Ehweiler 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 of Kusel-Altenglan, whose seat is in Kusel.
Geography
Location
The municipality lies 5 km southwest of Kusel some 330 m above sea level in a hollow of the Korbach, which rises in the municipality's west from several springs, and empties in the municipality's southeast into the Albessbach. In the municipal area's north, another stream flows parallel to the Korbach in the Ehweiler Grund, which also forms the municipal limit. The heights around the village climb up to almost 400 m above sea level (Ehweiler Höhe 390 m), and beyond the municipal limit reach higher than 400 m (Anieshügel 429 m). In the southwest and south, Autobahn A 62 (Kaiserslautern–Trier) touches the municipal limit. The municipal area measures 360 ha, of which 33 ha is wooded.
Neighbouring municipalities
Ehweiler borders in the north on the town of Kusel (Ortsteil: Bledesbach), in the east on the municipality of Schellweiler, in the south on the municipality of Konken, in the west on the municipality of Albessen and in the northwest on the municipality of Pfeffelbach.
Municipality’s layout
The village of Ehweiler is made up of two parts of roughly the same size, one north of the Korbach and one south. These may once have been two settled areas on a road running through this spot, but nowadays, the village's structure is rather more like a clump village.
History
Antiquity
Bearing witness to Stone Age human habitation in the Ehweiler area are various archaeological finds. Unearthed on the Ameshübel (or Anishügel – a hill) northwest of Ehweiler – actually beyond the municipal limit and into Albessen’s municipal area – on land that was later settled by Gallo-Romans was an agate borer, which is now kept by the Office for the Study of Archaeological Monuments (Amt für Archäologische Denkmalkunde) in Speyer. Within Ehweiler's own municipal area lie four barrows in the forest and on meadowland northeast of the village, laid out from east to west, whose origins are thus far undetermined. As early as the 19th century, there was apparently a Roman find, namely a stone with a Latin inscription, whose whereabouts are, however, unknown today. In 1957, forestry workers discovered foundations that likely stem from a Roman settlement. The same site yielded nails, potsherds and bits of brick, which were given to the Kusel local history museum.
Middle Ages
Ehweiler lay in the so-called Remigiusland. The local chronicler, Rainer Dick, tried to link the village's founding to its founder's name, as the name Agio or Ago was already customary by the 5th century. Researchers Dolch and Greule, on the other hand, note that the great majority of the villages with names ending in —weiler arose no earlier than the 12th century. In 1316, Ehweiler had its first documentary mention, at a time by which it had certainly already existed for quite some time. According to the document in question, the pastor Luccemann from Kusel forwent his tithes from a whole series of villages, among them Ehweiler, choosing instead to grant them to the monastery on the Remigiusberg. The village's name otherwise does not appear at all throughout the time in which the Counts of Veldenz held sway, but only once again after 1444, when that comital house died out and the new rulers, the Counts Palatine (Dukes) of Zweibrücken, took over as successors to the Veldenzes.