Lötzbeuren

About Lötzbeuren’s mediaeval history, little is known for sure. Until the 18th century, it was a bone of contention between the Palatine and Badish joint lords of the County of Sponheim as to whether the village lay in the “Further” or “Hinder” County. In 1332, Lötzbeuren was under the Further County’s ownership, but seems to have transferred to the Hinder County by 1417. Nevertheless, the Further County’s lords time and again tried to assert their rights, especially Baden, which claimed Lötzbeuren for the Further County and as of 1707 regarded it as a Badish possession[2] without, however, having any lasting success. In 1776, Baden finally forsook the village in Palatinate-Zweibrücken's favour.[3] At the same time, however, there was also a dispute with the Electorate of Trier over who held sovereignty. Since Electoral-Trier serfs were the overwhelming majority of the population, Trier deemed the village to be among its holdings. Moreover, there were further claims by other lords, making the situation quite convoluted. It is known that about the year 1637, Lötzbeuren had 36 townsmen, of whom 16 were of Electoral-Trier origin, 7 of Sponheim origin, 4 each of Palatinate-Simmern, Rhinegravial and Oberstein origin and one of Schmidtburg origin. Worth noting, however, is that only two of these were not Lutheran. One of the Sponheimers was Catholic and one of the Palatinate-Simmern townsmen was Reformed. It is therefore easy to see that Palatinate-Birkenfeld, the more influential of the Hinder County’s two joint lords eventually managed to assert itself, at least in the ecclesiastical sphere. It cannot be said, though, exactly when and how the Reformation was introduced into Lötzbeuren, but it might well have been not long after 1557, when the Hinder County of Sponheim saw the Reformation in. To this day, Lötzbeuren is an Evangelical community.

Owing to the tangle of disputes that reigned at the time, the villagers of Lötzbeuren might well have taken themselves to be a “free village” where no lord had any rights but those that he could exercise over his serfs. Thus it might well have been that no jurisdictional lord was recognized. For any misdeed, one had to turn to the jurists who answered to the lord under whose ownership the serf or serfs in question stood. Only in this light can one understand the Reverend Caspar Streccius’s words, which he wrote upon leaving Lötzbeuren in 1632 or 1633 as a result of the dispute, to take up the parish clergyman’s post at Irmenach:

The church that stands today comes from 1718. Within are found many paintings, some of which were only rediscovered in the 1950s. Furthermore, the church houses a one-manual Stumm organ from 1745.

When the Hinder County of Sponheim was divided in 1776, Lötzbeuren passed together with the whole Oberamt of Trarbach to Palatinate-Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld. In the wars that came in the French Revolution’s wake, the County’s history came to an end. The area passed into Prussian possession and Lötzbeuren was assigned to the Bürgermeisterei of Büchenbeuren in the new Zell district. In 1969, Lötzbeuren belonged for a short while to the Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis, until in 1970, at its own wish, it was annexed to the Verbandsgemeinde of Traben-Trarbach in the Bernkastel-Wittlich district.

• Friedrich Back, Heinrich Rodewald: Die Pfarrei Lötzbeuren, in: Monatshefte für Rheinische Kirchengeschichte 19 (1925), S. 69–78.

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• Official website (in German)