At the foot of the Selberg rises the Lammelbach, which flows through the Löffelmannsgraben and empties into the Lauter near the Schmeißbachermühle (a former mill[3]).

During the 19th century, the village expanded only slightly, and even the new building work done in the wake of the Second World War was not very great.

[8] From the time of its founding, Rothselberg lay within the free Imperial Domain (Reichsland) around Kaiserslautern.

In 1420, Archbishop Konrad III of Mainz gave Friedrich von Flörsheim one sixth of the tithes from the Rode Seelberg (another former form of the village's name).

Goswin Widder, though, wrote in 1788: “The court of Roth-Seelberg along with the villages that are counted as part of it, Rußweiler, Kaulbach, Kreimbach and Frankelbach, has posted to it one Schultheiß and four Schöffen (roughly “lay jurists”).

By the time of the 1933 Reichstag elections, after Hitler had already seized power, local support for the Nazis had swollen to 95.9%.

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

Beginning in 1945, the Palatinate lay within the then newly founded state of Rhineland-Palatinate and was in the course of series of administrative reforms in 1968 united with Rhenish Hesse.

Since that time, the great majority in the village has come to be workers who must commute to jobs elsewhere, mainly to Wolfstein and Kaiserslautern.

In 1961, because of ethnic Germans driven out of Germany's former eastern territories who had come to settle, the figure was back up to 793 inhabitants, 30 of whom were Catholic.

The inhabitants’ voting patterns in earlier years exhibited a moderate conservative tendency, but since then, there has been a strong swing to support for the left-of-centre Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).

The following table shows population figures for Rothselberg over the centuries, and in some instances breaks the population down by religious affiliation:[12] According to author J. G. Widder, in the late 18th century, there were still 11 “minor estates” lying within Rothselberg's limits, which likely meant small, manageable agricultural areas upon which possibly only one farmhouse stood.

[13] Over the ages, the village has borne the following names in documents: Rode (1377), Rodeselberg (1400), Rade am Seelberg (1419), Rodeseleberg (1420), Rode (1437/1438), im Rich zu Rodeselberg (1455), zu Röde (1500), Rottselberg (1555), Rodtselberg (about 1600), Rodt Selberg (1684), Roth am Selberg (1822), Rothseelberg (1824).

[16] Rothselberg's mayor is Rainer Mohr, and his deputies are Peter Baumhardt and Jürgen Hemmer.

[17] The German blazon reads, according to one source: In Gold auf grünem Boden ein schwarzer Wolf, an einem aus dem rechten Schildrand hervorbrechenden natürlichen Felsen anspringend.

According to another, it reads: In Gold auf grünem Boden ein schwarzer Wolf, der über einen weißen Felsstein springt.

The municipality's arms might in English heraldic language be described thus: Or on ground vert a wolf salient sable langued gules over, issuant from dexter base, a stone argent.

The arms have been borne since 8 August 1988, when they were approved by the now defunct Rheinhessen-Pfalz Regierungsbezirk administration in Neustadt an der Weinstraße.

[19] The following are listed buildings or sites in Rhineland-Palatinate’s Directory of Cultural Monuments:[20] Rothselberg holds its kermis (church consecration festival, locally known as the Kerb) on the weekend before Johannistag.

Rothselberg is said to be a rural residential community for people from the most varied of occupations and is now making an effort to further its tourism industry.