The Soonwald stretches out between the Guldenbach and the Simmerbach and with an area of 25 000 ha is after the Palatinate Forest western Germany’s second biggest contiguous woodland.

In this sanctuary for red deer has been not only the Jäger aus Kurpfalz (“Hunter from Electoral Palatinate”, the subject of a well known folksong), but also the Hunsrück “national hero” – actually a robber – known as Schinderhannes, who made the place his hideout.

[4] It is the custom in many parts of Germany for defined areas of rural land to bear proper names, and the countryside within Dörrebach’s limits is no exception.

In 1628, ore mining near Seibersbach had its first documentary mention when two Junker (young noblemen) from Dörrebach complained to the Archbishop of Mainz about some ironworkers at the Stromberger Neuhütte (ironworks), who together with French and Spanish soldiers had been causing damage to the woods and fields in their quest for iron ore. Also important are the limestone deposits in the eastern part of the municipal area.

Since 1925, the limestone pod that lies here has been called the Stromberger Karst because here, watercourses sink into the ground, flowing onwards underground, which in drier years can lead to the Dörrebach’s disappearing utterly.

Specific details are missing, but the rather well established traditional story about two Roman roads joining each other here (one from Mainz-Bingen and the other from Kreuznach, which after the junction led by way of the Thiergarten and Argenthal to Neumagen on the Moselle) suggests that this area before the Soonwald was inhabited quite early on.

In the vicinity of the Neupfalz Chief Forestry Office, armbands, bronze fibulae and urns for keeping ash were discovered in a barrow.

It is also believed that rural cadastral names containing the German word for “wall”, “Mauer” (of which there are three) have some historical link to Roman building remnants found in some parts of Dörrebach’s municipal area.

It is known from records that from the mid to late 15th century the Electors of Mainz had enfeoffed the Lords of Sponheim, whose landholds lay in the Upper Rhine districts, with it.

[8] On 5 May 1672, at the Schloss, sometime between 0900 and 1000, at the age of 61 years, 5 weeks and 2 days, the Imperial baron, highborn lord, Johann Werner Wolf von Sponheim, died.

In February 1702, Dörrebach passed by way of sale to the Baron, later Count, of Ingelheim, Franz Adolf Dietrich, Kammergericht President in Wetzlar.

Under the terms of the 1697 Treaty of Ryswick, however, Louis XIV was obliged to cede Electoral Palatinate and some neighbouring territories back to the Empire.

As far back as 1837, Dörrebach’s first watermain was built, drawing water from the Hemgen-Born, a spring in the Royal Forest and carrying it through cast-iron pipes to the village.

On 12 March 1876, a frightful windstorm struck Dörrebach and wrought widespread devastation, tearing roofs off and snapping or uprooting countless trees.

The jury found him guilty, and the prosecutor asked the court to impose the death penalty and to strip Orben of his civil rights.

[11] The leadup to the First World War was characterized by a tense atmosphere as everyone in Dörrebach awaited news of a solution to Europe’s quickly deteriorating political situation.

A crowd gathered at reeve Bernhard May’s home in the hope of finding out more news while weeping was heard from the village’s women and children.

The next day, Philipp Dhein’s and Eva Gerhardt’s general stores were both beset by housewives seeking to buy whatever they could in the way of food, reasoning that it would soon become scarce.

Two young lads from the village nearly got themselves shot when on the way back from Seibersbach, where they had gone to buy bread, they chose to rest awhile in a roadside ditch next to a rye field.

The solution was to buy a consignment of potatoes from Stettin in Pomerania (then still in Germany, now Szczecin in Poland), which Robert Molzahn, a wholesale dealer in produce and wood, duly and thoughtfully shipped by rail to Stromberg for the price of 215 ℳ.

On 9 November 1935, the foundation stone was laid for Dörrebach’s new National Socialist Volkshaus (“People’s House”, meaning in this case a municipal hall).

The date for the occasion was chosen to honour the 16 Nazi “heroes” who had fallen in the Beer Hall Putsch twelve years to the day earlier.

After a fortnight, the Americans pulled out of Dörrebach and moved on, taking along with them various persons from the local Nazi Party organization who had had leadership roles in the soon-to-be-bygone Third Reich (which indeed ceased to exist about five and a half weeks later, after Adolf Hitler killed himself and his appointed successor Karl Dönitz surrendered to the Allies) and later handed them over to the French occupational authorities who held them in a camp.

The legendary German outlaw, Schinderhannes (true name: Johannes Bückler; ~1778–1803), found himself at various times within Dörrebach’s limits, and the villagers long remembered him, even after he was beheaded by guillotine in 1803, after finally being caught.

A clergyman named Daniel reports a story related to Schinderhannes:In the earliest years (1871/1872) of my time as pastor, one day somebody found a man at the lavatory, dead.

So that his money would not be taken by accomplices on the way, Schinderhannes revealed to him the day’s password: Eckstein Ass ist Trumpf (“Cornerstone ace is trump”).

[15] The unusual alignment of Dörrebach’s municipal limit in the area of the Lehnmühle (mill) bolsters the likelihood that there was once a hamlet there named Hedisweiler (Hidewilre), which sometime about the 16th century passed to Schöneberg.

[1] The municipality’s arms might be described thus: Vert a bend wavy argent abased, in sinister chief a cross Latin countercompony gules and Or.

The parish belonged from 1420 to 1702 to the Counts of Sponheim, and this may well explain the chequered pattern (“countercompony”, meaning with two rows of squares of alternating tinctures) borne on this cross.

[20] The following are listed buildings or sites in Rhineland-Palatinate’s Directory of Cultural Monuments:[21] The kermis (church consecration festival), called "Kerb", is held either on the Feast of the Assumption of Mary (15 August) or, if that falls in midweek, on the following Sunday and Monday.