Hahnweiler

With its 218 inhabitants – which includes those who hold only a secondary residence here – (as at 31 January 2011), Hahnweiler is the third smallest municipality in the Verbandsgemeinde.

Hahnweiler, or Hanwilre as it was known in the Middle Ages, belonged to the comital House of Tholey holdings in the Moselgau (a territory that stretched along the Moselle).

By 1397, Count Friedrich von Veldenz had bought from Geretrud Broich, her son Emmerich and his wife the estate, along with its serfs, interests and rights at Hanwilre and Moysberg (now Mosberg, part of Mosberg-Richweiler, itself an outlying centre of Nohfelden) for 50 Rhenish guilders.

After the Nohfelden Gerichtsweistum (a Weistum – cognate with English wisdom – was a legal pronouncement issued by men learned in law in the Middle Ages and early modern times; Gericht means “court”), the rightful judges of the high court were deemed to be the Counts Palatine of Zweibrücken.

Wendel Gelzenleichter, his wife Agnes, son Nickel and daughter Elisa from Hahnweiler were Oberstein serfs in 1603.

Wendel performed “along with the thresher at Hanwiller and his fellow heirs at Berßwiller a goods transport for the Count of Oberstein.

The village’s Reformed parishioners were parochially bound with Wolfersweiler before French Revolutionary times, and thereafter with Berschweiler.

Coat of arms
Coat of arms