Odenbach - Religion

Religion

In Prüm Abbey’s 893 directory of holdings, the Prümer Urbar, a church in Odenbach was mentioned for the first time, one consecrated to Saint Peter. It is one of the oldest in the whole Glan valley. In 1683, the chapel fell to the pickaxe after falling into disrepair. On the same spot arose the Late Baroque hall church in 1763-1764. The churchtower was built in three steps: the ground floor was built in the 13th century, the second level in 1508, and the third in 1666 along with its three eight-sided cupolae, built one on top of the other. It is believed that the Prüm proprietary church lost its independence under Archbishop of Mainz Adalbert II (1138-1141) and was placed under Mainz ecclesiastical jurisdiction by reason of Verdun’s proprietary church rights and the Frankish Imperial partitions in the 9th century. Both Medard’s and Odenbach’s churches thereby passed into the ownership of the monastery at Disibodenberg. Under Archbishop Gerlach of Mainz (1353-1371), the Church of Odenbach got its independence back on 15 June 1367, and has held onto it without interruption ever since. In 1548, the parish became Lutheran, and in 1588, Reformed. In the last fourth of the 18th century, however, a number of Catholics and Lutherans migrated to the village, forming both a Catholic and a Lutheran parish, both of which sought a simultaneum. Any disagreements over church use were settled by the applicable sections of the Treaty of Ryswick (30 October 1697), but differences between Lutherans and Calvinists did not come to an end until 1818, when the two denominations united to form the Palatine State Church. Since 1970, the Evangelical parish of Odenbach (Odenbach, Adenbach, Ginsweiler) has been united with the parish of Gangloff (Gangloff, Roth, Becherbach, Reiffelbach). Several local clergymen have earned regional acclaim (see Famous people below). For a while, the Jewish share of the population was quite big. After the great fire of 1733, the Palatinate-Zweibrücken Judenschultheiß (“reeve of the Jews”) Salomon Meyer acquired a burnt-out spot on Kirchhofstraße where he built a prayer parlour. After Meyer’s death, his widow sold the building in 1802 to the Jewish religious community, who used it for worship until 1938, the time of Kristallnacht. In 1989, the Förderverein zur Erhaltung der Synagoge (“Promotional Association for Preserving the Synagogue”) acquired the run-down building, now under monumental protection, from private ownership and restored it with the Association’s own means and also government funding. Worth seeing are the wall paintings, which are now once more visible.