Körborn 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 Körborn lies in the headwaters of the Mühlbach, which rises on the plateau north of the town of Kusel, and flows out of a broad hollow in a narrow, steep valley southeastwards to the Kuselbach. Towards the north, the municipal area stretches rather a long way to the houses of the little village of the Breitsesterhof (an outlying centre of Baumholder), while towards the south, the municipality's administrative area reaches to a point near Diedelkopf (an outlying centre of Kusel). In the east-west direction, it broadens out only slightly, but jutting out from the built-up area are two bulges. The western one reaches right out to Castle Lichtenberg (although this lies just outside Körborn's limits in Thallichtenberg), while the eastern one runs along the so-called Roman road towards the Mayweilerhof (an outlying centre of Oberalben). The village itself sits at its lower elevations at 360 m above sea level, and at its higher ones at 390 m above sea level. In the municipal area's wooded northern reaches, the land at first falls off into a dale, the Baumholder Loch (Loch means “hole” in German), only to rise up again on the far side to heights reaching more than 400 m above sea level. The highest point that has been measured within the municipality's limits is one in the woods out near the Breitsesterhof reaching 456 m above sea level. The eastern and western bulges, too, both break the 400-metre mark in elevation. The lowest point in the municipality is one near Diedelkopf in the Mühlbach valley where the land drops down to about 270 m above sea level. The municipal area measures 586 ha, of which 138 ha is wooded.Location
Neighbouring municipalities Körborn borders in the north on the municipality of Dennweiler-Frohnbach, in the northeast on the municipality of Oberalben, in the east on the municipality of Blaubach, in the south on the town of Kusel, in the southwest on the municipality of Ruthweiler, in the west on the municipality of Thallichtenberg and in the northwest on the town of Baumholder.
Municipality’s layout The old village stretches along the road (Kreisstraße 23) that leads from Dennweiler-Frohnbach to Thallichtenberg, concentrating itself in the upper hollow of the dale through which the brook runs, thereby forming a village core, where two roads meet. The through road bends here towards the southeast (whereafter it is designated Kreisstraße 24) into the valley of the Mühlbach, while a linking road (likewise designated Kreisstraße 23) runs southwestwards to Castle Lichtenberg. Towards the north, a street climbs up to new building zones. The schoolhouse, built in 1936, stands here, although this is nowadays a village community centre. Before it stands a belltower, and next to it the fire station. The newest building areas spread out not only here in the municipality's far north, but also in the east along Römerstraße (“Roman Road”, but here actually a street within the village) and along the linking road to Castle Lichtenberg as well as along sidestreets in this area. The graveyard lies alongside this road on the way out of the village. In the oldest part of the village is still found a row of original Westrich (a historic region that encompasses areas in both Germany and France) farmhouses (Einfirsthaus or “single-roof-ridge house” type), although most have been altered by conversions.Municipality’s layout
History
Antiquity In almost every village in the area, there have been archaeological finds that bear witness to human habitation in prehistoric times, although no such finds have been unearthed in Körborn's municipal area. The same is true for finds from Roman times.Antiquity
Middle Ages At the time of Körborn's first documentary mention in 1270, it lay in the County of Veldenz, resident in which at the time was Count Heinrich von Geroldseck, whose wife was Agnes, Count Gerlach V's daughter. Since his father-in-law was the last count of the older line of Veldenz, Heinrich became the founder of the newer line. It cannot be assumed that the date of first documentary mention is also the village's founding date, for nothing is known about when Körborn actually arose as a settled place. It could have been a few years earlier, or a few hundred. Place-name researchers do not rule out a founding as far back as pre-Germanic times. The County of Veldenz was founded in 1112, mainly out of various Vogteien over ecclesiastical landholds, particularly the Remigiusland, a region around Kusel that belonged to the Abbey of Saint-Remi in Reims. According to the 1270 document, Körborn was then a Veldenz fief held by the Burgmann Johannes Raubesak at Castle Lichtenberg, who had to pay the Provost at the Remigiusberg Monastery a certain sum of money. The name Raubesak suggests that Sir Johannes sometimes indulged himself in highway robbery (rauben is still the German word for “rob”), although this is not known for sure. According to a 1376 document, a squire of Sötern acknowledged that Count Heinrich II of Veldenz had made him a Burgmann, and that as payment for his service he had also been awarded the village of Kerborn. The village then belonged to the Burgfrieden (literally “castle peace”, a truce imposed within a castle’s domain) of Lichtenberg Castle, which stood only a few kilometres away. The peasants from Körborn, and from all villages within the Burgfrieden, continually had to do compulsory labour, either at the castle itself or otherwise for the Burgmannen. In 1444, the County of Veldenz met its end when Count Friedrich III of Veldenz died without a male heir. His daughter Anna wed King Ruprecht’s son Count Palatine Stephan. By uniting his own Palatine holdings with the now otherwise heirless County of Veldenz – his wife had inherited the county, but not her father’s title – and by redeeming the hitherto pledged County of Zweibrücken, Stephan founded a new County Palatine, as whose comital residence he chose the town of Zweibrücken: the County Palatine – later Duchy – of Palatinate-Zweibrücken.Middle Ages
Modern times Thus, also from the 16th century onwards up until the late 18th century, Körborn shared the same history as the now former County of Veldenz and its successor state, Palatinate-Zweibrücken. Cörbern still belonged, as before, to the Burgfrieden of Castle Lichtenberg along with the villages of Thallichtenberg, Ruthweiler and Bistert (now vanished). According to Johannes Hoffmann’s 1588 description of the Amt of Lichtenberg, Körborn lay in the fifth Hauptgrund (literally “main ground”): “In this case … herein: The Cörbergrundt is 8,600 feet or 573 roods and 5 feet. In this lies above at the end or the beginning the village of Cörbern. The dell, called Müllenbach, is 5,170 feet or 344 roods and 10 feet long, falls into the Cörpergrundt”. Hoffmann used the word Schuch (in today's German, Schuh – literally “shoe”) for “foot” and Ruttenn or Rutten for “roods”. He also identified the “dell” (he used the same word in German) with the brook running through it. According to this report, the Mühlbach was called the Cörbergrundt (or Cörpergrundt) and the Müllbach was said to be a side valley of this “ground”. It is unlikely that a mill (Mühle in German) ever stood on either of these brooks. During the Thirty Years' War, the nearby Castle Lichtenberg escaped the customary destruction, though the villages all around it suffered heavily under the horrors wrought by the war and also by the Plague. Körborn was likely utterly destroyed in this war and afterwards newly settled. Further hardship and woe came in the late 17th century with French King Louis XIV's wars of conquest. Only in the 18th century was their steady population growth. From a report by Daniel Hinkelmann that has been preserved to the present day come details about agricultural conditions in those days. The first survey of the municipal area known to history was done in 1745 by the Ducal Renovator Gottfried Sundahl from Zweibrücken, who determined the area to be 3,455 Morgen. According to documents from 1777 issued by the Keller (collector) at Castle Lichtenberg, Johann Christoph Gassert, the municipality then had 1,287 Morgen of cropland of which 341 Morgen lay at the municipality's outermost edges, 245 Morgen of meadowland and 323 Morgen of woodland and grazing land. Produced were, among other things, 5,070 bales of corn straw and 2,845 bales of fodder straw. Of the cropland mentioned above, only 190 Morgen were dunged, which according to Gassert's calculations yielded 3,420 sheaves of grain, and therefrom all together 213 Malter of actual grain. The 42 Morgen of stubble fields and boggier land yielded 6 sheaves to a Morgen and therefore 252 sheaves all together, and thus 15 Malter and 3 Fass (“barrels”). Of the 269½ Morgen planted with summer crops, one third with potatoes, the yield for one Morgen was 15 Malter, all together 1,350 Malter of potatoes, while 179 Morgen of barley and oats yielded 3 Malter (roughly 6 hundredweight) to a Morgen, and thus all together 537 Malter. The livestock kept in that year broke down as follows: 1 horse, 48 oxen, 43 cows, 41 other cattle, 473 wethers and other sheep, 190 lambs and 182 pigs.Modern times
Recent times As a result of the events during the French Revolution, there was a thorough collapse of the old feudal structures, and new territorial entities arose. Körborn belonged during the time of French rule to the Mairie (“Mayoralty”) of Burglichtenberg, the Canton of Kusel, the Arrondissement of Birkenfeld and the Department of Sarre. After the victory over French forces towards the end of Napoleonic times, the victorious powers worked out a new territorial order by 1815 at the Congress of Vienna. For Körborn, the upshot was that it now found itself in a new exclave of considerable size that the Congress had chosen to award to the Kingdom of Bavaria, but not at all far inside it, for it now lay right at the border with the likewise newly created Principality of Lichtenberg itself a newly created exclave of the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, which as of 1826 became the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Körborn now lay in the Bürgermeisterei (“Mayoralty”) of Kusel, the Canton of Kusel and the Landcommissariat (district) of Kusel. After the Second World War, the village lay in the Regierungsbezirk of Neustadt in the then newly founded state of Rhineland-Palatinate. In the course of administrative restructuring in this state in 1968, Körborn passed as a self-administering Ortsgemeinde to the then newly founded Verbandsgemeinde of Kusel in 1972. This originally lay in the Regierungsbezirk of Rheinhessen-Pfalz, but Rhineland-Palatinate has since abolished its Regierungsbezirke.Recent times
Population development