The latest archaeological find was unearthed one kilometre south of Reipoltskirchen, an old Roman house, that is to say, a villa rustica, believed to have been built between about AD 100 and 200, with its associated stabling and lodging for servants.

According to Father Michael Frey's (1788–1854) Beschreibung des Rheinkreises (“Description of the Rheinkreis”, that is, the Palatinate during the time after the Congress of Vienna when it was Bavarian), it was sometime about 1181 that the lowland castle was built.

Sometime between 1194 and 1198, or perhaps even as early as 1189/1190, Reipoltskirchen had its first documentary mention in a directory of landholds kept by Count Werner von Bolant, whose family seat – a castle – stood in Bolanden on the Donnersberg.

In 1304, Count Heinrich bought from the noble knight Johann von Metz the villages of Finkenbach and Breitenborn (Gersweiler) along with the patronage rights at the church there.

As for the stepson, Johann III von Hohenfels-Reipoltskirchen, for whom Philipp had acted as regent, he took power upon his stepfather's death in 1597 and was the last in his noble line (Imperial ministerial family of the Lords of Bolanden), and died in Forbach in 1602 childless and unwed.

So instead, under the terms of her will, her sister Sydonia's (also called Sidonie) two sons, Johann Casimir and Steino von Löwenhaupt, inherited the estate, and also the County of Falkenstein.

Sydonia's younger son Steino bequeathed his half by way of his daughter Elisabeth Amalie to the Lordship of Manderscheid, who kept it until 1730, when Wolfgang Heinrich Count at Manderscheid and Blankenheim, Baron at Hohenfels and Reipoltskirchen and Lord at Keyl sold the half share for a price of 30,500 Rhenish guilders, likewise to the Counts of Hillesheim, who thus had acquired three fourths of the original Lordship.

In 1628, both through a failure of the House of Manderscheid to produce a male heir and by marriage, Reipoltskirchen became subject to an administrative arrangement called an Erbgemeinschaft or a Ganerbschaft.

In 1683, the Duchy of Palatinate-Zweibrücken passed by way of inheritance to the royal house of Sweden, and when French rule ended in Reipoltskirchen, it found itself under Swedish administration until 1718.

The deed was even prefaced with an exact description of the Lordship of Reipoltskirchen, which said in part: Die Reichsherrschaft Reipoltskirchen steht mit dem hochgräflichen Haus von Hillesheim in gleicher Gemeinschaft, liegt zwischen den hochfürstlich - zweibrückischen und kurfürstlich - pfälzischen Ländern und hat ihr eigenes, meistensteils in einem Reich fortgehendes Territorium.

By that time, though, the elder Ellrath had run into financial trouble anyway, and in 1770, he sold his share in the Lordship of Reipoltskirchen for 76,000 Gulden to the County Palatine of Zweibrücken, then ruled by Duke Christian IV.

Belonging to the lordship towards the end of its existence were the following villages: Reipoltskirchen, Nußbach, Rathskirchen, Reichsthal, Hefersweiler, Relsberg and Morbach, along with a half share of an enclosed area at Rudolphskirchen and the scattered holdings of Finkenbach-Gersweiler, Schönborn and Dörnbach.

On 24 April, the Isenburg Amtmann, Wilhelm Stern, reported to the Princely Estate Administration in Mannheim that the French had forced the subjects to take a vow to freedom and equality.

In 1797, with the beginning of French administration, the Glan became a border river and Reipoltskirchen found itself in the Department of Mont-Tonnerre (or Donnersberg in German), the Arrondissement of Kaiserslautern, the Canton of Lauterecken and the Mairie (“Mayoralty”) of Odenbach.

In 1798, he promulgated a law abolishing feudalism, along with all the payments, compulsory labour and tithes that hitherto had been every subject's burden, owed to the lord and the church in the Palatinate.

On 16 June 1799 (27 Prairial in the year VI of the Revolution), all lordly and ecclesiastical holdings were declared national property of the new state, and all the old feudal lordships were dissolved.

In 1808, the Amtshaus with its tower and some outbuildings went to Charles Baumann from Lauterecken, Henry Puricelli from Meisenheim, and Jean de Hoeffersweiler and Michael Seligmann from Kreuznach.

Within the kingdom it belonged to the Landkommissariat (district) and Canton of Kusel, and to the Bürgermeisterei (“mayoralty”) of Becherbach, although about 1895, after the onset of Imperial times, it acquired its own mayoral office.

For instance, the rampant inflation that characterized Weimar Germany at this time led to a six-pound (3 kg) loaf of bread costing more than 18,000,000,000 marks.

Despite it being the Americans who had marched into the village, Reipoltskirchen soon afterwards found itself in the French zone of occupation, and until 1955, it was subject to the Gouvernement Militaire Français in the wake of the unconditional surrender by the Third Reich.

[10][11][12][13][14] While in earlier times the greater part of Reipoltskirchen's population earned their livelihoods at agriculture, shifts in economic structure, particularly after the Second World War, have led to only one in five villagers still working the land.

However, even earlier than the war, there had been job opportunities in fields other than farming, such as craft occupations, work in stone quarries and mines and in the service of the resident lordship.

This was part of a sound-shift process that affected the German language as a whole, spreading from the east towards the end of the 15th century and gradually making its way across the Rhine into the Palatinate.

Other forms of the centre's name that have appeared in documents over time are Engelmorsweiler (no year), Wingewilr (1376), Ingwilre (1426), Ingwyler (1514), Schloss Ingweiler (1761) and Ingweilerhof (1824).

[18] Reipoltskirchen originally belonged to the Glan chapter within the Archbishopric of Mainz, even though during the Early and High Middle Ages it could have been held by Prüm Abbey in the Eifel.

The municipality's arms might in English heraldic language be described thus: Per fess azure a wheel spoked of six argent and vert semé of ten billets an anchor reversed, all of the second.

[21] The following are listed buildings or sites in Rhineland-Palatinate's Directory of Cultural Monuments:[22] Reipoltskirchen's first church, which was endowed by the village's namesake, Richbald, was followed by three others, each built on the same spot.

From 1848 comes a story that a schoolteacher named Storck was denied the right to the “use of the graveyard”, which led him to complain and have himself transferred to Erzhütten (now an outlying centre of Kaiserslautern).

In 1891, the pastor wrote “In the four years that I have been here, I have learnt that, particularly in our area, so-called Affenliebe (literally “monkey love”, meaning a kind of unhealthy, “smothering” doting) by parents towards their children prevails.

Braun, too, met with some difficulty in the village, once being blackmailed by a forest ranger who had witnessed the teacher's son forging the school inspector's signature.