Thallichtenberg - History - Modern Times - Recent Times

Recent Times

In 1799, there was a great fire at Lichtenberg Castle that burnt most of the buildings, after which – as before the blaze – the castle was subject to plundering. Thallichtenberg and the castle belonged at the time of French annexation beginning in 1801 to the Mairie (“Mayoralty”) of Burglichtenberg, the Department of Sarre, the Arrondissement of Birkenfeld and the Canton of Kusel. The French authorities declared the castle national property. Bit by bit, buildings were auctioned off, walls torn down and stones from the whole area sold as building materials. The first craftsmen were then already settling on the castle domain. At the same time, the now once again inhabited complex became the seat of the Mairie of Château Lichtenberg, to which the following villages belonged: Lichtenberg la vallée (Thallichtenberg), Routweiler, Pfeffelbach, Reichweiler, Schwarzerden, Albessen and Herchweiler (some of these names were Gallicized). After French troops withdrew in 1814, there was yet again a reorganization of territories by an administration commission and the Congress of Vienna. In 1816, the Principality of Lichtenberg, a newly created exclave of the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (which as of 1826 became the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha) came into being, comprising the cantons of Sankt Wendel, Baumholder and Grumbach. These cantons were split into Bürgermeisterämter (“mayoral offices”). One of these was called Burglichtenberg (a fusion of the German name for Lichtenberg Castle, Burg Lichtenberg), to which belonged the villages of Thallichtenberg, Ruthweiler, Pfeffelbach, Reichweiler and Schwarzerden. This Amt was merged in 1821 with its neighbour, the Amt of Berschweiler. The resulting bigger Amt retained the name Burglichtenberg, but its seat was at Berschweiler. Also belonging to the Amt were the villages of Berglangenbach, Eckersweiler, Fohren-Linden, Hahnweiler, Leitzweiler, Rohrbach and Rückweiler.

In the meantime, living in the village within the castle complex were about 100 inhabitants. The village became self-administering in 1831. The settlers there were cutlers and nailers who travelled about to sell their wares. The best known of these nailers was Christian Forsch, whose secondary occupation was local poet. In 1834, Saxe-Coburg sold the principality on the Rhine’s left bank to the Kingdom of Prussia at first for an annuity of 80,000 Thaler. Thallichtenberg and Burglichtenberg now became part of Prussia’s Rhine Province, in the Sankt Wendel district, which was divided into the Amtsbezirke of Sankt Wendel, Baumholder, Burglichtenberg (seat at Berschweiler) and Grumbach. The Amt of Burglichtenberg existed until 1963. In 1894, the Prussian state bought the Upper Castle from its private owners and placed the castle complexes under monumental protection. The first safety and reconstruction repair work began. In 1910, the village of Burglichtenberg lost its self-administration and was amalgamated with Thallichtenberg. The road to the castle was paved with tar in 1922 so that it could now also be reached by car. That same year, a youth hostel opened at the castle site, and is still quite popular today.

Later, after the First World War, the Treaty of Versailles stipulated, among other things, that 26 of the Sankt Wendel district’s 94 municipalities, including the namesake district seat, had to be ceded to the British- and French-occupied Saar, a newly created entity. The remaining 68 municipalities in the Ämter of Baumholder, Burglichtenberg and Grumbach then bore the designation “Restkreis St. Wendel-Baumholder”, with the first syllable of Restkreis having the same meaning as in English, in the sense of “left over”.

In 1935, after a referendum on the question, the Saar, now known as the “Saarland”, chose to rejoin Germany where, by this time, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis had taken over and established the Third Reich. Political arrangements did not return to what they were before the Treaty of Versailles. Instead, the Restkreis Baumholder united in 1937 with the former Oldenburg territory around Birkenfeld and Idar-Oberstein, which had also remained with Germany, to form the new Prussian district of Birkenfeld. Through administrative reform in 1969, the so-called Unterberggemeinden (roughly “municipalities at the foot of the mountain”) in this district, namely Ruthweiler, Pfeffelbach, Reichweiler and Thallichtenberg with Lichtenberg Castle, were transferred from the Birkenfeld district to the Kusel district. The development of the castle complexes, which the Birkenfeld district had already begun undertaking after the Second World War, experienced continued work under the Kusel district’s administration.