Niederbrombach

Niederbrombach is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Birkenfeld district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Birkenfeld, whose seat is in the like-named town. The municipality lies on a bend in a dale on the road between Birkenfeld and Idar-Oberstein. Indeed, four dales meet at Niederbrombach, one each coming from north, south, east and west. Also coming down three of those dales are streams, the Hambach, the Schwollbach and the Rothenbach. All three flow together at the hollow formed by the junction of the four dales and thereafter flow as one stream, called the Schwollbach, down to Kronweiler, where the Schwollbach empties into the river Nahe. Set above the dales are some peaks. North of Niederbrombach are the Hömelskopf and the Heidkopf, to the east are the Pferdshöhe and the Brombacher Höhe, to the south are the Rothenbachberg, the Winnenberg and the Hochkastell and finally, to the west are the Kleb and the Bauterskopf. Also belonging to Niederbrombach are the outlying homesteads of Fischerhof, Haus Manzenbach, Lärchenhof and Robinienhof. The oldest forms of the village's name found in documents are Brambach and Branbach. Only in more recent times has Niederbrombach been distinguished from Oberbrombach. Branbach, along with its subjects and its church, passed from Duke-Archbishop Liutwin's ownership to Saint Paulinus's Foundation in Trier about 700. Almost three centuries later, in 981, it passed to the Archiepiscopal Foundation of Trier. Brombach was the main centre of the Electoral-Trier holdings (later Sponheim holdings) south of the Idar Forest, and within the high court region and the Amtsbezirk, Brombach had become and remained the main centre of its own feudal domain (Großbann), its own Pflege (literally “care”, but actually a local geopolitical unit) and its own parish. Secular and ecclesiastical holdings matched one another so fully that in the 18th century, the term “parish” was also used to designate the administrative region.