Several tributary brooks flow from side valleys, forming a radial pattern and emptying into the Krottelbach within the municipality.

When the Remigiusland was donated by a Frankish king in the 5th century to the Bishopric of Reims, the churches in Osterna (Niederkirchen, now an outlying centre of Sankt Wendel) and Ouenbach (Ohmbach) with Krottelbach did not belong to it.

Rather, these two parishes remained first Imperial domain and only later, at an unknown time, were they given by a Frankish king as a donation to the Archbishopric of Mainz.

In 976, Archbishop of Mainz Willigis (975-1011) brought about the refounding of the Disibodenberg Monastery, which then stood as the hub of archiepiscopal holdings in the lands on the Rhine’s left bank.

To bring home this monastery's special status, Willigis bequeathed it extensive holdings in the surrounding area, among them the two parishes mentioned above, which were transferred out of the bishopric's belongings.

The result was that the Remigiusland around Kusel and the domains held by the Archbishopric of Mainz in the Ostertal (valley) and on the Ohmbach (river), which lay right next to it, were jointly administered.

This bequest was soon fulfilled: After taking part in a delegation to Spain, which offered King Alfonso X of Castile the German crown, Gerlach died, possibly in 1259, and the two parishes found their way into the Monastery's hands (some accounts falsely state that Gerlach did not even make it back from Spain).

Less than 200 years later, the Werschweiler Monastery was dissolved in the Reformation, and the holding passed to the Counts Palatine of Zweibrücken, whose rule had begun in 1444.

Within these none too fathomable development phases arose Krottelbach, but only during the 14th century, according to author Fritz Kleinschmidt's theory, at the forks of the various brooks, and as a branch settlement of the Cheiz Estate, and thus after Count Gerlach V's 1258 bequest.

This has caused some difficulty in ascertaining what the village's population was then, for in the so-called Konker Protokollen, the 12 hearths (for this, read “households”) with 65 inhabitants listed for Krottelbach were actually only the ones on the north side of the brook, in the parish of Konken.

Like all villages in the region around Kusel, Krottelbach suffered heavily under the twin blows of the Plague and the Thirty Years' War.

There were newcomers, too, but more people died towards the end of the 17th century in French King Louis XIV's wars of conquest.

Krottelbach now found itself in the Mairie (“Mayoralty”) of Konken, the Canton of Kusel, the Arrondissement of Birkenfeld and the Department of Sarre.

[8] Krottelbach was until not at all very long ago still characterized by agriculture, but even in the 19th century, workers held a great share of the population, which later grew.

In the time after the First World War, the number of workers, most of whom were known as Saargänger – “Saar-goers”, from their commuting habits – became more than half Krottelbach's workforce.

The following table shows population development over the centuries for Krottelbach, with some figures broken down by religious denomination:[9] Krottelbach's name is taken to mean the settlement on the like-named brook, which goes back to the Germanic word Kruftala, and from the beginning has meant “Toadbrook” (this would be Krötenbach in German).

Nevertheless, writer Ernst Christmann tried to trace the name back to a crypt (Gruft in German) or a cave (Höhle).

In the 1355 document that first mentions Krottelbach, the village is called Crofftelbach, in which the Germanic root can still clearly be recognized, whereas in the centuries that followed, the double F disappeared.

In a few reports, an estate called Cheiz, which was mentioned in 1238 in a document from the Wörschweiler Monastery, is named as the origin of the village of Krottelbach.

[11] Krottelbach belonged from its founding to the village church in Ohmbach, which Count Gerlach V of Veldenz had bequeathed to the Werschweiler Monastery after 1258.

After the Thirty Years’ War, there was supposedly freedom of religion, but on into the 19th century, the inhabitants of Krottelbach remained solidly Reformed, a faith that united with the Lutherans in 1817 in the Protestant Union.

[14] The municipality's arms might be described thus: Argent on ground vert an ox passant guardant gules horned and unguled Or.

[15] The following are listed buildings or sites in Rhineland-Palatinate’s Directory of Cultural Monuments:[16] In the nearby woods are seven marked hiking trails.

[19] Krottelbach has a village community centre, and also a hiking clubhouse called Zum Hohen Fels (“At the High Crag”).

After Theiß was at first always praised for his hard work and unimpeachable moral conduct, later there were criticisms to the effect that he was using more farmland than he was entitled to by the list of usage rights.

The couple of Morgen that he was working, though, amounted to woodland of questionable quality that hardly yielded bountiful crops.