Niederkirchen (St. Wendel)

Niederkirchen District town of Sankt Wendel
Coordinates: 49 ° 28 ′ 6 ″  N , 7 ° 15 ′ 5 ″  E
Height :	297 m
Residents :	971  (2014)
Incorporation :	1st January 1974
Postal code :	66606
Area code :	06856
Location of Niederkirchen in Saarland
View of the Margarethenkirche in Niederkirchen in the Ostertal

Niederkirchen is a district of the city of St. Wendel in the district of the same name in Saarland . Until the end of 1973, Niederkirchen was an independent municipality.

geography

Niederkirchen is located in the Oster valley approx. 6 km east of St. Wendel. The state forest of St. Wendel lies between the district town and this district .

history

According to archaeological finds, the Ostertal was already inhabited in prehistoric times . Finds from the Niederkircher corridors Heidenköpfchen (1928 and 1934/35) and Steinpforr also document a Roman settlement.

In a document dated November 17, 880, Ludwig the German donated a royal fiefdom to the Frankfurt Salvatorkapelle . This is the first known mention of the Middle Easter Valley in the Middle Ages. A church (presumably Niederkirchen) is mentioned for the first time in a confirmation document from Otto II (April 12, 977).

In the course of the following centuries the Ostertal estates changed hands several times, at the end (1444) they inherited the Duchy of Pfalz-Zweibrücken . The Reformation is introduced in 1538 ; the monasteries in the duchy are dissolved. During the Thirty Years' War , Niederkirchen, like the entire Ostertal valley, was heavily devastated and depopulated, and again burned down by French troops in 1677. In the 18th century there was an economic recovery under the Wittelsbach family . The Reformation remains.

After the occupation of the Left Bank of the Rhine by French revolutionary troops (1794), from 1798 to 1814, Niederkirchen belonged to the canton of St. Wendel in the Saarbrücken arrondissement in the Saar department . Niederkirchen became the seat of a mairie to which the places Bubach , Hoof , Marth , Osterbrücken and Saal also belonged.

After the Congress of Vienna (1815), the municipality, as a former Palatinate state, came to the Bavarian Rhine district , the neighboring district of Ottweiler, however, fell to the Prussian Rhine Province , and in 1832 - after the dissolution of the Saxon-Coburg-Gotha enclave of Lichtenberg - also large parts of the district St. Wendel takes up.

After the First World War (1914-1918) and the entry into force of the Treaty of Versailles in 1920, this demarcation, which ran between Niederkirchen and Sankt Wendel, Saal and Werschweiler, had a strong economic impact. The neighboring districts of Ottweiler and large parts of the St. Wendel district fell to the Saar region , which was economically dependent on France , in 1920 , while Niederkirchen and the central Ostertal remained in the Palatinate . However, many Ostertal workers were cross-border commuters in the Saar area between 1920 and 1935 and crossed a customs border twice a day between work and home .

After the Second World War , Niederkirchen and the other Ostertal communities of Hoof , Marth , Saal , Osterbrücken and Bubach (today districts of the district town of St. Wendel ) joined the Bavarian-Palatinate district of Kusel after a referendum and moved to the district of St. Wendel in the then autonomous Saarland . The main concern of the Ostertal population was job security for most of the people who work in Saarland. The fears seemed justified, since in 1929 people from the Palatinate were the first to be affected by layoffs in the Saar area, which was then administered by French.

During the district reform in Saarland, the office and the community were dissolved. Since January 1, 1974, the former community of Niederkirchen i. O. to the district town of Sankt Wendel .

politics

Since 1994, the St. Wendel districts of Bubach, Marth, Niederkirchen and Saal have been part of a common district. The local council of the district has eleven members, the mayor is Thea Edinger, SPD.

The distribution of seats after the last elections:

choice	CDU	SPD	left	FLMO	total
2019	-	7th	1	3	11 seats
2014	3	7th	1	-	11 seats
2009	2	6th	3	-	11 seats
2004	4th	7th	-	-	11 seats
1999	3	8th	-	-	11 seats
1994	2	8th	-	1	11 seats

Infrastructure

Until 1980, the Ostertalbahn , built between 1934 and 1938, carried people and goods between Ottweiler and Schwarzerden . This railway still exists today and is operated, among other things, as a museum railway supported by the Ostertalbahn eV (AkO) working group . The federal highway 420 follows this route.

Culture and sights

Protestant Church Niederkirchen: Mask console

Margaret Church

→ Main article : Margarethenkirche

The outstanding attraction of Niederkirchen is the essentially Romanesque - early Gothic St. Margaret's Church , which has been Protestant since the Reformation was introduced in 1538 . The oldest parts (12th / 13th century) are the basement of the tower and a barrel-vaulted room on the north side, which is now used as a baptistery . The tower was raised in the 16th century with a protruding upper floor with a pointed helmet . The southern nave (dated 1517) has strong buttresses . The late Gothic windows with their complete tracery are also preserved here. The interior (3 aisles) is characterized by late Gothic reticulated vaults . Grotesque masks serve as console figures . The keystones are versatile symbolic content, u. a. there is the Bundschuh . Another - unexplained - motive is a hand reaching out for a ring; the same motif can be found a second time on the outer wall of the choir . As today's Protestant parish of Niederkirchen in the Deanery Kusel it belongs to the Evangelical Church of the Palatinate . The oldest completely preserved duet bells in the Saarland is located in the bell tower . Both bells of the master Otto von Speyer were cast in bronze in 1414 . The large bell in a ¹ (650 kg, Ø 102.1 cm) and the small bell in b ¹ (400 kg, Ø 88 cm) have been hung on a four-compartment wooden bell chair since 1985 , where they also received new ellipsoid clappers.

Educational institutions

• kindergarten
• Primary school: The first school in Niederkirchen was founded in 1561/62, since then there have been several new buildings and renovations. The current elementary school building dates from 1964 and has had the status of a primary school since 1996.
• Former Saartechnikum (vocational school), in a building used as a regular school from 1931 to 1964
• A former home economics vocational school on Rathausstrasse, built in 1953, no longer exists; the building was converted into private apartments.

literature

• Oberhauser, Fred: Das Saarland, DuMont art travel guide, 4th edition Cologne 1995, p. 270 f.
• Knaurs Kulturführer Saarland, Munich 1994, p. 162 f.
• Ziskoven, Roman: The Evangelical Church in Niederkirchen im Ostertal, in: Westricher Heimatblätter. - 35 (2004), 2, pp. 3-57
• Literature on Niederkirchen (St. Wendel) in the Saarland Bibliography

Web links

• Map / pictures
• The bell of the Protestant church in Niederkirchen in the Ostertal

Individual evidence

1. ↑ St. Wendel, Numbers, Data, Facts ( Memento of the original from July 25, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ^ Federal Statistical Office (ed.): Historical municipality directory for the Federal Republic of Germany. Name, border and key number changes in municipalities, counties and administrative districts from May 27, 1970 to December 31, 1982 . W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart / Mainz 1983, ISBN 3-17-003263-1 , p. 810 .
3. ↑ Bylaws on the division of the district town of St. Wendel into municipal districts ( memento of the original dated November 8, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF file; 53 kB) 
4. ↑ St. Wendel, Stadtteile ( Memento of the original from July 25, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ↑ St. Wendel, Elections, Local Council
6. ↑ Homepage of the Ostertalbahn