Blaubach
Blaubach 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. Blaubach is also a state-recognized tourist community.
Geography
Location
The municipality lies in the Western Palatinate, at elevations from 275 to 290 m above sea level in the valley of the Blaubach, which rises a few kilometres away, northeast of the village near the Mayweilerhof, is also known in its upper reaches as the Dambach, and empties into the Kuselbach south of Blaubach in Kusel's outlying centre of Diedelkopf. Flowing from the west to the Blaubach is the Röhrbach. The broadening of the valley where this stream ends originally favoured the establishment of a settlement. The elevations around the village reach up to 375 m above sea level. The municipal area measures 314 ha, of which 75 ha is wooded.Neighbouring municipalities
Blaubach borders in the north on the municipality of Oberalben, in the east on the municipalities of Erdesbach and Altenglan, in the south on the town of Kusel and in the west on the municipality of Körborn.Constituent communities
Also belonging to Blaubach are the outlying homesteads of Hotel Reweschnier and Rothengründerhof.Municipality's layout
The old village core near where the Röhrbach empties into the Blaubach spread out considerably, bit by bit, first up the dale through which the Röhrbach flows, also up the Blaubach's right bank, and then downstream as well to the mountain slopes, later spreading, too, to the left bank with extensive new building areas. The old schoolhouse from the 19th century with its gable, belltower and clock on Matzenberg is held to be a village landmark. This building is today used as a house. A new schoolhouse, now a village community centre, was built between 1958 and 1960. In the older built-up area are found the farmhouses that typify the West Palatinate. On the road going towards Mayweilerhof, one comes first to the renowned Hotel Reweschnier on the brook's left bank, and then to the Rothengründerhof, an Aussiedlerhof that arose in 1957. The graveyard lies south of the village, on the Blaubach's right bank.History
Antiquity
In the late 19th century, while a pit was being dug for a new building on Matzenberg, workers stumbled on some potsherds, likely from an urn buried more than 2,000 years earlier by the dale's Celtic inhabitants. Further ceramic vessels – grave goods – were found in recent times while a house was being built on Am Äckerchen. These witnesses to early settlers in the dale have also been joined by further potsherds from Roman times, which were unearthed in the 1950s when the Rothengründerhof was being built. A plot of meadowland near the Rothengründerhof called Gerzenmooch might also be a reference to Gallo-Roman settlers, perhaps from the assumption that an idol once stood here near a headwater stream, Götze being a German word that can mean “false god” or “idol”. The lane near Blaubach's municipal area leading from Körborn to Mayweilerhof is to this day called Römerstraße – “Roman Road”.Middle Ages
This village, with its small municipal area, might have arisen relatively late. It lay in the so-called Remigiusland, which belonged to the Bishopric of Reims and the Abbey of Saint-Remi in Reims. Consequently, Blaubach had its first documentary mention in the Remigiusberg Monastery's taxation books in 1436, and it was mentioned once more in a 1480 taxation assessment roll from the Amt of Lichtenberg. As early as 1112, Count Gerlach I had, with the founding of the County of Veldenz, among other things, taken over the protection of the Remigiusland, which thenceforth belonged to the Veldenz Oberamt of Lichtenberg. In 1444, Count Palatine Stephan had founded the County Palatine of Zweibrücken, to which the whole County of Veldenz, along with the Oberamt of Lichtenberg, belonged. Listed in the 1480 document was every village in the Oberamt, including Blaubach, which then belonged to the Pfeffelbach Amt or the Diedelkopf Amt. The 1480 roll also gives a clue as to Blaubach's population: it listed four families with roughly 20 people. It is likely, though, that there were others who did not appear on the roll because they paid no taxes. Thus, the population might have numbered as high as 40.Modern times
In the 16th century, as a result of Martin Luther's Reformation, a new order in religious life came about for the whole Duchy of Palatinate-Zweibrücken, and thereby also for the small village of Blaubach. Worth noting in this era is the rise of fearsome sicknesses, above all, the Plague. In Blaubach, which had so few inhabitants to begin with, 22 persons died in the Plague year 1574 alone; in the Plague year 1597 it was a further 18. Nevertheless, the village did not die right out, for in the years after 1600, roughly two children were being born every year. Perhaps young families had already come and settled in the village. Later Plague epidemics did not affect Blaubach as badly. In the 1588 description of the Oberamt of Lichtenberg by the Zweibrücken official Johannes Hofmann, a description of the village's location also appears, dealing mainly with geographical dimensions.The worst blow struck against the region's population growth was brought by the Thirty Years' War. In 1635, a cohort of Croatian mercenaries cunningly broke into the town of Kusel. The Landsknechte raped many women, massacred most of the townsfolk and set the whole town on fire. These events likewise drew neighbouring villages into danger, although particulars do not appear in the record. One legend, however, says that the farmers in Blaubach, which lay just across the river from Kusel, wrung all their cocks’ necks so that the Croats would take no notice of the village. Whether or not the people of Blaubach momentarily met with any success in doing this, on the whole, only the odd person in the villages around Kusel survived the onslaught. In the Kusel church book in the war's later years and after the war, hitherto unknown names cropped up – newcomers. It can be concluded from the names appearing in the church book that members of only two families in Blaubach survived the war.
These newcomers revived the village, although King Louis XIV's wars of conquest brought further death and destruction. Blaubach was among those villages described in 1675 as verbrannt – “burnt up”. Nonetheless, that same year, 40 inhabitants were counted. According to a 1717/1718 stock book, there were once again eleven families living in the village. As the 18th century went on, a steady growth in population took hold. It is likely that it was in this time that the well known – at least in Blaubach – legend of the Reweschnier arose.
Recent times
In 1793, French Revolutionary troops occupied the land, and in 1801, France annexed the German lands on the Rhine's left bank. Blaubach now belonged to the Mairie of Kusel and the Canton of Kusel in the Arrondissement of Birkenfeld in the Department of Sarre. In 1816, the Kingdom of Bavaria acquired, under the terms laid out by the Congress of Vienna, the lands on the Rhine's left bank, which were now known as Rheinbaiern, but later as Bayerische Rheinpfalz. Within the Kingdom of Bavaria, Blaubach belonged to the Bürgermeisterei of Kusel, the Canton of Kusel and the Landkommissariat of Kusel in the Rheinkreis – yet another name for Bavaria's exclave in the Palatinate. In 1871, the municipality received an endowment from a villager who had emigrated to the United States amounting to more than $1,000, the interest from which was to be paid out to the poor each year. The donation spread some cheer, but because of the formula whereby the money was to be distributed, it was both a boon and a bane, causing considerable disquiet. In the 1933 Reichstag elections, the people of Blaubach voted 70.1% for Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party. In the course of the 1968 administrative restructuring in Rhineland-Palatinate, Blaubach became in 1972 a self-administering Ortsgemeinde within the Verbandsgemeinde of Kusel. In the time that followed, the village ushered in a considerable upswing through the opening of extensive new building areas. Workers, officials and businesspeople who had jobs in Kusel settled in Blaubach, thus bringing a change in the population structure. As well, the prospects for tourism improved. Blaubach is today said to be a tourist community and a suburb of the town of Kusel with a good outlook for the future.Population development
The breakdown of the inhabitants by occupation had changed fundamentally by 1937. While earlier almost all the villagers earned their livelihood at agriculture, by this time, only about half did. Ever more inhabitants were said to be wage-dependent employees, of whom one in four went to work somewhere outside Blaubach. The village thereby turned from a farming village, as it had once been, to an almost purely residential one. This has brought along with it a lively collaboration in the furthering of a harmonious community and of cultural life, and also made people determined to work towards important goals in the village's development. Population statistics make it clear that until sometime in the 18th century, the village consisted of only a few houses. During the 18th century, and particularly during the 19th century, there was a great upswing in the population, and the population figures doubled over 50 years, and then again in another 80. Against this background, though, between 1816 and 1860, at least officially, 67 inhabitants emigrated to the United States. In the last decade of the 20th century, more than 500 people were living in the village.The following table shows population development over the centuries for Blaubach, with some figures broken down by religious denomination: