Antiquity Bearing witness to early settlers in the area are
prehistoric barrows within Ohmbach's own limits and also on land held by all the neighbouring municipalities. A great barrow from an unknown time lies on the heights of the Knechtenberg, but it is damaged, reportedly after having been half dug away in 1945 by the
Wehrmacht.
Gallo-Roman times, too, left their traces. The remnants of a
villa rustica were unearthed as long ago as the 19th century.
Reliefs from
Roman times were built into the mediaeval churchtower. The originals of these
spolia are now kept at the
Historisches Museum Speyer.
Middle Ages When the villages of Ohmbach and Weitersbach were founded is something that is now unknown. They do not appear in the
Polyptique, the late-9th-century taxation register from the
Abbey of Saint-Remi handed down by Guérard. This is a clue that suggests that they did not then belong to the
Remigiusland. With a fair degree of certainty, they both lay within the Free
Imperial Domain (
Reichsland). Sometime after their founding, perhaps as far back as the 8th century or even earlier, their shared history was set asunder when each one found itself in a different lordly domain. Weitersbach long remained in the
Reichsland, whereas Ohmbach passed as a
Frankish king's donation into the ownership of the
Archbishopric of Mainz sometime before 976. Ohmbach thus did not belong, as often assumed, from its founding to the
Remigiusland, but rather was held, like the villages of the parish of Niederkirchen in the Oster valley, by the Archbishopric. A place named
Ovenbach, mentioned in 967 in connection with the Saviour's
Chapel (
Salvatorkapelle) in
Frankfurt, cannot be the same place as this one in the Palatinate, for in the course of a reorganization of the bishoprics within the Archbishopric of Mainz on the
Rhine’s left bank by Archbishop
Willigis beginning in 976, Ohmbach passed into the ownership of
Disibodenberg Abbey. Willigis raised Disibodenberg to a middle centre among Mainz holdings on the Rhine's left bank outside the city of
Mainz itself. A record from the time documenting this deed has unfortunately not been preserved, but its content has reached the present day through restitution documents from 1108 and 1128. In 1112, Count Gerlach I founded the
County of Veldenz and at the same time took over the
Vogtei over extensive ecclesiastical landholds, among them Disibodenberg Abbey and the
Remigiusland. About the middle of the 13th century, the
Benedictine monastery at Disibodenberg was dissolved and the building complex was taken over by
Cistercians from the Otterberg Monastery. It thus became possible for Count Gerlach V to buy up Disibodenberg's church property. It was in this way that Ohmbach and
Niederkirchen came to the
Remigiusland only quite late. Gerlach V of Veldenz bequeathed the parish of Ohmbach to the Werschweiler (now Wörschweiler) Monastery, under whose ownership it remained until the time of the
Reformation. In 1444, the County of Veldenz met its end when Count Friedrich III of Veldenz died without a male heir. His daughter
Anna wed
King Ruprecht's son
Count Palatine Stephan. By uniting his own Palatine holdings with the now otherwise heirless County of Veldenz – his wife had inherited the county, but not her father's title – and by redeeming the hitherto pledged County of Zweibrücken, Stephan founded a new County Palatine, as whose comital residence he chose the town of
Zweibrücken: the County Palatine – later Duchy – of
Palatinate-Zweibrücken, to which Ohmbach (Oberohmbach), too, belonged. Parts of the
Reichsland with the village of Weitersbach in the court district of Kübelberg were acquired in 1375 by
Elector Palatine Ruprecht I as an
Imperial pledge. He handed the court district of Kübelberg on to the
Counts of Sponheim. In 1437, however, it passed back, along with Weitersbach, to the
Electorate of the Palatinate.
Modern times Even after the
Middle Ages, the names Ohmbach and Weitersbach still kept cropping up in records. During the time of the
Reformation, Ohmbach lay in the Duchy of
Palatinate-Zweibrücken while Weitersbach belonged to the
Electorate of the Palatinate. Ohmbach remained part of Zweibrücken until
feudalism itself was swept away by the
French Revolution. Weitersbach remained at first with the Electorate of the Palatinate. Sometime after 1600, the name Weitersbach disappeared from the historical record and was replaced with the name Nieder-Ohmbach, while the village that had hitherto been known as Ohmbach assumed the name Ober-Ohmbach. The
Thirty Years' War swept over the land, which was also laid waste in
French King
Louis XIV’s wars of conquest. At the height of the Thirty Years' War, many villagers died, not only from the war's effects, but also from the
Plague. Survivors fled. The villages were revived when newcomers settled there. It must be borne in mind, though, that many of these settlers, especially the ones in the Electorate of the Palatinate lands, were instruments of Louis XIV's policy, which favoured
Catholic settlers. Only in the course of the late 18th century did population figures once more begin to grow healthily, and then began
emigration. In 1779, the two villages for the first time found themselves under the same lordship once Nieder-Ohmbach, along with all other villages in the hitherto Electorate of the Palatinate court district of Kübelberg, was exchanged against villages on the
Nahe held by Zweibrücken. Thus, Nieder-Ohmbach experienced a brief interlude as a Zweibrücken holding, but this lasted only about a decade before the French Revolution broke out.
Recent times French Revolutionary troops showed up in 1793, and in 1801, the
French annexed the German lands on the
Rhine’s left bank to France. Ober-Ohmbach and Nieder-Ohmbach now formed for the first time a single municipality under the name
Commune d’Ohmbach, which lay in the
Mairie (“Mayoralty”) of Konken, the
Canton of Kusel, the
Arrondissement of Birkenfeld and the
Department of
Sarre. After
Napoleon’s final defeat, the
Congress of Vienna drew new boundaries yet again. After a transitional time, Ohmbach was grouped into the
bayerischer Rheinkreis, later known as
Rheinpfalz (“Rhenish Palatinate”), an exclave of the
Kingdom of Bavaria in 1816, within the
Landcommissariat (today
Landkreis or district) of Kusel and the Canton of Kusel. The lowest administrative units were the
Bürgermeistereien (“mayoralties”). The still united Ohmbach belonged to the
Bürgermeisterei of Konken, which from 1821 to 1843 was headed by mayor Mehl from
Konken. Under this mayor, the united municipality of Ohmbach was once again split in two, becoming Oberohmbach and Niederohmbach. In 1877 and 1888, attempts to reunite the two villages failed. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the
Nazi Party (NSDAP) did not become quite as popular in Ohmbach as in some other places in the district. In the
1928 Reichstag elections, only 0.9% of the local votes went to
Adolf Hitler’s party, but by the
1930 Reichstag elections, this had grown, albeit slightly, to 3.1%. By the time of the
1933 Reichstag elections, after Hitler had already
seized power, the Nazis fared no better than 21.1% in terms of local support (as against 92.5% in
Horschbach or 90% in
Ehweiler, for instance). Nevertheless, Hitler's overall success in these elections paved the way for his
Enabling Act of 1933 (
Ermächtigungsgesetz), thus starting the
Third Reich in earnest. Only in 1936, under the Nazis, did it become possible to reunite the two villages. Ohmbach has been one municipality ever since. In 1952, a new
Bürgermeisterei of Herschweiler-Pettersheim was founded, to which belonged, besides the
mayoral seat, Ohmbach,
Krottelbach and
Langenbach. In the course of administrative restructuring in
Rhineland-Palatinate, Ohmbach was grouped as an into the
Verbandsgemeinde of Schönenberg-Kübelberg in 1972.
Population development Ohmbach was originally a village characterized by
agriculture, though even in the 19th century, the local diamond-cutting industry was growing, offering earning opportunities for many villagers. In the time after the
Second World War, this industry was given up, and those seeking work did so mainly outside the village. With respect to membership in
Christian denominations, it can be noted that about the same number of
Protestants and
Catholics live in the village, whereas historically, owing to the territorial development in
feudal times outlined above, most of the Protestants lived in the former village of Oberohmbach, and most of the Catholics in Niederohmbach. This difference is becoming blurred nowadays. The following table shows population development over the centuries for Ohmbach, with some figures broken down by religious denomination: • Oberohmbach
Municipality’s name Ohmbach's name is understood to mean a village on the like-named brook. On the other hand, it could be that the brook is named after the village, for the Ohmbach originally bore several names drawn from villages through which it flowed. Thus, a
Frank named Ovo may have founded the village. The name would therefore mean “Ovo’s Brook”. In a 977 document issued by
Otto III, Holy Roman Emperor, the villages name appears as
Ouenbach, and in an 1128 document issued by Archbishop
Adalbert of Mainz as
Ovenbach. In 1460 the village was called
Obenbach, in 1545
Ombach and in 1629
Ohmbach. Beginning in the 17th century, the names Oberohmbach and Niederohmbach crop up. The name Weitersbach for Niederohmbach is drawn from the smaller brook that flows by the village, later emptying onto the Ohmbach. As
Weytersbach, this name can be found in a 1541 border description of the court district of Kusel, and in the description of the
Oberamt of Lichtenberg by Johannes Hoffmann as
Weittersbach (
Daran stoßen zusammen die Bännen Ohmbach, Steinbach und Weittersbach). Weitersbach would have been founded by a Frank named Wither or Witheri.
Vanished villages Southeast of Ohmbach once lay a village called Remmweiler, sometimes also wrongly named as
Rennweiler, bearing witness to which today are only rural cadastral toponyms. According to researchers Dolch and Greule, its name is explained by its having been founded by somebody named Ramno, and thus the name means “Ramno’s Homestead”. ==Religion==