Kirrweiler is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Kusel district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde Lauterecken-Wolfstein.
Geography
Location
The municipality lies in the Western Palatinate between the Palatinate Forest and the Hunsrück. Kirrweiler lies on a sloped plateau that rises gently from south to north (from 320 to 350 m above sea level). South of the village rises the Anderbach, which runs for some 3 km down to its mouth into the Glan near Glanbrücken. The outlying centre of Zollstock lies at an elevation of 360 m above sea level on the heights of a mountain saddle that stands between the Anderbach and Rötelbach valleys. The municipal area is 51% wooded.
In 1938, when the Baumholder troop drilling ground was being built, the municipality was stripped of 155.5 ha of woodland by the Nazis. In the course of disarmament after the Cold War, Kirrweiler received 170.21 ha of the drilling ground in 1993. Although this is now officially part of the municipal area, the landowner is still the German federal government.
Neighbouring municipalities
Kirrweiler borders in the north on the municipality of Homberg (and more specifically on the Schönbornerhof, that municipality's historic farm estate), in the northeast on the municipality of Herren-Sulzbach, in the east on the municipality of Deimberg, in the south on the municipality of Sankt Julian and in the west on the Baumholder troop drilling ground.
Constituent communities
Also belonging to Kirrweiler is the outlying homestead of Zollstock.
Municipality’s layout
Kirrweiler lies on a street that runs through the village, branching off which are three smaller, built-up streets. There are two old village centres, the Oberdorf ("Upper Village") and the Unterdorf ("Lower Village"), which, owing to later building in between, have now been joined. A piped well that once stood between these two centres has since disappeared. The village's farmhouses are still mostly of the Einfirsthaus variety ("one-roof-ridge house"). All together, very little new building work is in evidence. The former schoolhouse stands on a sidestreet in the Upper Village and is nowadays used as business premises. The graveyard with its great mortuary lies at the village's upper end.
History
Antiquity
The broader area around Kirrweiler was settled in prehistoric times, bearing witness to which are grave goods that have been unearthed. Within Kirrweiler's limits long ago, the foundations of a Gallo-Roman estate were discovered.
Middle Ages
Kirrweiler lay in the Nahegau, having been founded in the 11th or 12th century at a church, which later vanished. Local rural cadastral toponyms still preserve references to a church. As early as 1259, Kirrweiler had its first documentary mention in a document from the Counts of Zweibrücken. According to historian Wilhelm Fabricius (1857-1942), the village belonged to the Gericht auf der Höhe ("Court on the Heights"), which itself was considered part of the Hochgericht auf der Heide ("High Court on the Heath"). The Gericht auf der Höhe was named when in 1258, Castle Grumbach with its surrounding lands was given to the Waldgraves and Rhinegraves of Dhaun. The villages in this court region appeared in a 1363 document dealing with the pledging of these lands to Sponheim-Starkenburg, with Kirrweiler named among them. Kirrweiler cropped up once again in a 1443 document, according to which the "poor people of Grumbach" were transferred to Count Friedrich III of Veldenz and his son-in-law Stephan, who the very next year, on his father-in-law's death, founded the Duchy of Palatinate-Zweibrücken. Both were to be "lord protectors" of the district. Thus, Kirrweiler originally belonged to the Nahegau, from which arose the Waldgraves and Rhinegraves, then it passed to the Waldgraviate-Rhinegraviate of Dhaun, later passing to the County of Veldenz in 1443 and its successors, the Counts Palatine of Zweibrücken. Thereafter, the area was bought back by the Lords of Grumbach. Even later, though, Kirrweiler was now and then the object of exchanges in divisions of holdings or disputes among the various lines of the Waldgraves and Rhinegraves.