by a 1393 Veldenz letter of bestowal, the two villages of Oberaschbach and Unteraschbach belonged to this Amt of Nerzweiler. Count Friedrich III of Veldenz bequeathed the Amt to his wife, Margarethe von Nassau-Saarbrücken, to provide for her in case of widowhood (an arrangement called a Wittum). After 1446, Hundheim appeared once again as the only administrative seat. Hinzweiler acquired its own church in 1451 and thereby took over from Hirsau as the Eßweiler Tal parish's ecclesiastical hub. Having a great number of feudal lords obviously led to greater freedoms than in other regions, where unified power and governmental structures prevailed. Questions of law were governed in the Eßweiler Tal by a series of Weistümer (singular: Weistum; cognate with English wisdom, this was a legal pronouncement issued by men learned in law in the Middle Ages and early modern times) that were already in force in the Middle Ages, although only in the early 16th century were they put into writing. These have been preserved down to the present day and are now held to be prime examples of mediaeval jurisprudence.
Aschbach was a relatively rich village in the Late Middle Ages. In 1477, twelve families had to pay both the May tax (Maibede) and the autumn tax (Herbstbede). That was almost every family living in the village. By way of comparison, in the then somewhat smaller village of Nerzweiler, only two families paid taxes.Middle Ages
Modern times In 1526, the Reformation was introduced into the Eßweiler Tal. In the course of the 16th century, the Plague raged in the dale, and the villages were depopulated. In Aschbach itself, apparently only 12 people survived the epidemic. With regard to manorial relations, there was a change due to this situation in 1595 that saw high jurisdiction, hitherto held by the Waldgraves and Rhinegraves for some 250 years, transferred to the Counts Palatine of Zweibrücken. In return for this, Count Palatine Johannes I of Zweibrücken let the Rhinegraves have the village of Kirchenbollenbach near (and now a constituent community of) Idar-Oberstein. High jurisdiction and lordly rule over the "poor people" were thereby in one lordship's hands, although the other feudal lords still had the same rights to their shares of the tithes in the various villages as before. In 1614, Count Palatine (Duke) Johannes II of Zweibrücken traded his serfs in Teschenmoschel for Baron Johann Gottfried von Sickingen's serfs in Schallodenbach and the Eßweiler Tal. Aschbach also suffered in the Thirty Years' War. While only the odd person survived this war in other villages, Aschbach already once again had 11 families in 1675 (27 years after the war ended). It may be assumed that losses were less heavy here than they were farther up the Glan valley. There may indeed have been newcomers among those 11 families who had come to settle. A new, fundamental change in the territorial arrangement came to pass in 1755. It was then that Duke Christian IV transferred the Offenbach Monastery, along with the villages of Aschbach, Hundheim, Nerzweiler, Hinzweiler and Oberweiler, and the Hirsauer Kirche, to the Rhinegraves of Grumbach, who had exercised high jurisdiction in these villages until 1595. The actual count at this time was Rhinegrave Karl Walram von Grumbach. Aschbach thereby remained under Rhinegravial rule until the old feudal order was swept away in the events of the French Revolution.Modern times
Recent times In French Revolutionary and Napoleonic times, the German lands on the Rhine's left bank were annexed by France, which brought about the abolition of all hitherto existing borders and the founding of new French departments. Roughly, the river Glan formed the boundary between the Departments of Sarre and Mont-Tonnerre (or Donnersberg in German). Aschbach was grouped, along with the villages of Nerzweiler, Hinzweiler, Hachenbach and Gumbsweiler, into the Mairie ("Mayoralty") of Hundheim. After Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo in 1815, a new entity came into being under the terms of the Congress of Vienna after a transition period. It was the Bavarian Rheinkreis, a new exclave in the Palatinate ruled by the Kingdom of Bavaria; it later came to be called the bayerische Rheinpfalz ("Bavarian Rhenish Palatinate"). Aschbach now belonged to the Bürgermeisterei ("Mayoralty") of Hundheim in the Canton (District) of Lauterecken and in the Landkommissariat (later Bezirksamt, and later still Landkreis, or district) of Kusel. Further changes came with the 1968 regional and administrative reform in Rhineland-Palatinate. Since 1971, the Ortsgemeinde of Aschbach has belonged within the Kusel district to the Verbandsgemeinde of Wolfstein.Recent times
Population development