Homberg, Kusel
Homberg 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
Homberg lies at the edge of the North Palatine Uplands in the Western Palatinate, roughly 7 km from Lauterecken. The village itself stretches along a high hollow that opens towards the east into the Grumbach valley at an elevation of some 320 m above sea level. The Schönbornerhof about one kilometre away and with an excellent view over the North Palatine Uplands lies almost 400 m above sea level. The Kellertsberg, a mountain near the village, reaches a height of 450 m. The municipal area measures 1 086 ha, of which roughly 130 ha is wooded. These figures take into account the large parcel of land transferred to the municipality from the Baumholder troop drilling ground.Neighbouring municipalities
Homberg borders in the north on the municipality of Langweiler, in the east on the municipality of Herren-Sulzbach, in the south on the municipality of Kirrweiler, in the west on the Baumholder troop drilling ground and in the northwest on the municipality of Unterjeckenbach. Homberg also meets the municipality of Merzweiler at a single point in the northeast.Constituent communities
Also belonging to Homberg is the outlying homestead of Schönbornerhof.Municipality’s layout
The village of Homberg lies on a through road running from northeast to southwest, and is most thickly concentrated near two intersections roughly in the village centre. One intersection leads to a country path while the other is a road leading to the neighbouring village of Herren-Sulzbach. The village's appearance is still largely characterized by old farmhouses. All together there is very little in the way of new building activity. The graveyard lies at the village's western entrance on the north side of the road.History
Antiquity
The greater area was already settled in prehistoric times, although no archaeological finds have been made within Homberg's own limits to confirm this, unless the vanished village of Käsweiler is prehistoric, an assumption that is far from certain.Middle Ages
The mediaeval historical development that Homberg experienced closely matches that experienced by neighbouring villages such as Kirrweiler, Deimberg, Buborn, Langweiler and Hausweiler. Like these places, Homberg belonged until 1140 to the Nahegau, and then thereafter until 1263 to the Waldgraviate, which itself had arisen from the Nahegau. As far as is now known, Homberg had its first documentary mention in 1319. In the document in question, an arbitrator confirmed that Waldgrave Friedrich of Kyrburg had to forgo all his claims to rights to Hoenberg and a series of other places in the “Gericht auf der Höhe”. The Gericht auf der Höhe was said to be a constituent district of the “Hochgericht auf der Heide”, which comprised, roughly, lands in a triangle bounded by the Nahe, the Glan and the Steinalp. The 1319 document dealt with a dispute between the two Waldgravial sidelines of Kyrburg and Dhaun-Grumbach. About 1344, in his own documents, the name “Friedrich von Hoenberg” appeared. He was obviously a nobleman who came from Homberg, but nothing else about him has come to light. The villages under the Gericht auf der Höhe, among which was Homberg, were pledged first, in 1363, by Johann von Dhaun to Sponheim-Starkenburg and then in 1443 by Waldgrave and Rhinegrave Friedrich to the last of the Counts of Veldenz, namely Friedrich III, whose daughter Anna married King Ruprecht's son Count Palatine Stephan. The document whereby this arrangement was laid out referred to the village's inhabitants as the “poor people of Grumbach”. By uniting his own Palatine holdings with the now otherwise heirless County of Veldenz – his wife had inherited the county upon her father Friedrich III's death in 1444, but not his comital 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. Thus, Homberg, and the other villages, too, lay within this duchy, but they were all returned to the Waldgraviate in 1477 when the pledge was redeemed.Modern times
Beginning in 1477, Homberg belonged to the lordship of Grumbach until the time of the French Revolution. Like Kirrweiler, Homberg was mostly spared the woe of the Thirty Years' War, coming through it more or less unscathed. However, the Franco-Dutch War was less kind, for in 1677, Homberg was burnt right down by French King Louis XIV's troops. Not one house was left standing, but the Hombergers built their village anew. Homberg was a rich farming village where there was also fruitgrowing. In 1746, according to a court protocol, Phillip Mensch was the Reihebürgermeister, a mayor responsible for a number of villages. In this year, the otherwise trustworthy Mensch got himself into quite a bit of trouble when he auctioned the communal fruit before the recommended time. It was a pleasant, warm autumn day, the auction went quite well and good prices were paid. Afterwards, the mayor invited the villagers to come and drink at the village inn. There, bit by bit, all the money wandered into the innkeeper's pockets. However, it had escaped the mayor's notice that a few villagers had not partaken. Those who had been left out were greatly angered and brought the matter before the court in Grumbach. For this oversight, Phillip Mensch was fined one ounce.Recent times
After the French Revolution, French Revolutionary troops occupied the land on the Rhine’s left bank in 1793, and thereby Homberg, along with the Schönbornerhof too, and this territory was ceded to France. Through a law from 26 March 1798, the French abolished feudal rights in their zone of occupation, and there were thus no longer any lordly holdings. During this time and the Napoleonic era that followed, Homberg belonged to the Mairie of Grumbach, the Canton of Grumbach, the Arrondissement of Birkenfeld and the Department of Sarre. The French declared the Schönbornerhof national property, and as early as 1795, they had it auctioned. Thereafter it found itself under private ownership. The new owner was Christian Mohr, whose descendants still live on the Schönbornerhof. An old Bible from 1754 recalls this time. The French were driven out of the annexed German lands on the Rhine’s left bank in 1814, and Napoleon met his ultimate fate at Waterloo the following year. On 19 October 1814, inhabitants from all villages in the local area turned out and had a freedom celebration on the heights between Herren-Sulzbach and Homberg while cannon salutes and bellringing from Herren-Sulzbach filled the air with the merry mood. In 1816, Homberg passed to the Principality of Lichtenberg, a newly created exclave of the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, which as of 1826 became the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. As part of this state, it passed in 1834 to the Kingdom of Prussia, which made this area into the Sankt Wendel district. Later, after the First World War, the Treaty of Versailles stipulated, among other things, that 26 of the Sankt Wendel district’s 94 municipalities had to be ceded to the British- and French-occupied Saar. The remaining 68 municipalities then bore the designation “Restkreis St. Wendel-Baumholder”, with the first syllable of Restkreis having the same meaning as in English, in the sense of “left over”. Homberg belonged to this district until 1937, when it was transferred to the Birkenfeld district, newly formed out of Lichtenberg and a former Oldenburg district also called Birkenfeld. This lay within the Prussian Regierungsbezirk of Koblenz. After the Second World War, Homberg lay at first in the Regierungsbezirk of Koblenz in the then newly founded state of Rhineland-Palatinate. In the course of administrative restructuring in the state in 1968, the Amt of Grumbach was dissolved and in 1969, Homberg was transferred, this time to the Kusel district, in which it remains today. In 1972, it passed to the newly founded Verbandsgemeinde of Lauterecken and at the same time to the likewise newly founded Regierungsbezirk of Rheinhessen-Pfalz. In 1859, there was a devastating fire that burnt 47 buildings in Homberg down. The people saved themselves, but there was much loss of life among the livestock. The damage was estimated at 35,000 Thaler. The Prussian king granted reconstruction aid in the amount of 1,000 Thaler, and all neighbouring villages, and even some in the Meisenheim area, gathered up funds to help the Hombergers make a new beginning. In the course of reconstruction, water channels were dug and a municipal centre was built. At that time, the foremost things in villagers’ lives were land and livestock. Even a century later, Homberg was still mainly agricultural. In 1958, there were still:- 18 horses
- 337 cows
- 217 swine
- 7 beekeepers