[4] From the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages comes no direct information about archaeological finds anywhere within Relsberg's limits.

[5] An exact time for Relsberg’s founding cannot be pinpointed, but it is likely that it did not arise until the High Middle Ages, perhaps in the 12th century, around a castle that had been built sometime earlier.

He was a Burgmann at Castle Lichtenberg, and his name cropped up in a document from the Count of Veldenz as a witness, or at least so wrote Father Michael Frey, a 19th-century Palatinate historian, albeit without citing a source, so that it cannot be verified.

In an account issued about 1555, a man named Peter von Relspergck crops up, who for a stated amount of wax had to pay two albus.

[8] An important Lord of Reipoltskirchen in the 16th century was Johannes, who as a young knight for a time led Franz von Sickingen’s army.

His daughter-in-law Amalia wed Count Philipp I of Leiningen-Westerburg as her second husband, who introduced the Reformation into all his holdings, and also into the Lordship of Reipoltskirchen.

Within the French First Republic, Relsberg now belonged to the Mairie (“Mayoralty”) of Hefersweiler, the Canton of Wolfstein, the Arrondissement of Kaiserslautern and the Department of Mont-Tonnerre (or Donnersberg in German).

After the reconquest of the German lands on the Rhine’s left bank in 1814 by Prussian, Austrian and Russian troops, the Congress of Vienna drew new boundaries yet again.

After a transitional time, Relsberg was grouped into the bayerischer Rheinkreis, later known as Rheinpfalz (“Rhenish Palatinate”), an exclave of the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1816.

By the time of the 1933 Reichstag elections, after Hitler had already seized power, local support for the Nazis had swollen to a full 100%.

Hitler's success in these elections paved the way for his Enabling Act of 1933 (Ermächtigungsgesetz), thus starting the Third Reich in earnest.

The village stayed with Bavaria until the end of the Second World War, when it became part of the Federal Republic of Germany within the then newly founded state of Rhineland-Palatinate.

The greater part of Relsberg's workforce must nowadays commute to jobs elsewhere, in, among other places, Kaiserslautern, Wolfstein and Lauterecken.

Formerly, there were other job opportunities besides farming, albeit slight ones, within the village, namely in the craft occupations and at the stone quarries and mines in neighbouring areas.

While a steady rise in population was to be noted throughout the 19th century, in the 20th, there was an at first gradual and then eventually a worsening loss in numbers.

The name had its first documentary mention in an original document now kept at the Landesarchiv Speyer (State Archive) issued sometime between 1432 and 1462.

Other names that the village has borne over time are Relsburg (before 1491), Relspergck (1555), Reylsberg (1560), Regelspurg or Regelsburg (1565) and Rölsberg (1824).

[13] Relsberg originally belonged to the Glan chapter within the Archbishopric of Mainz, and in terms of ecclesiastical organization was tied to Reipoltskirchen.

In those days, all the villagers were, under the principle of cuius regio, eius religio, followers of Martin Luther’s teachings.

In 2005, the Relsberg Local History and Cultural Club leased the ground and set itself to work making The Old Graveyard publicly visitable.

He who gives himself over to thought under those May blossoms and young leaves on the graveyard bench encounters an original picture of Romanticism: mysteriously carefree, the colourful spring overgrows the transient idyll lying in the rubble.

[1] The German blazon reads: Über silbernem Dreiberg in Grün zwei gekreuzte silberne Ähren.

The municipality's arms might in English heraldic language be described thus: Vert two ears of wheat slipped per saltire above, issuant from base, a mount of three, all argent.

[20] The earliest information about schooling in Relsberg comes from the late 18th century in connection with silkworm raising by a 50-year-old schoolteacher whose name is unknown.

Menhorn was in debt, but managed to get back on his feet by marrying a craftsman's daughter from the Feuchtwangen area.