The Hainbach rises at a height of 400 m on the east flank of the Roßberg mountain (637.0 m) in the Haardt, the eastern edge of the Palatinate Forest range.

After four kilometres it leaves the mountains between Frankweiler and Gleisweiler, passes through the narrow hill zone of the rift valley and enters the Upper Rhine Plain.

In 1185 Emperor Frederick Barbarossa awarded extensive estates on the territory of Zeiskam north of the village on the Hainbach to the Knights Hospitaller.

The order, whose Catholic successors after the Reformation period were called the Knights of Malta, founded a regional administrative centre, the Komturei of Heimbach, and named it after the stream, whose name was then spelt with an m. In 1525, during the Peasants' War the entire site including its church was burned down by rebellious farmers of the Nußdorf Haufen and permanently destroyed.

In 2011 the municipality of Zeiskam inaugurated a monument near the few visible remains of the abbey, in the form of a Gothic sandstone arch.