Niederstaufenbach

Niederstaufenbach 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. Niederstaufenbach lies in the Western Palatinate between the Walbersberg and the Krämel (mountains), on both sides of the Reichenbach in a broad hollow roughly a kilometre and a half up from where the Bosenbach empties into the Reichenbach. The village sits at an elevation of roughly 240 m above sea level between the villages of Oberstaufenbach and Friedelhausen. On the dale’s west side, the ground climbs up steeply to the Potzberg (hill) and to the neighbouring village of Föckelberg. Stretching east of the dale is a somewhat higher mountain ridge (Hertelwald 338 m) between the Reichenbach valley and the Walsbach and Bosenbach valleys. Rising in the south, within neighbouring Oberstaufenbach’s limits, is the mountain Heidenburg, from which the village might have got its name (see Municipality’s name below). The municipal area measures 201 ha, of which 31 ha is wooded and roughly 6 ha is settled. Niederstaufenbach borders in the north on the municipality of Bosenbach, in the east on the municipality of Reichenbach-Steegen, in the south on the municipality of Oberstaufenbach and in the west on the municipality of Föckelberg. Niederstaufenbach’s old village core lies on the Reichenbach’s left bank on a small side brook known in old border descriptions as the Limbach, but it is not to be confused with another stream by that name near Oberstaufenbach. The Limbach at Niederstaufenbach rises near Föckelberg on the slope of the Potzberg. In this part of the village stand Einfirsthäuser (“single-roof-ridge houses”), a kind of farmhouse found throughout the Westrich, an historic region that encompasses areas in both Germany and France. An extensive new building zone stretches out on the brook’s right bank next to the road going towards Bosenbach.