Rutsweiler Am Glan - History

History

Rutsweiler is one of the oldest villages in the Middle Glan Valley. Its name quite possibly goes back to the personal name Hruod (later Ruod). This man, Ruod – whoever he was – was surely one of the first (perhaps the first) to live at what is now the village of Rutsweiler am Glan. The village’s name has undergone spelling changes quite a number of times, having formerly been known as Rützweiller in 1590 and Rudtsweiler am Glan about 1835. Other forms known to history are Routzweiler, Rutzweyler and Rußwilre. In June 1303, Rutsweiler had its first documentary mention. The actual document says: “Count Georg of Veldenz (Veldentie) gives his consent for Sir Heinrich, son of the knight Godebert of Zweibrücken (de Geminoponte), to bestow upon his wife Lyse his Veldenz fief in Rußwilre and lying around the mountain Deynesperg. – Datum anno domini 1303 post octavas Trinitas.” Unfortunately, this document has gone missing, and despite intensive searching, it has not turned up in any state archive.

Before and during Roman times, the area was settled by Celts. After the Romans withdrew, Frankish settlers came to the area. Rutsweiler’s founding may have happened in the 7th or 8th century when territorial changes took place with the donation of the Remigiusland. The prevailing version of the story about the donation of the Remigiusland by Frankish king Clovis I to the Bishop of Reims on the occasion of Clovis’s baptism and conversion along with 3,000 other Franks in 496, has been called into question by historians, and is interpreted in various different versions. Undisputed, however, is that the donation, in whatever year it took place, went into effect very early on and the formerly kingly Imperial Domain passed into ecclesiastical ownership. The river Glan thereby became a border, with all the villages on the right bank, from Rehweiler to Altenglan still held by King Charlemagne (768-814). After the division of the Carolingian Empire in the 9th century, the Rutsweiler area became German domain, whereas the Remigiusland remained under ownership of the Bishopric of Verdun. Endless disputes over succession as well as over borders led to continual friction between the secular rulers and the Church of Reims. Even the Counts of Veldenz, who from 1072 to 1444 ruled as two separate lordly families, who held considerable power in the Rutsweiler area and who bore responsibility for security in the Remigiusland as Schutzvögte, were no exception to this general rule. Their quest for broadened power eventually brought them the Schultheißerei of Reichenbach, to which Rutsweiler then belonged, in the form of an Imperial pledge; in 1444 it passed by marriage to the Duchy of Palatinate-Zweibrücken.

New territorial changes came by 1524, as manifested in the 1543 Treaty of Marburg, which established the Principality of Palatinate-Veldenz-Lützelstein. Among other things, this resulted in the Amt of Bosenbach, to which Rutsweiler, Mühlbach, Föckelberg, Gimsbach, Deinsberg and a number of other nearby places belonged, being incorporated into this new state, thereby making the Glan a border from Altenglan to Bettenhausen between Palatinate-Veldenz and Palatinate-Zweibrücken jurisdiction. There were border disputes, although these were resolved peacefully by a series of treaties in 1600 and 1607. Rutsweiler, together with the other places around the Potzberg, was transferred to Count Palatine Georg Gustav. With Count Palatine Leopold Ludwig’s death in 1694, the family Palatinate-Veldenz died out in the male line after four generations. There was, of course, a dispute over who would inherit his “orphaned” estate, but it ended with the Settlement of Mannheim on 24 December 1733. The Schultheißerei of Reichenbach, which included Rutsweiler, would henceforth belong to Electoral Palatinate.

The rather haphazardly chosen borders, though, held true for none too long. No sooner had the French Revolution reached full swing than it spilt over into the Palatinate in 1792. In the fighting that followed, the French defeated the Austrian-Prussian alliance, and all sovereign boundaries on the Rhine’s left bank were swept away. The administration of the conquered areas was reorganized according to the French Revolutionary model. In this time, Rutsweiler belonged to the Department of Sarre and the Arrondissement of Birkenfeld. Under the Treaty of Paris (30 May 1814), the Palatinate passed to the Kingdom of Bavaria. The Landcommissariat of Kusel (as of 1862 the Bezirksamt of Kusel) consisted of the cantons of Kusel, Lauterecken and Wolfstein. Rutsweiler was grouped into this last canton and was administered by the Mayoralty of Neunkirchen until 1825, and then by the Mayoralty of Mühlbach from 1826 to 1853. After a petition in 1829, the municipality, together with Mühlbach and Bedesbach, was transferred out of the canton of Wolfstein on 1 January 1836 and into the canton of Kusel by reason of the better accessibility under this arrangement. Beginning in 1853 and until 1972, Rutsweiler belonged to the Mayoralty of either Godelhausen or Theisbergstegen. In the course of administrative restructuring in Rhineland-Palatinate, Rutsweiler was grouped into the Verbandsgemeinde of Altenglan.