Thallichtenberg - Religion

Religion

Throughout feudal times, the villagers of Thallichtenberg attended the churches at Lichtenberg Castle, during the Middle Ages and early modern times Saint George’s Chapel (St. Georgskapelle) and as of 1758, the then newly built church near the tithe barn. Duke Ludwig II, who died in 1532, was already a friend of the Reformation, which in 1536, under Ludwig’s brother Ruprecht, then acting for the underaged Duke Wolfgang, was introduced into the Duchy of Palatinate-Zweibrücken and made binding on all its subjects. During the time of the Reformation, the reformer Ulrich Zwingli twice stayed at the castle, once on the way to the 1529 Marburg Colloquy and again on the way back home to Zurich. In 1588, all the duchy’s subjects had to convert once again when Duke Johannes I introduced Calvinism. After the Thirty Years' War, the odd Lutheran or Catholic settled in the village. Because Thallichtenberg and Burglichtenberg lay in the Principality of Lichtenberg, which was part of the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and later in Prussia’s Rhine Province, the Evangelical Christians in the village today belong to the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland. In 1818, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg brought about the merger of the two Reformed denominations, and the resolution of an 1820 synod in Baumholder in turn brought about the “full unification” of these two denominations. In Prussian times, after 1834, the church district of Sankt Wendel came into being within the Rhenish Church. Fundamentally, this organizational scheme persists to this day. The first graveyard for the whole Burgfrieden was laid out in 1750. The village’s Roman Catholic Christians, in line with their historical development, belong to the deaconry of Kusel. During the 18th century, Jews also settled in Thallichtenberg, earning their livelihoods from trade and crafts. Buried at the Thallichtenberg Jewish graveyard, which nowadays stands under monumental protection, were Jews from the villages in the castle area and also from the town of Kusel.