Otzweiler

Otzweiler is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Bad Kreuznach district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde Kirner Land, whose seat is in the town of Kirn. Otzweiler lies on the Großbach in the North Palatine Uplands. It borders on two neighbouring districts, Kusel and Birkenfeld. Clockwise from the north, Otzweiler's neighbours are the municipalities of Becherbach bei Kirn and Limbach, both of which likewise lie within the Bad Kreuznach district, the municipality of Hoppstädten in the neighbouring Kusel district and the municipalities of Sien, Sienhachenbach (although this boundary is confined to one point) and Schmidthachenbach in the neighbouring Birkenfeld district. From the Early and High Middle Ages, little is known about Otzweiler. In the 14th century, Otzweiler belonged to the Lordship of the Waldgraves at the Kyrburg (castle). In 1375, the Waldgraves Otto and Friedrich of Kyrburg shared out landholds and rights between themselves that they owned in the Amt of Otzweiler, which also comprised, among other places, Hundsbach, Schweinschied and Löllbach. Historian Wilhelm Fabricius presumed that the village had arisen from a Waldgravial estate in the court region of Becherbach and that it had originally belonged to the Hochgericht auf der Heide (“High Court on the Heath”). Otzweiler, which was then made up of only this estate and two mills, grew over time into a bigger settlement. In the early 16th century, the village belonged to the Schultheißerei of Sien within the Waldgravial Amt of Kyrburg. Since there were also Sponheim subjects living in Otzweiler, the Counts of Sponheim and later their rightful successor, the Margrave of Baden, maintained a claim to territorial ascendancy over the village as holders of the Amt of Naumburg. The disagreements over rights arising from this between the Amt of Salen-Kyrburg and the Badish Amt of Naumburg were arbitrated in 1757 so that the landholds and the inhabitants of Otzweiler would remain under the joint administration of both Ämter.