Gimbweiler - History

History

The oldest forms of Gimbweiler’s name are Gumbweiler (1397), Gompwiler (1480) and Gympwiler (1480). Gimbweiler may be of Roman origin, as the now vanished hamlet of Frudesweiler may have been, too, but this cannot be proved.

Gimbweiler’s history unfolded much like neighbouring Wolfersweiler’s (nowadays an outlying centre of Nohfelden). Gimbweiler always belonged to that village’s high court and parish, while the lords through the Middle Ages were the Bishops of Verdun, the Counts of Veldenz and the Dukes of Palatinate-Zweibrücken.

In the 13th century, the Lords of Oberstein tried to gain a foothold in the villages that lay between Wolfersweiler and Baumholder. They renewed these attempts in the centuries that followed, bolstered by their enfeoffments from the Duchy of Lorraine.

The Obersteins had had holdings in Gimbweiler from days of yore. The Veldenzes and the Zweibrückens, though, held some lordly rights and ownership, too, jealously guarding and forcefully expanding them. In 1397, for instance, Count Friedrich von Veldenz bought from the Lords of Broich, besides landholdings, interests and rights at Eckelnhusen (Eckelhausen, nowadays an outlying centre of Nohfelden), Hanwilre (Hahnweiler), and Moysberg, an estate and some paupers at Gumpwiler.

After 1432, Gimbweiler and Frudesweiler, along with the neighbouring villages of Freisen, Hoppstädten, Hahnweiler and Reitscheid (nowadays an outlying centre of Freisen), belonged to the Obersteins’ great Lotharingian fief; the enfeoffment document laying out this arrangement was first put into force in this year, and was continually renewed until 1667. The Lotharingians, as well as their fiefholders, the Obersteins, always held on to their claims to Gimbweiler, even after the Oberstein-Falkensteins further enfeoffed the Lord of Schillards of Feigniss with the village in 1599. In reality, however, Palatinate-Zweibrücken hegemony over Gimbweiler was not questioned.

In Napoleonic times, Gimbweiler and neighbouring Wolfersweiler belonged to the Mairie (“Mayoralty”) of Nohfelden, which in turn belonged to the canton of Baumholder.

In 1640, it seems that Frudesweiler was still in existence, but by 1740, the historical record reports that it was in decay. The people of Gimbweiler and Weiersbach exercised grazing rights here, the legal disputes over which continued into the 19th century. The question was settled with a compromise: Weiersbach got two fifths of Frudesweiler’s area, mostly woodland, while the other three fifths, mostly cropland and meadow, went to Gimbweiler.