Ginsweiler
Ginsweiler 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 in the North Palatine Uplands in the Odenbach valley, which runs between the Lauter and Alsenz valleys. The greater part of the village lies on the Odenbach's right bank at an elevation of some 180 m above sea level. Here, the Becherbach, which rises east of the village near the neighbouring village of Becherbach, meets the Odenbach. The elevations either side of the valley within Ginsweiler's limits reach up to 340 m above sea level on the right bank and 350 m above sea level on the left. Many people call the region the Alte Welt. The municipal area measures 399 ha, of which 38 ha is settled and 57 ha is wooded.Neighbouring municipalities
Ginsweiler borders in the north on the municipality of Adenbach, in the east on the municipality of Becherbach, in the south on the municipality of Reipoltskirchen, in the southwest on the municipality of Hohenöllen and in the west on the municipality of Cronenberg.Constituent communities
Also belonging to Ginsweiler are the outlying homesteads of Naumburgerhof and Ölmühle.Municipality’s layout
The old village core lies in the valley of the Becherbach just upstream from where it empties into the Odenbach. The original village was expanded along the through road in the Odenbach valley. There are still quite a few old farmhouses here. The mill in the village's north end, the oilmill in the southwest and the Naumburgerhof in the west are also part of the older building areas. A new building area, Nachtweide, arose in 1990 south of the Becherbach. The former schoolhouse, in which an ecumenical church service room has now been set up, stands on Hauptstraße. A sporting ground with a football pitch lies in the village's northern area between the through road and the Odenbach. The graveyard is found in the east on the road to Becherbach.History
Antiquity
Until 27 BC, the area was inhabited by the Treveri, a people of mixed Celtic and Germanic stock, from whom the Latin name for the city of Trier, Augusta Treverorum, is also derived. Thereafter, until AD 451, the area was part of the Roman Empire’s province of Germania Superior. Then, between 375 and 496, the Alamanni thrust their way into the lands on the Rhine’s left bank. However, they were dislodged from their new lands by another Germanic people, the Franks, in 496, who took over the area.Within Ginsweiler’s own municipal area, no prehistoric archaeological finds are thus far known, but as witnessed by those unearthed in neighbouring places, human beings were already living in the area in prehistoric times. That the immediate area was settled in Gallo-Roman times might be proved by a piece of spolia that is today part of a wall in a building at the Naumburgerhof. Moreover, unearthed in 1833, during building work on a house, were a Roman relief and two lions. These finds were described by the Odenbach pastor Philipp Wilbrand Jakob Müller as follows: “A 3¾-foot-tall tableau chiselled out of fine sandstone; showing three well worked, clad human figures, not hewn into the stone, but rather standing out in a statuelike way, the middle figure was missing its head, which was broken off at the torso. It must, given the clothing and the whole composition, be explained as a female person, a mother who carries and leads her children with devoted love. On her left arm sits a small child wrapped in a cloth folded over and over. The child’s head is likewise broken off at the torso. With the hand hanging down on the right side, the figure leads a lad briskly and ably walking behind. A male lion broken into two pieces, about half life size, lying, resting on his forelegs, holding a sheep’s head between them. A lioness, broken into two pieces of the same size and in the same position: the front side broken up and with the sheep’s head between the paws. Both animals seem to have stood facing each other at a gateway or portal.”
Middle Ages
About 600, the lordship of Medard was split from the royal holdings and donated to the Bishopric of Verdun. In 843 came the Treaty of Verdun, which divided the Frankish Realm into three states. Ginsweiler was grouped into the Kingdom of the East Franks. From roughly 750 to 1140, spanning both the eras, before and after Verdun, the local area belonged to the Nahegau Counts. Splitting away from them about 1127 was the County of Veldenz, under whose protection were mostly ecclesiastical lands, for instance lands held by the Bishopric of Verdun around Baumholder and Medard and the Remigiusland, a domain held by the Archbishopric of Reims. In 1327, the Counts of Veldenz also bought the lordship of Medard. Ginsweiler, too, lay within the new County of Veldenz and later, comital vassals were time and again enfeoffed with the whole village or part of it. The first indication that history has of this is a document from 1379, wherein the knight Sir Mohr of Sötern confirmed that he had been enfeoffed by the gracious Junker Friedrich, Count of Veldenz, with holdings in the villages of Heinzenhausen, Lohnweiler, Lauterecken, Medard, Roth, Schwanden, Obersulzbach, Niedersulzbach, Ginsweiler, Mannweiler, Adenbach and Odenbach, and in the outlying countryside around Meisenheim. For Ginsweiler, Mannweiler, Adenbach and the two Sulzbachs, this was a first documentary mention. Nevertheless, Pöhlmann rather assumed that the Gundeswilre mentioned in the document referred to Gumbsweiler, not Ginsweiler. Before these holdings were once more granted as fiefs, according to Alfred Wendel, the Knights of Odenbach had supposedly been the fiefholders. “Junker Friedrich” was Count Friedrich II of the cadet line of the Counts of Veldenz. In a 1380 itemization, a knight named Gerhard von Alsenz likewise acknowledged an enfeoffment from Count Friedrich II, confirming that he held a share in Castle Odenbach, and also received interest from various villages, namely Ginsweiler, Mannweiler and Adenbach. The fiefs named herein later passed at some unknown point in time to the Lords of Allenbach. The village of Ginsweiler belonged then to the Unteramt of Odenbach. In 1444, Frederick III, Count of Veldenz, the last from the Hohengeroldseck family to rule the county, died without a male heir; the county passed to his son-in-law Stephen, Count Palatine of Simmern-Zweibrücken, 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. For the time being, the town of Meisenheim remained the residence town, but it was moved to Zweibrücken in 1477.Northeast of the Naumburger Hof near Ginsweiler once stood the mediaeval Naumburg, a castle that has now all but vanished.
Modern times
The Counts Palatine of Zweibrücken introduced the Reformation as early as 1537. In documents dealing with subsequent ecclesiastical visitations, citizens of Ginsweiler were mentioned. Before the end of the 16th century, the rights to Ginsweiler granted by the Counts Palatine passed from the Lords of Allenbach to the Lords of Kellenbach and to the Mauchenheims of Zweibrücken. All these rights passed in the late 17th century to the Lords of Fürstenwerther, the offspring from Frederick Louis, Count Palatine of Zweibrücken's morganatic marriage to a Meisenheim townswoman, to whom the Elector had transferred the village and castle of Odenbach. The 17th century was otherwise marked by war, namely the Thirty Years' War and French King Louis XIV's wars of conquest towards the end of the century. There was more hardship than simply war that the somewhat secluded villages faced; there were hunger and pervasive sickness as well. The worst emergencies for the Glan valley were to be noted beginning in 1635. People's morals broke down and became unimaginably brutal. The villages were largely depopulated and after the war virtually had to be repopulated. Indeed, even before the Thirty Years' War, Ginsweiler was a very small village with only six families, according to a count done at a 1609 ecclesiastical visitation. By 1656, only three families were living in the village, and there may already have been newcomers among them. Even municipal boundaries had largely been forgotten, leading to boundary disputes between villages. As Alfred Wendel wrote: “The farmers of Adenbach and Ginsweiler in 1701 drove before the established time, instead of at Michaelmas, as early as the Nativity of Mary, to the jointly used 'Nachtweide'. Those from Odenbach and Roth complained to the Swedish administration.” The administration answered them by saying that everything should remain as it had been before. The reference to a “Swedish” administration here stems from the dynasty that then held Zweibrücken: from 1681 to 1718, the Kings of Sweden were concurrently the Counts Palatine of Zweibrücken. Other than contribution lists, nothing is recorded about events in the village during Louis XIV's wars. Population figures rose very quickly, supported by new settlers. In the course of the 18th century, it was found that not everyone could be fed by the local harvest yields, and there began extensive emigration.Over the ages until this time, the local rulers were as follows:
Recent times
During the time of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era that followed, the German lands on the Rhine’s left bank were annexed by France, and all the old feudal boundaries were swept away. The Treaty of Campo Formio had mandated this cession. Until 1814, Ginsweiler was ruled by the French. After territorial reorganization, Ginsweiler lay in the Mairie of Odenbach, the Canton of Lauterecken, the Arrondissement of Kaiserslautern and the Department of Mont-Tonnerre. After the united Prussian, Russian and Austrian troops’ victories over Napoleon, Blücher was able to cross the Rhine on New Year's Night 1814, and the French withdrew from the lands on the Rhine's left bank. For the next two years after that, the area lay under military administration by these allies. The authority was the Imperial and Royal Austrian and Royal Bavarian State Administration Commission, whose seat was in Kreuznach, and then later Worms. Ginsweiler passed on 1 May 1816 to the bayerischer Rheinkreis, or “Bavarian Rhine District”, the name given the Palatinate once the Congress of Vienna had awarded it to the Kingdom of Bavaria as an exclave. Ginsweiler then belonged to the Bürgermeisterei of Odenbach in the Canton of Lauterecken and the Landkommissariat of Kusel.In 1871, the German Empire was founded, but the Kingdom of Bavaria still existed within this. It was not until after the First World War, after the German Revolution in 1918 that the territorial status changed. After the Kaiser had been overthrown and driven into exile, Bavaria became the Free State of Bavaria. This lasted throughout Weimar Republic times until early in the time of the Third Reich.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Nazi Party became quite popular in Ginsweiler. In the 1928 Reichstag elections, 10.1% of the local votes went to Adolf Hitler’s party. In the 1930 Reichstag elections, it was 32.6%. By the time of the 1933 Reichstag elections, after Hitler had already seized power, local support for the Nazis had swollen to 48.1%. Hitler’s success in these elections paved the way for his Enabling Act of 1933, thus starting the Third Reich in earnest. On 8 April 1934, Ginsweiler was grouped into the Gau of Saarpfalz, and later, on 11 March 1941, it was transferred to the Gau of Westmark, whose seat was in Saarbrücken.
On 19 March 1945, American tanks rolled into Odenbach. Then came the occupation, first by the Americans, and then by the French. On 10 May 1945, a provincial government was set up in Saarpfalz and Rhenish Hesse under French occupation, and on 31 July 1945, the Chief Government Presidium of Palatinate-Rhenish Hesse was established. Finally, on 18 May 1947, the state of Rhineland-Palatinate was founded. After the Second World War, when the Palatinate was split away from Bavaria, other territorial arrangements did not change at first. Only in the course of the 1968 administrative restructuring did Ginsweiler pass in 1970 to the then newly founded Verbandsgemeinde of Lauterecken. The Bürgermeisterei of Odenbach was also dissolved.