Löllbach is a typical clump village and lies between Lauterecken and Meisenheim, off the major traffic routes, in the North Palatine Uplands at an elevation of 208 m (682 ft) above mean sea level.
In the rural cadastral area known as the “Lagerstück” near Löllbach, a stone hatchet and a sharp-edged arrowhead were unearthed, which these early hunters would not have been happy to lose.
In their struggle with Germanic peoples who had crossed the Rhine, the Celts fled for shelter behind the ringwalls at their refuge castles that they had built on mountaintops: Marialskopf near Medard, Raumberg, Donnersberg, and many others.
The Celts, however, were outnumbered and melded with the victors, with the result being the Treveri, a people of mixed Celtic and Germanic stock, from whom the Latin name for the city of Trier, Augusta Treverorum, is also derived.
Nevertheless, the Treveri were hardly spared foreign rule, as the Romans remained in their land as rulers for the next 500 years with the Rhine as the Imperial frontier to be guarded against the Germanic peoples that they had driven out.
From their stronghold at Trier, supplies rolled through the Löllbach area to the frontier, but not before the old wilderness paths gave way to paved roads leading across the heights.
These would have carried all manner of traffic, from marching legions to commercial wagons to dignified Roman ladies hurrying to their husbands in some garrison town on the Rhine.
Because counts and lords were locked in a seemingly endless struggle with each other over their feudal rights, there was always feuding, and the serfs were often the ones who paid the price, by being mishandled, robbed, murdered and having their homes set ablaze by soldiers.
[7] In 1319, Löllbach had its first documentary mention when a document from the Hochgericht auf der Heide (“High Court on the Heath”) named a village called Leubilbach.
The High Court on the Heath comprised the whole area of the Winterhauch between the Nahe and the Glan, this according to the boundaries laid down for it in many Weistümer (singular: Weistum; cognate with English wisdom, these were legal pronouncements issued by men learned in law in the Middle Ages and early modern times).
The boundary ran from Oberstein down the Nahe as far as Hachenfels (a castle named in 1075), thence by way of Otzweiler to Hundsbach, Schweinschied, Löllbach, Udencappeln and Grumbach to Lauterecken.
For a time, a man from Löllbach held the post of Amt Schultheiß, bearing witness to which is the gravestone built into the church wall in memory of Johann Ludwig Meurer.
In the 14th century, the Waldgraves of Kyrburg bought the one part of the village that they had for some unknown reason sold, back from the knightly family of Frey in Oberwesel.
It goes without saying that they also needed goose feathers, flax and finished linens, along with eggs, fattened geese (for Martinmas), and also Shrovetide chickens, flitches of bacon and smoked meat, all of which had to be delivered on particular days throughout the year.
It may well have reached across the modern street, Schweinschieder Weg, for behind the municipally owned memorial square is today still found a cellar from the old Kyrburg landhold.
Waldgravial territory was invaded and villages set afire by General Marquis Ambrogio Spinola's (1569–1630) Imperial-Spanish troops, then by the Swedes, then by the Imperial Croats, and next by the French armies and last of all once again by the Spaniards.
Standing as a notable exception among the lords of the Waldgraviate was Prince Johann Albert Dominik von Salm-Kyrburg, who was honoured as a thrifty, caring housemaster to the local people.
In the Treaty of Campo Formio of 17 October 1797, the Emperor, in his country's (Austria's) name, agreed to a secret article that ceded the Rhine’s left bank to French sovereignty.
All that is known is that a young man from “Altshannese” who lived at the house now called the altes Pfarrhaus (“Old Rectory”), not only took part in much fighting in France, but also fought in the decisive battles at Ligny and Waterloo.
Before that year had ended though, the Oberamt passed once again to a new authority, this time the Kingdom of Prussia, for the soldiers from Löllbach had fought on the losing side in the Austro-Prussian War.
A glass of beer then cost 10 ₰, and in school, children sang: “Der Kaiser ist ein lieber Mann…” (“The Emperor is a dear man…”).
Anyone who cares to read the names on Löllbach's warriors’ memorial can get a sense of the pain, woes and tears that this event brought the villagers.
His promises were believed, and his intentions and laws, right up to the Enabling Act and the Third Reich's racist decrees, were blindly accepted, and the Weimar Republic, which had never had an effective democracy, was swept aside.
As for the graveyard's location, the municipality's mayor, Harry Schneider, identifies it as lying west of Kappeler Weg in the cadastral area known as “Dähältgen”.
According to Professor Ernst Christmann of Kaiserslautern, who greatly concerned himself with placename research, villages with names ending in —bach (“brook”) arose at many different times over the centuries.
This came about when the original Frankish centres outgrew their loess soils and young, marriageable farmers began clearing goodly areas of old-growth forest for expanded farmland.
An example of this would be Kaulbach, whose first syllable comes from the same root as the German word Kugel (“sphere”, “ball”), a reference to stone orbs found in the brook itself.
For Leubil – there are rural cadastral areas in Palatine municipalities with names such as “Leusbil” and “Leisbil” – Professor Christmann offered the following interpretation: leusen or leisen means “hearken” or “listen”; as for bil or bül, this refers to a hill.
This, however, would not exclude the existence of the odd homestead dating from even longer ago on the surrounding heights, as the settlement patterns in the region are known from evidence to have become villagelike only quite late.
As if to confirm this, a 1698 compilation record from the Oberamt of Kyrburg states that the village then had 18 households (it also listed 12 in Schweinschied, 2 in Otzweiler and 15 in Sien along with its farms).