The municipality lies in the Kusel Musikantenland (“Minstrels’ Land") in the Western Palatinate, in the northerly shelter of a ridge stretching southeastwards from the 402 m-high Odersberg (or Ödesberg).

Surrounded by gardens and meadows with many fruit trees, Etschberg lies in a relatively small municipal area with an elevation ranging from 220 to 320 m above sea level.

Etschberg was four times district winner as well placing high on other occasions, coming in second in regional and state competition.

[4] The Etschberg area was settled in both prehistoric and Gallo-Roman times, bearing witness to which are local archaeological finds.

According to the 1364 document, all villages in the Amt of Altenglan-Brücken, and thus also Etschberg, had to materially support the newlyweds Heinrich III of Veldenz and Lauretta of Sponheim, who had chosen Lichtenberg Castle as their seat.

On the other hand, since no burials are listed until 1668 (twenty years after the war ended), it can be assumed that the villagers back then were young families who had come to Etschberg to repopulate it.

[7] Etschberg lay in French times from 1801 to 1814 in the Department of Sarre, the Arrondissement of Birkenfeld, the Canton of Kusel and the Mairie (“Mayoralty”) of Quirnbach.

During the 1849 Palatine-Badish Uprising, the cantonal defence board gathered together 19 young men who had been recruited for the first contingent of Revolutionary troops.

By the time of the 1933 Reichstag elections, after Hitler had already seized power, local support for the Nazis had swollen to 35.9% while the Communists’ share of the vote had risen slightly to 54.7%.

The Nazis nevertheless prevailed in the end, and Hitler's success in these elections paved the way for his Enabling Act of 1933 (Ermächtigungsgesetz), thus starting the Third Reich in earnest.

According to the so-called 1609 Konker Protokolle (Konken Protocols), there were 11 families living in Etschberg in that year, with 48 inhabitants, among them 22 married people, one widow, 22 children, a manservant and two maidservants.

Thus, even before the Thirty Years' War, agriculture was not pronounced in Etschberg, although it was certain that, through the one farmer that they had, all families worked at farming as a secondary occupation.

During the great population growth in the 18th century, during which hardly any emigration was recorded, Etschberg grew into one of the biggest villages around Kusel.

Etschberg was developing into a workers’ village, and beginning in the 19th century, it was becoming a centre of the Wandermusikantentum, the industry of travelling musicians.

The following table shows population development over the centuries for Etschberg, with some figures broken down by religious denomination:[9] The village's name is made up of the placename ending —berg (“mountain” in German) with the prefix Etsch—, which stems from an old German verb etzen, a word that meant “eat” (essen in Modern High German), “browse” (äsen) or “feed” (atzen; used when speaking of young birds) among other things, and thus it refers to animals feeding, and the name would mean a meadow or grazing land that lies at a mountain.

[10] The former village of Leidenstall, whose name still appears in the rural cadastral toponym “Leidstaler Hube”, lay to the municipal area's south, so as to be within Rehweiler’s limits.

Even then, a building was still standing near the village's location within Etschberg's limits, the so-called Huberhaus from which watch was kept over the surrounding forest.

[11] Etschberg lay in the Remigiusland, and thereby belonged from the time of its founding to the Church of Reims, although in terms of ecclesiastical organization it was subject to the Archbishopric of Mainz.

Within the regional ecclesiastical organization the village belonged to the Church of Kusel during the Middle Ages and even into Early Modern Times.

In the age of the Reformation, all the inhabitants converted first to Lutheranism and then on Count Palatine Johannes I's orders in 1588, they had to drop Martin Luther’s teachings and adopt Calvinism.

[1] The German blazon reads: In Silber auf gewölbtem, grünen Boden ein kniender, grünbekleideter Jäger mit roter Feder am Hut und goldenem Pfeil mit blauer Spitze in gespanntem, goldenen Bogen.

The municipality's arms might in English heraldic language be described thus: Argent in base a mount vert on which a hunter kneeling proper vested of the second, his hat with a feather gules, with an arrow Or barbed of the first in a bow drawn of the fourth.

The arms have been borne since 1982 when they were approved by the now defunct Rheinhessen-Pfalz Regierungsbezirk administration in Neustadt an der Weinstraße.

Then in the 19th century, the great stone quarries arose in Rammelsbach and on the Glan which, although they were indeed hard jobs, offered fairly good earning opportunities, for those who could get themselves hired.

Not everyone could work in the mines, and this spurred the travelling musician industry (Wandermusikantentum), which arose in the earlier half of the century.

[17] Originally, from the late 17th century onwards, schoolchildren from Etschberg attended school in Kusel, as did those from Godelhausen and Eisenberg.

In 1711, the three municipalities reported to the government in Zweibrücken that the way to Kusel was too far, and that the three villages wanted to build a school out of their own resources.

It is to be understood, though, that two thirds of the schoolchildren were from Etschberg, also that this, the biggest of the three villages, was seeking to build its own schoolhouse, and moreover, that the one in Godelhausen was falling into disrepair.

This teacher, who also worked at the tailor’s trade, was reported to the government by the municipality, who claimed that he had hired an apprentice who was a sodomite.

The Etschberg winter school teacher Johann Jakob Reiß now took over the main teaching job in Godelhausen.