Wiesweiler

Wiesweiler 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 Lauterecken-Wolfstein. Wiesweiler lies on the river Glan in the Western Palatinate. Unlike neighbouring places on the Glan, Wiesweiler was not built at the lower end of a side valley opening into the Glan valley, but rather right on the valley's slopes. The ridge to the east is made up of several peaks that run together from the Königsberg (mountain, not the former East Prussian city) to Lauterecken, while to the west, the ridge is made up of several outliers of a mountain north of Deimberg. Wiesweiler lies at an elevation of roughly 165 m above sea level downstream from Offenbach-Hundheim and upstream from the town of Lauterecken. The elevations either side of the Glan reach about 320 m above sea level. The municipal area measures 333 ha, of which 11 ha is settled and 24 ha is wooded. Wiesweiler borders in the northeast on the town of Lauterecken, in the east on the municipality of Lohnweiler, in the south on the municipality of Offenbach-Hundheim, in the southwest on the municipality of Buborn and in the northwest on the municipality of Hausweiler. Wiesweiler's Ortsteile are Wiesweiler on the Glan's left bank and the formerly self-administering village of Berschweiler on its right bank. The original villages were each laid out in the form of linear villages (by some definitions, thorpes) running parallel to the river, the road and the railway line. The church stands on the Glan's right bank on the way out of the former village of Berschweiler to the south. The former school building stands in the middle of the part of the village on the Glan's left bank, and the old mill on the right towards the village's north end. A bridge across the Glan in the mill area links the two formerly self-administering villages. The former railway station stands on the left bank, about 50 m up from the bridge.