Löllbach

Löllbach
Coat of arms
Löllbach
Location of Löllbach within Bad Kreuznach district
Coordinates: 49°41′20″N 7°35′35″E / 49.68887°N 7.59296°E / 49.68887; 7.59296Coordinates: 49°41′20″N 7°35′35″E / 49.68887°N 7.59296°E / 49.68887; 7.59296
Country	Germany
State	Rhineland-Palatinate
District	Bad Kreuznach
Municipal assoc.	Meisenheim
Government
• Mayor	Harry Schneider
Area
• Total	4.94 km2 (1.91 sq mi)
Elevation	208 m (682 ft)
Population (2015-12-31)
• Total	208
• Density	42/km2 (110/sq mi)
Time zone	CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)
Postal codes	67744
Dialling codes	06753
Vehicle registration	KH
Website	www.loellbach.de

Löllbach 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 of Meisenheim, whose seat is in the like-named town.

Löllbach is a typical clump village and lies between Lauterecken and Meisenheim, off the major traffic routes, in the North Palatine Uplands at an elevation of 208 m (682 ft) above mean sea level. Running through the village is the Jeckenbach, and emptying into it in the village core is the Schweinschieder Bach. The municipal area measures 494 hectares (1,220 acres).

Clockwise from the north, Löllbach’s neighbours are the municipalities of Jeckenbach and Breitenheim, which likewise lie within the Bad Kreuznach district, the municipalities of Medard and Kappeln, which lie in the neighbouring Kusel district, and the municipality of Schweinschied, also in the Bad Kreuznach district.

Also belonging to Löllbach are the outlying homesteads of Alte Ölmühle and Altheckmühle.

Some 5,000 years ago, the Löllbach area lay in trackless wilderness. The mountains were covered in old-growth forest, and most of the dales were marshy. It was at about this time, though, that the first humans set foot here, nomadic hunter-gatherer folk, whose feet made the first human paths through the area, although these would not have looked very different from trails made by the deer. In the rural cadastral area known as the “Lagerstück” near Löllbach, a stone hatchet and a sharp-edged arrowhead were unearthed, which these early hunters would not have been happy to lose. Only 2,000 years later, thus about 3000 BC, scattered bits of tribe from far away made themselves at home on the local heights at homesteads. They already knew about the metals tin and copper, and the alloy that could be made from them: bronze. Iron was then still unknown to them. Knowledge of these people’s presence comes from the graves that they left behind, barrows, known in German, not altogether accurately, as Hünengräber or “Huns’ graves”. These can be found in the Striedter Wald (forest), as well as in other places in the area. These Bronze Age dwellers had also learnt the rudiments of cropraising. These people were succeeded by the great Celtic tribes who came into the area from northern France and northern Germany to settle across their vast new homeland stretching to the northern edge of the Alps. They, too, worked the land and raised , although they hunted as well. Archaeological finds have also shown that they had also mastered pottery along with bronze and iron casting. In their time, the Löllbach area was already widely settled with homesteads in hillside glades. In their struggle with Germanic peoples who had crossed the Rhine, the Celts fled for shelter behind the ringwalls at their refuge castles that they had built on mountaintops: Marialskopf near Medard, Raumberg, Donnersberg, and many others. The Celts, however, were outnumbered and melded with the victors, with the result being the Treveri, a people of mixed Celtic and Germanic stock, from whom the Latin name for the city of Trier, Augusta Treverorum, is also derived.