Antiquity The land both nearer Haschbach and somewhat farther away was settled in the late
New Stone Age, the
Bronze Age, the
Iron Age and
Roman times, bearing witness to which are
archaeological finds from all the surrounding municipalities. In Haschbach itself, down from the village, going towards Theisbergstegen, early work on a quarry on both sides of the road unearthed an urn-grave burying ground, which likely dates from
La Tène times.
Middle Ages Haschbach lay in the so-called
Remigiusland, and likely arose in the 11th century, and thus some 100 years before the first documentary mention from 1149. An exact year of founding, though, cannot be determined. The
Remigiusland was originally part of the
Imperial Domain (
Reichsland) around
Kaiserslautern, but was split away from it about AD 590 and likely given by
Frankish King
Childebert II to Bishop Egidius of
Reims as a donation. A story that already appeared in the Archbishopric's history books in the
Middle Ages that had King
Clovis I making the donation to Bishop Remigius (
Saint Remigius) himself is now no longer accepted by historians. In 952, the Bishopric of Reims transferred its holdings around Kusel – the
Remigiusland – to the
Abbey of Saint-Remi, also in Reims. In 1112, Count Gerlach I, whose father was a count from the
Nahegau, founded the new
County of Veldenz, also belonging to which, as a
Vogtei, was the
Remigiusland. At this time,
monks from Reims, who in all likelihood had considered the town of Kusel their base since the
Remigiusland was founded, may even have built the Monastery on the Remigiusberg. The monastery had its first documentary mention in 1127. Before it was founded, nobles from a neighbouring region had unlawfully built on the mountain a
castle, which against a payment of compensation was now torn down. The original
Latin text reads: “
utili et salubri consilio sibi posterisque providentes eundem montem licet suum munitionem pretio redemerunt et destructo castro monasterium sibi cum claustralibus officinis ibidem construxerunt,…”. One of the invaders, likely a knight named Albert, himself ruefully joined the monastery. Tensions between the provosts at the Saint-Remi branch monastery on the Remigiusberg and the Counts of Veldenz arose soon after the monastery's founding and lasted centuries. According to the 1149 document that also mentions the name of the village of Haschbach for the first time (as
Habbach), a delegation from the Abbey of Saint-Remi and the branch monastery on the Remigiusberg complained to
King Conrad III about disputes between the Counts of Veldenz and the monastery. King Conrad issued a legal pronouncement in the monastery's favour, but this was never quite brought into force. Four of Count Gerlach's successors likewise bore the name Gerlach. Gerlach V died in 1259 after taking part in a mission to
Castile, leaving behind a young daughter named Agnes. Serving as Agnes's regent was
Count Heinrich of Zweibrücken, who was her grandfather and her late father's father-in-law. To safeguard the County of Veldenz, Count Heinrich had several castles built, thus flouting the monks at the Remigiusberg and also the Michelsburg, the castle right next to the monastery. In various Veldenz documents, the Michelsburg is mentioned. In 1387 and 1390, Count Friedrich II of Veldenz acknowledged that he had been enfeoffed with, among other things,
Sant Michelsberg by
Count Palatine Ruprecht the Elder. A similar thing was acknowledged in 1437 by
Count Friedrich III of Veldenz with regard to his overlord
Count Palatine Ludwig. This feudal arrangement shows that the Counts of Veldenz did not hold their fief directly from the king, but rather through the
Electors Palatine who served as their overlords. Count Friedrich III was the last from the
Hohengeroldseck family to rule Veldenz - that male line died out with him in 1444, and the county passed to his son-in-law
Stephen, Count Palatine of Simmern-Zweibrücken (son of
Rupert, King of Germany), widower of Frederick's daughter,
Anna of Veldenz. Stephen, combining his lands, created the new
County Palatine of Zweibrücken, which in the fullness of time came to be known as the Duchy of Palatinate-Zweibrücken. Stephen chose the town of
Zweibrücken as comital residence.
Modern times The
Counts Palatine (Dukes) of Zweibrücken introduced the
Reformation according to
Martin Luther’s teachings to their subjects beginning in 1523, and in 1588,
John I, Count Palatine of Zweibrücken forced his subjects to
convert to
John Calvin’s
Reformed teachings (
Calvinism). In 1543,
Wolfgang, Count Palatine of Zweibrücken gave the
County of Veldenz to his uncle and former
regent,
Rupert. During his regency, Rupert had resided at the castle on the Remigiusberg, the Michelsburg, which was forthwith swallowed into his new county's domain. The by now
Lutheran church once belonging to the monastery, which had suffered dissolution in the time of the Reformation, served the princely family of Palatinate-Veldenz as a burying place. The village of Haschbach itself at first remained with the Duchy of Zweibrücken, but nevertheless likewise ended up with the newer County of Veldenz under the terms of the
Recess of Meisenheim, proclaimed on 1 August 1600. As Lehmann wrote in 1867, “In August however, our
Prince established two agreements with Georg Hannsen’s son, Count Palatine Georg Gustav of Veldenz; in the first, he transferred to the said count the mills at
Mühlbach and
Oberstaufenbach, two woods named Hochwald and Steinchen, then the villages of Hasbach (Haschbach) and
Stegen, as well as many
serfs and certain tithes, against which he (the Prince) received his share of
Alsenz, the village of Reichartsweiler, the Veldenz share of the tithes in the Stolzenberg Valley along with many serfs.” The
Thirty Years' War and
French King
Louis XIV's wars of conquest exacted great losses, and for a while, the village would have been almost empty of people. Newcomers boosted the population figures. The later Veldenz line died out with
Count Palatine Leopold Ludwig's death in 1694. There then ensued a dispute over the succession between Palatinate-Zweibrücken and
Electoral Palatinate, which was settled in the latter's favour by the 1731 Treaty of Marburg. Under its terms, the village of Haschbach along with the castle and the church were held by Electoral Palatinate until the country was
occupied by
French Revolutionary troops. During the 18th century, having been mentioned as early as 1590, the Remigiusberg Estate lay below the monastery and the castle, held by the House of Remigiusberg, that is, the Counts Palatine of Veldenz-Lichtenstein and from 1731 the Prince-Electors of the Palatinate. Bit by bit, not always without displeasure, the estate was given to various other landholders. In the time of the
French Revolution, the
French authorities seized all Electoral holdings as national property. The estate was sold to private buyers, but nevertheless did not last much longer: the original cadastral survey done in
Bavarian times, not many years later, described it as a ruin.
Recent times During the time of
annexation of the German lands on the
Rhine’s left bank by France, Haschbach belonged within the
French First Republic – and then later within the
First French Empire under
Napoleon – to the
Department of
Sarre, the
Arrondissement of Birkenfeld, the
Canton of Kusel and the
Mairie (“Mayoralty”) of Quirnbach. After the French were driven out, Haschbach then belonged within the
Kingdom of Bavaria (to which the
Congress of Vienna had awarded the
Palatinate) to the
Landkommissariat (district) and Canton of Kusel, and to a
Bürgermeisterei (“mayoralty”) whose name changed according to where the mayor lived – sometimes in Godelhausen and sometimes in
Theisbergstegen (the former is today a constituent community of the latter). :“From Theisbergstegen, through a narrow, wooded mountain gap we reach the
hamlet of Haschbach, whose broadly strewn homesteads gleam with bright red tile roofs over the plateau, over which, towards the east the mountain ridge already described looms.” Thus did Franz Xaver Remling report on a visit to the Remigiusberg in 1850. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the NSDAP (
Nazi Party) was becoming quite popular in Haschbach. In the
1928 Reichstag elections, only 0.6% of the local votes went to
Adolf Hitler’s party, but by the
1930 Reichstag elections, this had grown to 11.3%. By the time of the
1933 Reichstag elections, after Hitler had already
seized power, local support for the Nazis had swollen to 31.7%. Hitler’s success in these elections paved the way for his
Enabling Act of 1933 (
Ermächtigungsgesetz), thus starting the
Third Reich in earnest. Once the
state of
Rhineland-Palatinate had been founded after the
Second World War and the Palatinate had been split away from Bavaria, the broader territorial arrangements did not change at first, although from 1945 to 1949, Haschbach was itself seat of the mayoralty. Only with administrative restructuring in 1968 did Haschbach pass as an
Ortsgemeinde to the newly founded
Verbandsgemeinde of Kusel, with effect from 1972. In 1959, the municipality’s name, which hitherto had been simply Haschbach, was lengthened to the current form, Haschbach am Remigiusberg, to avoid confusion with Haschbach am Glan, an outlying centre of
Henschtal, which lies nearby, in the same district.
Population development Until the early 20th century, the villagers earned their livelihoods mainly at
agriculture, although even before this, there had been workers (miners, for instance). With the rise of industry, in this region the foremost industry being stone quarrying, towards the end of the 19th century, social change became constant. Out of the farming village of Haschbach grew a village of stoneworkers where many workers long kept at their farming as a secondary occupation. They jokingly called themselves
Steinarbeiterbauern – “stoneworker-farmers”. In time, though, quarrying, too, met with hard times, and rationalization measures meant that fewer workers were needed. It was therefore not hard to see that Haschbach's future would hold neither farmers nor stoneworkers. Indeed, of the 70 agricultural operations, run as either a main or secondary occupation, that existed in Haschbach in 1950, none is still in business. All were either closed or given up. While the quarry drew workers from outside the village in its heyday, today, more and more people from Haschbach must seek work elsewhere,
commuting to Kusel and Kaiserslautern, or even farther afield to other industrial centres. There is little in the way of earning opportunities in Haschbach itself, for even
service industries are nowadays found mostly outside the village. Today the village is held to be an aspiring rural residential community, defined by a good quality of living, and also by its proximity to the town of Kusel. The population figures show, from the early 19th century, a steady upward trend lasting through to 2000. Recently, though, stagnation seems to have set in. It is unknown how long this will last. The following table shows population development over the centuries for Haschbach am Remigiusberg, with some figures broken down by religious denomination:
Municipality’s name The name “Haschbach” may derive from the
Old High German hase, which meant – as the same word in
Modern High German still means – “hare”, which would mean that the name as a whole means “Harebrook”. Indeed, a pattern is seen in other placenames combining an animal's name with the very common
—bach ending:
Rehbach,
Hirschbach, Fuchsbach (“Hindbrook”, “Hartbrook”, “Foxbrook”), etc. It was, however, the brook (
Bach) itself that first bore the name. Only later was the name given the village that sprang up alongside. The first syllable may, on the other hand, be a colour, from the
Germanic hasa,
hasan (
Old English hasu), meaning “grey”, which would mean that the name as a whole means “Greybrook”. If so, another pattern is seen when the name is put alongside
Blaubach,
Schwarzbach, Rotenbach (“Bluebrook”, “Blackbrook”, “Redbrook”), etc. Researchers Dolch and Greule put forth a further idea. They do not rule out that the first syllable in the name “Haschbach” may derive from an old German personal name that only accidentally mutated into something meaning “Harebrook”. Even the oldest records of the name do not go far enough back, and are not clear enough, for the name's actual meaning to be precisely determined. Whatever its meaning or roots, the municipality's name underwent many changes over the ages: Since about 1824, the spelling has been the modern one. Locally, it is pronounced with a “long A” (). The addition of the tag “am Remigiusberg” to the municipality's name came after council decided on 18 January 1959 to apply to change the name officially. A certificate granting this was issued on 4 November of the same year by the
Rhineland-Palatinate Ministry of the Interior pursuant to “§ 4 Abs. 3” (Section 4, Paragraph 3) of the
Gemeindeordnung.
Vanished villages In the municipality's southwest, near where the Münchbach rises, once stood a small village named Wetzenhausen. It was a very small place that only had its first documentary mention in the 16th century, but then late that same century, Johannes Hoffmann described it as an
untergegangene Dorfstatt – a “lost village place”. This village's name can be seen in rural cadastral toponyms such as Wetschhausen or Welschhausen. The name itself might originally have referred to a man named Wezzo, and therefore would have meant “Wezzo’s Farm” or “Wezzo’s House”. ==Religion==