The municipality lies at the foot of the 437 m-high Hühnerkopf in the Saubeertal (valley) in the Western Palatinate.

The local area is rich in forests, especially to the south, where the Hodenbach rises, flowing southwestwards to the Henschbach.

The municipality's lowest point lies near the sewage treatment plant on the way out of the village going towards Hüffler.

Along both these roads stand the village's older houses, which in many cases are typical Westrich (an historic region that encompasses areas in both Germany and France) farmhouses (Einfirsthäuser – houses with a single roof ridge), built either with a gable or an eaves facing the road.

A few of these houses are semi-detached as double farmhouses, representing a peculiarity that seldom crops up elsewhere in Westrich villages.

[5] The Wahnwegen area is rich in prehistoric archaeological finds going back to the New Stone Age.

That the Wahnwegen area was inhabited in Roman times is also known from its proximity to the well known villa rustica in Herschweiler-Pettersheim, lying only some 2 km from the Heidenhübel burying ground.

[6] Wahnwegen lay in the so-called Remigiusland around Kusel, a part of the original Imperial domain around Kaiserslautern, which in the late 6th century was donated to the Archbishopric of Reims by a Frankish king.

According to this document, the estate at Wahnwegen had to deliver four Malter of grain to Count Palatine Stephan of Zweibrücken.

In 1127, the Counts of Veldenz had taken over the Vogtei (that is, they had become “lords protector”) over the Remigiusland and incorporated the region into a newly founded county.

More than 300 years later, the last Countess of Veldenz wed the said Stephan of the Electorate of the Palatinate (as he was then known), who took his own landholds, combined them with the lands that his wife inherited in 1444 – namely the County of Veldenz – and founded the County Palatine of Zweibrücken, which was later generally described as a duchy.

Between 1801 and 1814, Wahnwegen lay in the Department of Sarre and the Mairie (“Mayoralty”) of Quirnbach in the Canton of Kusel and the Arrondissement of Birkenfeld.

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

[8] Wahnwegen was, even into the 19th century, a village characterized by agriculture, in which, however, the share of the population represented by workers in other industries began to rise considerably quite early on.

The following table shows population development over the centuries for Wahnwegen, with some figures broken down by religious denomination:[9] The village's name, Wahnwegen, means an den Wagenwegen, or “on the wain ways” (or for “wain”, read “wagon”, “cart”, “carriage”, etc., as Wagen can mean all these things in German).

Alternative interpretations see the first syllable as coming from a personal name, perhaps Werni, and the ending —wegen or —winden as meaning bei den Weiden (“by the meadows”, or perhaps “by the willows”).

The name supposedly goes back to a Celtic word for “body of water”, onto which the German placename ending —bach was added.

[11] Wahnwegen lay in the Remigiusland, and thereby was originally subject to the lordship of the Bishopric of Reims, but in terms of ecclesiastical administration, it belonged to the Archbishopric of Mainz.

After the Thirty Years' War, it was theoretically possible to choose one's religion, although the villagers in Wahnwegen remained overwhelmingly Calvinist, or at least generally Protestant after the Lutheran and Reformed faiths were united in 1817.

The arms have been borne since 1979 when they were approved by the now defunct Rheinhessen-Pfalz Regierungsbezirk administration in Neustadt an der Weinstraße.

[14] The following are listed buildings or sites in Rhineland-Palatinate’s Directory of Cultural Monuments:[15] Wahnwegen holds its kermis (church consecration festival, locally known as the Kerwe) on the fourth Sunday in September.

[18] From the time of the Reformation, the government of the Duchy of Palatinate-Zweibrücken sought to spread schooling throughout the country, so that the subjects could independently understand Holy Writ.

In 1783, a new schoolhouse for the three villages was built in Hüffler, although Schellweiler had, in the foregoing year, founded its own winter school.