Altenglan
Altenglan 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. Altenglan is a recognized tourism community. Also, named after the municipality is the Altenglan Formation, a lithostratigraphic entity, and by extension, so is Altenglanerpeton, a microsaur whose fossil remains were found therein.
Geography
Location
The municipality lies in the uplands in the Western Palatinate on the river Glan, which is the village's namesake, at an elevation in the valley of some 200 m above sea level, although the elevations within municipal limits reach almost 400 m, and on the slopes of the Potzberg within the formerly self-administering municipality of Mühlbach almost 500 m. Altenglan lies roughly 5 km northeast of the district seat and nearest town, Kusel, and 25 km northwest of Kaiserslautern. In Altenglan, the Kuselbach and the Reichenbach empty into the Glan. The dale here forms a broad bowl, although the pattern is broken somewhat by the two streams that meet the Glan here, one from each side. Part of the Potzberg massif lies within Altenglan as does part of the long Remigiusberg ridge, although these hills' summits all lie outside the municipality's boundaries. The municipality has an area of 1 362 ha, of which 237 ha is wooded.Neighbouring municipalities
Altenglan borders in the north on the municipality of Bedesbach, in the northeast on the municipality of Welchweiler, in the east on the municipality of Bosenbach, in the southeast on the municipality of Föckelberg, in the south on the municipalities of Rutsweiler am Glan and Theisbergstegen, in the southwest on the municipality of Rammelsbach, in the west on the town of Kusel and the municipality of Blaubach and in the northwest on the municipality of Erdesbach. Altenglan also meets the municipalities of Elzweiler and Haschbach am Remigiusberg at single points in the east and south respectively.Constituent communities
Altenglan's Ortsteile are Altenglan, Mühlbach am Glan and Patersbach.Municipality’s layout
The original settlement of Altenglan stretched along the higher parts of the left banks of both the Glan and the Kuselbach, along today's Glanstraße from the graveyard with the old church to the T-junction formed by today's Bahnhofstraße. This can clearly be seen in a stock book compiled in the mid-18th century. Other settlements on Bahnhofstraße had also already arisen by the 18th century. The last house before the bridge was the one that is now the rectory, and across the bridge stood a smith's workshop. Likewise already standing by the 18th century were houses in the area of today's Ringstraße, which the stock book describes as a gemeiner Weg – “common way”. Thus, a big triangle stretching back from the forks of the Glan and Kuselbach was settled at the time when the original cadastral survey was done in 1848. The settlement began to spread out in the 19th century towards Eckstraße and Tränkstraße, towards Neuwiesenstraße and today's Schulstraße. In the early 20th century, houses were built on Kuseler Straße. Altenglan station was built in 1868 along with the railway line between Kusel and Landstuhl. New, bigger residential areas arose after the Second World War west of Bahnhofstraße and to the side of Kuseler Straße. A new rectory was built in 1934 on Kuseler Straße, after the old one had been sold. The town hall, in its original form, the then municipality had built after the Second World War. Expansions took place after the founding of the Verbandsgemeinde. Most of the shops, supermarkets, banks and inns stand on the main street along with Austraße, and on Glanstraße, while the school with its gymnasium and event hall and the Verbandsgemeinde administration building stand on Schulstraße. Adjoining the school is a sporting ground. The sport and leisure swimming pool lies east of the village off the main road going towards Bosenbach. The mediaeval church stands in the middle of the graveyard in the village's northeast at the end of Glanstraße and across Kuseler Straße.As a very old village, Altenglan has a relatively large municipal area, great swathes of which were opened up to development after the Second World War. The biggest tract of woodland is the Bruderwald, a typical mixed forest once owned by the Remigiusberg Monastery. Besides cropraising and livestock breeding, the municipality also worked at winegrowing to a limited extent in the time before the Second World War.
History
Antiquity
The Altenglan area was settled as early as the last period in the New Stone Age and on into Gallo-Roman times, bearing witness to which are archaeological finds. Since the name Glan is of Celtic origin, it could be that the centre was settled continuously up to the Frankish takeover of the land. From Roman times, too, traces have been preserved, such as a sculpture of a woman, the so-called “Venus of Glan”, which has since disappeared.Middle Ages
The name Gleni appears along with the name Cosla in the historical work from the Archbishopric of Reims compiled by the early mediaeval historical writer Flodoard. According to the greater Remigiustestament, which is included in this work, the so-called Remigiusland with Kusel and Altenglan had supposedly already been bequeathed by King Clovis to Saint Remigius as a donation. This forgery was made possibly with the object of reinforcing the claim to Reims holdings in what is today the Western Palatinate through a reference to the famous bishop Remigius. It is highly likely that King Childebert II transferred the Remigiusland with the villages of Cosla and Gleni to Bishop Giles about 590. On these grounds, the municipality celebrated its 1,400-year jubilee in 1989. Altenglan surely exercised an important midpoint function in the Remigiusland.In the time that followed, Altenglan's history corresponded with the Remigiusland’s. In 1112, the Remigiusland was taken over as a Vogtei by the Counts of Veldenz. In 1444, it passed as a Vogtei to the Dukes Palatine Zweibrücken, which bought the region – a Vogtei was only a protective function – in 1552. In connection with the Remigiusland, Altenglan was also mentioned in one of Louis the German’s documents, which was issued in 865, although it is only known today from a 13th-century copy. The name’s first mention in an original document, one bearing witness to an exchange of holdings by the Bishop of Worms, dates from 992.
According to Prüm Abbey’s directory of holdings, the Prümer Urbar, this abbey in the Eifel owned near a place called Glan a major holding. It is disputed today whether this meant the village of Altenglan. It is likewise disputed whether a knight named Straßenraub lived in Altenglan or indeed in Neuenglan, believed to have been the same place as today’s Hundheim. Straßenraub’s actual family name, however, was Hettenberg. Since it is known that the noble family Hettenberg had holdings at Altenglan, it is at least possible that Straßenraub lived here.
The first Schultheiß, Dylen, was named in 1388. As well, a 1364 document, in which Count Heinrich I of Veldenz set forth the conditions for the support of his son, also named Heinrich, and his wife Lauretta, Altenglan was mentioned as an Amt seat along with Brücken near Ulmet. It can be assumed that Altenglan had had this administrative function since the founding of the County of Veldenz in the earlier half of the 12th century. In 1410, the two Ämter were merged, and the new seat was Pilsbach, a place on the Glan’s right bank that was later swallowed up by Ulmet. Altenglan thereby lost its central function, which it had likely had since the Early Middle Ages.
Modern times
Johannes Hoffmann’s 1588 description of Altenglan may be exaggerated, but it nevertheless gives today’s reader a little glance at the village’s original importance. Hoffmann described the village of Alten-Glan as “quite an old place” that had been built, like Trier and some other towns, more by “heathens” than anyone else, and these heathens had apparently built Altenglan into a “very great town”, girding it each side of the river Glan with ringwalls, so that the river flowed through the middle of the town.Altenglan's first known municipal charter dates from 1567, and was renewed in 1581. At the time of the 1609 ecclesiastical Visitation, there were 37 families in the village. As a result of the Plague, the population shrank greatly even before the Thirty Years' War broke out. According to the Huberweistum, a 1630 Weistum, there were then only 30 families still living in the village. That same year, Imperial troops plundered Altenglan. As in the whole swathe of countryside around Kusel, especially because of the wartime events of 1635, very few people in Altenglan survived this frightful war, and almost all the houses had been destroyed. For a long time, it was not even worth the trouble of holding church services in the church. Even after the population had built itself back up somewhat through newcomers to the village, there was more war, this time King Louis XIV's wars of conquest. About 1680, Altenglan was said to be “burnt”. Nevertheless, during the 18th century, the population once again rose quickly by both migration to the village and natural growth, and according to the 1742 stock book, there were once more 47 houses in the village.
In the time of the French Revolution, French Revolutionary troops plundered Altenglan, but otherwise left it unscathed. The village now belonged to the Department of Sarre, the Arrondissement of Birkenfeld, the Canton of Kusel and the Mairie of Ulmet.