Einöllen

Einöllen is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a type of collective municipality – in the Kusel district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde Lauterecken-Wolfstein. The municipality lies 6 km southeast of Lauterecken and 7 km east of Offenbach-Hundheim on Landesstraße 383. Einöllen is located on a mountain ridge between the Odenbach and Lauter valleys at elevations between 303 and 360 m above sea level. The highest elevation within municipal limits is the Sattelberg at 381 m above sea level. Wolfstein lies roughly 7 km away, while it is about 35 km to each of Kusel, Kaiserslautern and Idar-Oberstein. Kreisstraße 42 leads through the actual village core and onwards to the Ausbacherhof (an outlying hamlet of Reipoltskirchen) and Reipoltskirchen into the Odenbach valley, and to Rockenhausen and the Donnersberg. Running over the heights from Lauterecken is an old Roman road leading to Hohenöllen, near to that village's namesake Hohe Halde (“High Heap” or “High Dump”) with its famous view of the Lauterschleife (a tight bow in the river Lauter). Until just before the little wood known as the Harstholz, this Roman road forms the stretch of Landesstraße 383 that today runs through Einöllen. Then, at the so-called Hohe Dohl at the vorderer Weiher (“further pond”), it bends to the left, runs between the woods and the hinterer Weiher (“hinder pond”) and meets the other Roman road coming from Kaiserslautern and leading by way of Morbach and the Ausbacherhof to Meisenheim. Given the location between the two roads, the Harstholz was ideal for Roman settlements. Within the municipality's limits, from several springs lying towards the boundary with Relsberg, rises the Sulzbach, which in its upper reaches flows through what was once the village of Heinzweiler, and which downstream from Medard empties into the river Glan. Near the Harstholz rises the Breitbach, which empties into the river Lauter in Oberweiler-Tiefenbach. Einöllen's municipal area measures 571 ha, of which 80 ha is wooded.