[4] Archaeological finds in the neighbouring municipalities of Kreimbach-Kaulbach and Wolfstein, as well as parts of buildings unearthed inside and outside the Zweikirche, bear witness to human habitation in protohistoric and Roman times.

Geographer Goswin Widder, writing in 1788, recorded that also in the Late Middle Ages, a knight, Sir Hans of Flörsheim, was enfeoffed with the village.

[8] Rutsweiler belonged to the Amt of Wolfstein (court of Rothselberg) and shared from 1312 on with the town and municipalities in the upper Lautertal the patchwork of permanent pledged landholds.

Changing territorial rulers notwithstanding, the rights that the Offenbach Monastery had originally held to the Rutsweiler estate remained untouched.

[9] The only Erbbestandsbriefe (“hereditary holding letters”, actually pledge agreements) issued by the geistliche Güterverwaltung (“spiritual administration of estates”) in Zweibrücken in the Dukes’ name that have been preserved, unfortunately, are the ones from the 18th century.

They describe the lands belonging to the lordly estate, “gardens, meadows and cropland” and name the pledgeholders, who had to pay for their pledges at the monastery each year at Martinmas.

The plots of land of the roughly 30 ha estate lay scattered on the slopes that rose to the west, and that were safe from flooding.

The monastery estate's hub was the Herren- und Hofhaus (“lord and estate house”), which in the early 18th century was held by the Hauptbeständer (“main holder”) Heinrich Klein, and it was furthermore presumably the farm later owned by the economic adviser Eugen Klein, which was torn down in 1985 to make way for the new village thoroughfare.

Those in the uppermost sixth of society (Höchstbesteuerte) in those days were Nikolaus Woll, Martin Klein, Johannes Rosenberger and Heinrich Diehl.

[11] During the time of French rule from 1801 to 1814, Rutsweiler an der Lauter belonged to the Mairie (“Mayoralty”) of Rothselberg, the Canton of Wolfstein, the Arrondissement of Kaiserslautern and the Department of Mont-Tonnerre (or Donnersberg in German) whose seat was at Mainz.

[12] After Napoleonic times and the Congress of Vienna, the whole of the Palatinate on the Rhine’s left bank passed to the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1816, and thereafter, Rutsweiler shared its territorial history with Wolfstein.

It lay in the Bürgermeisterei (“Mayoralty”) of Rothselberg and the Canton of Wolfstein, but now in the Landkommissariat (later Bezirksamt and then Landkreis, or district) of Kusel.

[15] Rutsweiler an der Lauter was a centre of the West Palatine Musikantentum (roughly "musicianhood"), a musical phenomenon that saw local musicians travelling and working all over Europe and the world.

Rutsweiler an der Lauter, originally a village of farmers, has since grown into a residential community with opportunities to develop the tourism industry.

In earlier years, the villagers’ voting patterns showed a marked conservative tendency, but nowadays there has been a rather sharp swing towards the SPD.

The following table shows population development since Napoleonic times for Rutsweiler an der Lauter, with some figures broken down by religious denomination:[17] *In the 1939 census, the workers in the two Nazi Reichsarbeitsdienst detachments, which had been established within Rutsweiler's limits in the dale by the boundary with Wolfstein in 1938, were included in the municipality's population.

It can thus be assumed that throughout the Middle Ages, this church stood beside a small village that could have comprised only a rectory and one estate with stables and barns.

[20] From the time of the Reformation onwards, Lutheranism was the predominant faith in Rutsweiler an der Lauter, even after the Thirty Years' War when there was a general religious freedom.

The Evangelical Zweikirche that stands outside the village has its beginnings in the 11th century, although it shows developmental features from later times up to Late Gothic.