Hohenöllen | |
|---|---|
 Coat of arms | |
Location of Hohenöllen within Kusel district  | |
  Hohenöllen  Hohenöllen | |
| Coordinates:49°37′12″N7°37′40″E / 49.62000°N 7.62778°E /49.62000; 7.62778 | |
| Country | Germany |
| State | Rhineland-Palatinate |
| District | Kusel |
| Municipal assoc. | Lauterecken-Wolfstein |
| Government | |
| • Mayor(2019–24) | Hans Jürgen Reule[1] |
| Area | |
• Total | 5.17 km2 (2.00 sq mi) |
| Elevation | 312 m (1,024 ft) |
| Population (2022-12-31)[2] | |
• Total | 349 |
| • Density | 68/km2 (170/sq mi) |
| Time zone | UTC+01:00 (CET) |
| • Summer (DST) | UTC+02:00 (CEST) |
| Postal codes | 67744 |
| Dialling codes | 06382 |
| Vehicle registration | KUS |
| Website | vg-lauterecken.de |
Hohenöllen is anOrtsgemeinde – amunicipality belonging to aVerbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in theKuseldistrict inRhineland-Palatinate,Germany. It belongs to theVerbandsgemeinde Lauterecken-Wolfstein.
The municipality lies on a high plateau at the edge of a mountain east of and above theLauter valley in theNorth Palatine Uplands at an elevation of some 315 m abovesea level. There is a particularly picturesque view of Hohenöllen in the heights from the valley. Other heights within municipal limits are the Hansmauler Kopf in the south (325 m) and the Wolfersheck in the north (366 m). Thehamlet of the Sulzhof with its 15 or so houses lies north of the village on the way toCronenberg, which itself lies roughly 4 km from Hohenöllen's main centre in the Sulzbach valley at an elevation of only 227 m above sea level. The Birkenhof was founded about 1970 as anAussiedlerhof (outlyingagricultural settlement), and lies about 200 m north of Hohenöllen. The municipal area measures 517 ha, of which roughly 9 ha is settled and 95 ha is wooded.[3]
Hohenöllen borders in the north on the municipality ofCronenberg, in the northeast on the municipality ofGinsweiler, in the east on the municipality ofReipoltskirchen, in the southeast on the municipality ofEinöllen, in the south on the municipality ofOberweiler-Tiefenbach, in the west on the municipality ofHeinzenhausen and in the northwest on the municipality ofLohnweiler and the town ofLauterecken. Hohenöllen also meets the town ofWolfstein at a single point in the southwest.
Also belonging to Hohenöllen are the outlying homesteads of Sulzhof and Birkenhof.[4]
Hohenöllen is a clump village whose main inhabited area lies on an old road running upon the plateau, skirting the Lauter valley's steeply sloped eastern edge. Particularly noteworthy buildings named by Schüler-Beigang are the schoolhouse and a classroom that stands next door, a day labourer's house and the war memorial that stands in the open countryside to the village's south. Otherwise, the village's appearance is dominated by farmhouses, eitherEinfirsthäuser (houses with a single roof ridge) orQuereinhäuser (combination residential and commercial houses divided for these two purposes down the middle, perpendicularly to the street), and also workers’ houses. Many farmhouses have been converted to purely residential use. Small new development areas mark the village's outskirts. To the south lies the graveyard. The Sulzhof, lying on both sides of the Sulzbach, was originally made up of a few farmhouses and aninn. These buildings, too, have mostly been converted to purely residential use.[5]
The countryside around Hohenöllen was settled as early asprehistoric times, bearing witness to which arearchaeological finds, such as one made in 1964 in Hob (a rural cadastral name) by a student, astone hatchet made of hard, grey stone with a pointed knob and offset sides, and with a length of 9.4 cm. Another such hatchet was found in some heaped earth near a farm. The earth itself had been heaped there more than one hundred years earlier, having likewise been dug up in Hob.Roman finds have not come to light in Hohenöllen itself, unlike what has been found in neighbouring villages. The road running by the village is often called aRoman road.[6]
An exact date for Hohenöllen's founding cannot be determined; the vanished and later revived centre of Sulzbach (now called the Sulzhof) might well have been older. It is believed to have arisen in the 8th or 9th century, whereas the village itself arose only in the 10th or 11th century. Both centres lay in theNahegau and passed to theCounty of Veldenz when this became independent in the early 12th century. In 1268, Hohenöllen had its first documentary mention in Goswin Widder's book aboutElectoral Palatinate, in which he refers to a lecture by theHeidelberg historian Grollius that mentioned that in that year, Craffto von Boxberg, whose wife was a Countess of Veldenz, leased, among other things, his holdings inHohenhelden (Hohenöllen) to the Counts of Landsberg. The transaction was linked to the Veldenz transition from the older line to the newer line. Both Hohenöllen and Sulzbach were later named repeatedly in Veldenz documents. In 1431, Henchin Wolf von Spanheim acknowledged that he had received a series of holdings from Count Friedrich III of Veldenz, among them certain taxation rights inHohenhelde. That same year, Henchin Wolf announced to the Count that his late brother had sold these income rights. A year later, Count Friedrich granted Henchin leave to transfer thetithes fromHohenhelde to his wife Fyhe von Eyche as a widow's estate. Then, in 1438, Henchin sold the Count the estate, which had since become his own, along with the income rights inHohenhelde. As early as the 14th century, Hohenöllen was described as anAmt seat. The village was seat of anUnteramt within the Veldenz, and laterZweibrücken,Oberamt of Meisenheim. TheUnteramt seat was later moved toEinöllen.[7]
Sulzbach, on the other hand, was home to nobles, such as a Rudolf von Soltzbach in 1387. It is often hard to tell whether the lords took their name from the local place or from the like-named and likewise vanished village of Sulzbach that once lay withinBedesbach’s current limits. In 1444, the newer line of theCounts of Veldenz died out in the male line. The last count's daughterAnna had marriedKing Ruprecht's sonCount Palatine Stephan. By uniting his own Palatine holdings with the now otherwise heirless County of Veldenz – his wife had inherited the county, but not her father's title – and by redeeming the hitherto pledged County of Zweibrücken, Stephan founded a new County Palatine, as whose comital residence he chose the town ofZweibrücken: the County Palatine – later Duchy – ofPalatinate-Zweibrücken. It was likely sometime before 1500 that the village of Sulzbach vanished. It is unlikely to have happened duringCount Palatine Ludwig I's (Ludwig the Black's) warlike disputes. It is assumed, rather, that it was anepidemic that put an end to the village.[8]
From 1544, the text of aWeistum (aWeistum –cognate withEnglishwisdom – was a legal pronouncement issued by men learned in law in theMiddle Ages and early modern times) from Hohenöllen has been preserved. Hardship and woe were brought to the village by theThirty Years' War and thePlague. Further suffering came in the late 17th century withFrenchKing Louis XIV's wars of conquest. In 1672, eleven families were once again living in the village, making Hohenöllen one of the biggest villages in the greater area. Hohenöllen belonged to the County Palatine ofZweibrücken until it became part ofElectoral Palatinate in 1768. The instrument whereby this happened was theSelz-Hagenbach Treaty, also known as theSchwetzingen Compromise, under whose terms Zweibrücken exchanged a series of villages for another series of hitherto Electoral Palatinate villages, the former series comprising mainly the Zweibrücken villages in theSchultheißerei of Einöllen with Hohenöllen, the then town ofOdernheim, Frankweiler,Niederhausen,Hochstätten andMelsheim (now inFrance), and the latter series comprising the Electoral PalatinateÄmter of Selz and Hagenbach (whose like-named seats today lie in France and Germany respectively). The seat of theUnteramt was nowWolfstein, which belonged to the Electoral PalatinateOberamt of Kaiserslautern. Nevertheless, this arrangement lasted only a bit less than three decades before the wholefeudal system was swept away. Goswin Widder, who about 1788 published a four-volume work about all Electoral Palatinate places, put together the following description: “Hohenöllen lies one and a half hours down from Wolfstein on the Lauter’s right bank. … A quarter hour to the side lies a considerable farm, called Sulzhof. Including this, the population of 41 families, which comprise 224 souls, is great. Besides a school, there are 33 townsmen’s houses and common houses. The municipal area contains 978Morgen of cropfields, 100Morgen ofvineyards, 6Morgen ofgardens, 80Morgen ofmeadows, 308Morgen offorest. This last belongs partly to the municipality, partly to the Baron of Fürstenwärther and a few subjects, also at the Sulzhof. They are subordinate to the forestry duties of the forester atKatzweiler.”[9]
French Revolutionary troops wereoperating in the WesternPalatinate beginning in 1793 as the old ruling structures were being dissolved bit by bit. In 1798, the inhabitants of Hohenöllen were under orders to set up aLiberty pole, but they refused to do so. In 1801, the German lands on theRhine’s left bank wereannexed to theFrench Republic. Hohenöllen now belonged to theMairie (“Mayoralty”) of Lauterecken, theCanton of Lauterecken, theArrondissement of Kaiserslautern and theDepartment ofMont-Tonnerre (or Donnersberg inGerman). In 1814, the French were driven out. A commission made up ofPrussians,Bavarians andAustrians administered the area until eventually, theBaierischer Rheinkreis (“Bavarian Rhine District”) was founded, later known as theRheinpfalz (“Rhenish Palatinate”). TheCongress of Vienna awarded this territory to Bavaria in 1816. Within theRheinpfalz, Hohenöllen belonged to theBürgermeisterei (“Mayoralty”) of Lauterecken, the Canton of Lauterecken and theLandkommissariat of Kusel. From theLandkommissariat later arose theBezirksamt, and then theLandkreis (district). In the late 1920s and early 1930s, theNazi Party (NSDAP) became quite popular in Hohenöllen. In the1928 Reichstag elections, 51.8% of the local votes went toAdolf Hitler’s party, but by the1930 Reichstag elections, this had shrunk to 45.7%. By the time of the1933 Reichstag elections, though, after Hitler had alreadyseized power, local support for the Nazis had swollen to 64.9%. Hitler's success in these elections paved the way for hisEnabling Act of 1933 (Ermächtigungsgesetz), thus starting theThird Reich in earnest. Even after theFirst World War, Hohenöllen belonged toBavaria, although it was no longer akingdom now that thelast king, and of course theKaiser, hadabdicated. After theSecond World War, the Palatinate was separated from Bavaria and became part of the then newly foundedstate ofRhineland-Palatinate. In the course of administrative restructuring in the state, the old administrative structures were dissolved, and in early 1972, Hohenöllen, along with the Sulzhof, passed as anOrtsgemeinde to the newly foundedVerbandsgemeinde of Lauterecken.[10]
Even into the 20th century, most inhabitants in Hohenöllen earned their livelihoods inagriculture. This reality has, however, undergone a fundamental shift since then. Today, 95% of those in the workforce must now seek work elsewhere, outside the village. Hohenöllen is thus no longer a farming village. Even when it was, though, there were other ways to earn a living than by farming. There were jobs in mining and quarrying, and one could also become aWandermusikant, or travelling musician (see theHinzweiler article for more about this). According to 1906 statistics, 65 musicians from Hohenöllen were travelling the world plying their trade at the time. The population figures broke the 500 mark as early as the early 19th century, peaking around the turn of the 20th century. Since then, the trend has been towards a steady fall in numbers.Commuters go to jobs in, among other places,Kaiserslautern,Wolfstein,Kusel,Lauterecken andMeisenheim.
The following table shows population development over the centuries for Hohenöllen, with some figures broken down by religious denomination:[11]
| Year | 1788 | 1825 | 1835 | 1871 | 1905 | 1939 | 1961 | 1998 | 2010 |
| Total | 222 | 420 | 507 | 455 | 555 | 457 | 488 | 435 | 396 |
| Catholic | 69 | 54 | |||||||
| Evangelical | 351 | 434 |
The second part of the name,—öllen, developed out of theMiddle High German wordhelde (Modern High German:Halde), meaning “heap” or “mound”, referring to the steep slope between the village and theLauter valley. The first part of the name,Hohen—, is adeclined form of the adjectivehoch (“high”). Thus, the village's name can be taken to mean “Settlement behind the steep slope”. The link with the earlier form,helde, can be seen in some of the name's earlier forms:Hohenhelde (1268),Hoynhelden daz Ampt (1387),Honellen (1565).
The Sulzhof, an outlying centre of Hohenöllen, was originally a village in its own right, named Sulzbach. TheSulz— may have referred to a saltyspring, or perhaps to a boggy forest floor. Former names include Solzbach (1321) and Wüst solzbach (1543).Wüst means “forsaken” or “waste”; by 1543, the village had been given up.[12]
Sulzbach was already being described as a downfallen village in the 16th century, and may well have been uninhabited for 200 years before rising once again as the Sulzhof.[13]
Hohenöllen originally belonged to the Glanchapter in theArchbishopric of Mainz. TheAmt of Hohenhelden formed a parish together with the mother church inTiefenbach, which was tended by theOrder of Saint John fromMeisenheim. With the introduction of theReformation, at the Prince-Bishop-Elector's decree, everyonebecame firstLutheran, and then, as of 1588,Calvinist. After theThirty Years' War, villagers could once again choose their faith, and also, adherents of anyChristian denomination were free to come and settle. DuringElectoral Palatinate times, theCatholic faith was once again to be promoted (but notenforced). Nevertheless, most people kept theirReformed (Calvinist) beliefs. About 1700, the Reformed parish seat was moved to Einöllen. Lutherans belonged to the Church of Roßbach (nowadays an outlying centre ofWolfstein). Today, about 80% of the villagers areProtestant. The Catholic Christians now officially belong to the Church of Reipoltskirchen, but usually attend services inLauterecken. There are noJews living in Hohenöllen.[14]
The council is made up of 8 council members, who were elected bymajority vote at the municipal election held on 7 June 2009, and the honorary mayor as chairman.[15]
Hohenöllen's mayor is Hans Jürgen Reule.[1]
The municipality'sarms might be described thus: Per bend sable a plough bendwise Or and argent a lyre azure.
Thecharge on the dexter (armsbearer's right, viewer's left) side, the plough, hearkens back to the days when Hohenöllen was a farming village. The charge on the sinister (armsbearer's left, viewer's right) side, the lyre, refers to the former industry of travelling musicians,Musikantentum. The arms have been borne since 1979 when they were approved by the now defunctRheinhessen-PfalzRegierungsbezirk administration inNeustadt an der Weinstraße.[16]
The following are listed buildings or sites inRhineland-Palatinate’s Directory of Cultural Monuments:[17]
Hohenöllen holds itskermis (church consecration festival, locally known as theKerb) on the second weekend in September. On the Monday, two “Lulus” show up, young men wearing masks who pull the wagon of theStraußmädchen andStraußbuben (“bouquet girls and boys”). The custom supposedly goes back to a spoof onNapoleon.[18]
Hohenöllen is a village with great community spirit, and with the following clubs, which reflect that:[19]
Besidesagricultural operations, which includedwinegrowing and fruitgrowing in earlier times, Hohenöllen had the customary craft occupations in the village itself, along with the St. Antoniuscolliery, in business from 1777 to sometime towards 1900; it was quite small, employing about five workers. There was also alimestone mine, and for the village's own needs, there were also stone quarries. The village still has oneinn (at the Sulzhof). Further independent businesses are no longer to be found here. The village is therefore a typical country community with a very great number ofcommuters living in it.[20]
The first schoolhouse was built sometime about 1770 as a simpletimber-frame building for a winter school (a school geared towards an agricultural community's practical needs, held in the winter, when farm families had a bit more time to spare). This schoolhouse was torn down in the early 19th century, and in 1829, on the same spot, a new schoolhouse was built. In the beginning, bothEvangelical andCatholic schoolchildren were taught together. Since not all the children could be taught in thesingle room, the municipality acquired a private house in 1843 in which an assistant would take over teaching for the few Catholic schoolchildren. Because two classes of greatly differing sizes (about 60:15) would then arise, the municipality opposed the government's plans. Thus it became possible for the actual schoolteacher to teach in the big class and for a trainee to take the smaller class in the auxiliary space. About 1870, the schoolhouse was given aridge turret in which a bell could be hung. A new schoolhouse in theClassicist style was built in 1899 with one classroom for theprimary school pupils, while the upper classes remained at the old schoolhouse. Beginning in the 1922/1923 school year, the two classes switched places. About 1969, the two-class Hohenöllen school was dissolved. The upper class went to theHauptschule inLauterecken while the lower class went to theLohnweiler-Heinzenhausen primary school. The old Hohenöllen schoolhouse passed into private ownership. The so-called new schoolhouse was taken over by the municipality for its own requirements.[21]
Hohenöllen lies onLandesstraße 383, branching off which in the middle of the village isKreisstraße 51, leading towardsReipoltskirchen. The nearestAutobahninterchanges are the ones atKaiserslautern andKusel, each some 25 km away. To the west runsBundesstraße 270. The nearestrailway station isLohnweiler-Heinzenhausen on theLautertalbahn, some 5 km away.[22]
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
