Horschbach
Horschbach 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
The municipality lies at the foot of the Herrmannsberg hill in the Western Palatinate. Through Horschbach flows the village's namesake brook, the Horschbach. The village lies at an elevation of some 220 m above sea level on the north side of the Herrmannsberg in the Horschbach valley, with most of its houses on the brook's right bank. The summit of the Herrmannsberg lies within the municipality's limits. Along the brook's left bank stretches the woodland known as the Großes Mayen, which reaches an elevation of 352 m above sea level. The Reibelsberg between Horschbach and Gumbsweiler reaches 309 m above sea level. The Spenzelberg down the valley is 305 m high. The municipal area measures 705 ha, of which 93 ha is wooded.Neighbouring municipalities
Horschbach borders in the north on the municipality of Glanbrücken, in the northeast on the municipality of Hinzweiler, in the southeast on the municipality of Oberweiler im Tal, in the south on the municipality of Eßweiler, in the southwest on the municipality of Elzweiler, in the west on the municipality of Welchweiler and in the northwest on the municipality of Sankt Julian.Municipality’s layout
Branching away from each other in Horschbach's village centre are the roads to Glanbrücken, Welchweiler and Hinzweiler, each one of which is only loosely built up. South of this mesh of roads is a housing development whose streets climb up the Herrmannsberg massif. In the village's east end stands the church, while north of the village, at the side of the road leading to Glanbrücken, lies the graveyard. Within the village itself are found the village community centre with the shooting club's clubhouse and a fire station for the villages of Horschbach, Elzweiler and Welchweiler.History
Antiquity
In 1910, some Roman coins, some potsherds and the foundations of a Roman settlement were unearthed on the Herrmannsberg. No prehistoric archaeological finds have ever come to light in Horschbach.Middle Ages
The village likely arose in the 8th century in the broad Imperially immediate domain around the town of Kaiserslautern. Only in the 14th century did its name appear in a document. During the 13th century, great parts of the Imperially immediate domain were pledged to the counties at the edge of the Königsland. Horschbach then lay in the so-called Pflegschaft Hundheim, which was pledged to the Rhinegraves of Grumbach. The whole Pflegschaft, to which belonged all the villages of the Eßweiler Tal, shared the Rhinegraviate's history for some 250 years. A mediaeval castle complex below the Herrmannsberg's peak was utterly destroyed long ago and lies at a rather unreachable spot in the mountain's woods. About the castle's history, nothing is known, and even its name has been forgotten over the ages.Modern times
In 1595, the whole Pflegschaft of Hundheim, along with other villages in the area, was transferred to the Duchy of Palatinate-Zweibrücken. Horschbach, and also Niedereisenbach and Hachenbach, along with Elzweiler remained with the Duchy until it was dissolved in the time of the French Revolution. The other villages in the Pflegschaft of Hundheim passed back to the Rhinegraviate in 1755. Even then, Horschbach was the seat of an Unteramt. One Schultheiß at that time for the whole Amt was Peter Simon Gilcher.Recent times
During the French Revolution and Napoleonic times, Horschbach lay within the Department of Mont-Tonnerre, whose seat was at Mainz, the Canton of Wolfstein and the Arrondissement of Kaiserslautern. After French rule ended and Napoleon met his ultimate political fate at Waterloo, the Congress of Vienna awarded a great swathe of territory in this region to the Kingdom of Bavaria, and by 1817, Horschbach found itself within this exclave, called the Bayerischer Rheinkreis. More locally, it lay within the Landcommissariat of Kusel and the Canton of Wolfstein. Horschbach was also an administrative seat, home to the Bürgermeisterei for the three Herrmannsberg municipalities of Horschbach, Elzweiler and Welchweiler, and from the beginning until 1838 also for Bedesbach, a village on the river Glan. Such was the uniting force of this arrangement that until 1853, the villages of Horschbach and Elzweiler were regarded as one village. In 1923, the warriors’ memorial for those who fell in the First World War was built. The following year, electric lighting was installed in Horschbach. At elections between 1920 and 1933 – in Weimar times – the strongest showings were among centre-right and rightwing parties, a common pattern in places with a strongly developed agricultural structure. Indeed, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Nazi Party became quite popular in Horschbach. In the 1928 Reichstag elections, none of the local votes went to Adolf Hitler’s party, but by the 1930 Reichstag elections, this had grown to 23.9%. By the time of the 1933 Reichstag elections, after Hitler had already seized power, local support for the Nazis had swollen to 92.5%. Hitler’s success in these elections paved the way for his Enabling Act of 1933, thus starting the Third Reich in earnest. It was not until 1949 that the first tractor, owned by a man named Ernst Mäurer, made its appearance in Horschbach. Bavarian times ended with the Allied occupation after the Second World War and the region became part of the then newly founded state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The Bürgermeisterei of Horschbach, however, remained in force until 1968, when there was sweeping administrative restructuring in Rhineland-Palatinate. Horschbach then lost its administrative function, and since 1972 it has been an Ortsgemeinde within the Verbandsgemeinde of Altenglan. In 1956, a third schoolhouse was built. Like the first one, it is now used as a house. In 1968, 23 years after the war ended, the warriors’ memorial for those who fell in the Second World War was built. That same year, the church got a new organ. In a turnaround from what was the pattern in Weimar times, left-leaning parties now do somewhat better in local elections, if not as strongly as in the other Herrmannsberg municipalities of Elzweiler and Welchweiler. In 1972, the “Mühlgärten und Steinbach” building plan was set forth. In 1973, Horschbach came in second at the district level in the contest Unser Dorf soll schöner werden, and the renovated church became ready for use. Modern sewerage was laid in 1975. In 1976 came the last day of school. The local primary school was closed on 28 July, as the ones in Elzweiler and Welchweiler already had been. The schoolchildren thereafter had to go to school in Rammelsbach. Another building plan was set forth in 1998, “Am Hofacker”. A linking street was built to the site the following year. In 2009, a photovoltaic array was installed on the former schoolhouse's roof.Population development
Of the three Herrmannsberg municipalities of Horschbach, Elzweiler and Welchweiler, Horschbach was at almost every time in history the biggest. Originally, most people earned their livelihoods at farming, though quite early on, some inhabitants began to specialize in crafts. According to a 1477 taxation roll, there were only three people in the village liable to pay taxes. In 1515, seven households were counted. It must be borne in mind, however, that as a result of deaths due to constant epidemics, the population figures sometimes underwent great swings. For 1609, documents from the ecclesiastical visitation show that there were 76 inhabitants living in 13 families. During the Thirty Years' War, the population once again shrank sharply, only to climb quickly in the early 18th century. In 1743, the village counted 132 souls at 26 hearths. Of the 26 men who headed families, 19 worked at craft occupations. At the turn of the 19th century, the population figures were once again growing fast. The Kingdom of Bavaria announced the following population figures for Horschbach and Elzweiler together: 451 for 1827, 614 for 1835 and 662 for 1850. There was thus no continuous rise in the figures throughout the 19th century. On the contrary, it is believed that the village's population peaked at over 400 sometime in the earlier half of the 19th century. There must also have been heavy population losses due to emigration. As early as the 19th century, it is known that 13 families sought new lives abroad. Seven went to the United States while the other six went to lands in the Balkan Peninsula. As the 19th century wore on, emigration to the United States grew. By 1970, population figures were subject to only slight swings. Then came a sharp downswing towards today's level of about 300. This fall can be ascribed to the distance to economic centres and the rather unfavourable local transport links. The trend continues with people still moving out of Horschbach, although on the other hand, their favourably priced empty houses and flats ensure that there are also newcomers. This has led to a marked shift in the population's age structure towards greater ages.The following table shows population development over the centuries for Horschbach: