Niederalben

Niederalben
Coat of arms
Niederalben
Location of Niederalben within Kusel district
Coordinates: 49°36′24″N 7°28′01″E / 49.60659°N 7.4669°E / 49.60659; 7.4669Coordinates: 49°36′24″N 7°28′01″E / 49.60659°N 7.4669°E / 49.60659; 7.4669
Country	Germany
State	Rhineland-Palatinate
District	Kusel
Municipal assoc.	Altenglan
Government
• Mayor	Andreas Hübsch
Area
• Total	8.81 km2 (3.40 sq mi)
Elevation	210 m (690 ft)
Population (2015-12-31)
• Total	285
• Density	32/km2 (84/sq mi)
Time zone	CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)
Postal codes	66887
Dialling codes	06387
Vehicle registration	KUS

Niederalben 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 of Altenglan, whose seat is in the like-named municipality.

The municipality lies in the Steinalb valley in the Western Palatinate. The municipal area is 72.7% wooded. Niederalben lies at an elevation of between 180 and 250 m above sea level on the Steinalb’s left bank. This brook empties into the Glan only a few hundred metres downstream from the village. Running alongside the brook is a village bypass. The streets within the village itself sprout off the original through road that the bypass has now replaced and lead into the little side dales. Elevations outside the village reach heights of greater than 400 m above sea level. Among the more noteworthy of these is the Mittagsfels, with its craggy steep slopes looming over the built-up area. The Glan and Steinalb valleys are rather narrow, and on either side, a broad plateau spreads out. Two thirds of the former municipal area (before 1938) today lies within the Baumholder Troop Drilling Ground, a military facility created by the Nazis.

Niederalben borders in the north on the Baumholder Troop Drilling Ground, in the east on the municipality of Sankt Julian, in the south on the municipality of Ulmet and in the west on the municipality of Rathsweiler.

Also belonging to Niederalben is the outlying homestead of Neuwirtshaus.

Niederalben’s appearance is characterized by its topographical location. The street with the newer houses runs parallel to the Steinalb, right near which building was formerly avoided owing to the flooding danger. In the narrow side dales, two centres have formed, called Oberdorf and Unterdorf (“upper village” and “lower village”). Where the two side dales meet stands the old village church. Nearby stands the Evangelical parish hall, which long served as a stand-in church, although the old church has now been properly renovated and now once more fulfils its original purpose. The trend towards “modernity” claimed many old farmhouses in the rush to convert existing properties, often radically, into modern dwellings, but nowadays the trend is more towards striving to preserve older building forms. The municipality has become almost wholly a residential community, a great shift from its former function as a pure farming village. In 1994, the phenological weather station run by the German Weather Service in Offenbach was closed after having existed since the end of the Second World War. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the municipality had a vast woodland in the Steinalb area that was tended by the municipality’s own forester. This forest, along with a great part of the old municipal area, now belongs to the Baumholder Troop Drilling Ground, a big restricted area, and is now tended by the state forest administration in Baumholder. A forester’s house for the Steinalb area long stood in Niederalben, but this has since been sold. The main farming lands are found on the high plateau on either side of the dale. The greater part of the municipal woodland now found in what is left of the municipal area was planted after the Second World War. Within the municipal area lie two nature conservation areas, “Mittagsfels” with its dry grassland and rare flora, and “Steinalbmündung”, a bird conservation area.