Geographically, the municipal area belongs to the Glan-Alsenz mountain and hill country, which meets the Kaiserslauterer Senke (a depression) to the north.

In 1905, the Bavarian State Government – the Palatinate had belonged to the Kingdom of Bavaria since the Congress of Vienna – ordered the cession of the Kuhbrücker Hübel, with its railway station, seven houses on the slope side of Bahnhofsstraße (“Station Street”), seven others on Hefersweilerstraße, a few storage sheds next to the railway and the storehouse of the Consumvereine (“coöperatives”), to the town of Wolfstein.

The decisive factor in favour of the amalgamation of this strip of land on both sides of the railway line, which had been opened in 1883, was economic considerations.

Thus, until the village of Roßbach in der Pfalz along with all its Ortsteile was merged into the town of Wolfstein in 1969, the town's foremost new building area remained the steep slope stretching up the Königsberg west of Hauptstraße (Bundesstraße 270), even after the Second World War (Röther Weg, Steinwiesen, Am Hang, Am Gericht, In der Trift, Bergstraße, Am Kirchpfad).

Archaeological finds from both the Old Stone Age and the New Stone Age on the Königsberg's and the Selberg's west flank, barrows in the Jungenwald (forest) at the town limits with Aschbach and Lohnweiler that have been explored and many finds of Roman coins with effigies of Roman emperors at the old Celtic settlement, which was once surrounded by a ringwall, on the Kreimberg at the town limit with Kreimbach-Kaulbach (known as the Heidenburg, or “Heathen Castle”) bear witness to the presence of people in what is now Wolfstein in prehistoric times and early historic times.

The Electoral Palatinate Amt (or Unteramt) of Wolfstein in the Oberamt of Kaiserslautern comprised the two court regions of Katzweiler and “Rothe am Seelberg” (Rothselberg).

Far away from their small seat on the Moselle (Veldenz Castle), they owned considerable lands between the Alsenz, the Glan and the Nahe, among which was Honhelden daz ampt (1387), within which lay the settlements in question.

As early as 1797, Wolfstein became, in the course of administrative reform carried out by the French, a cantonal seat in the Arrondissement of Kaiserslautern and the Department of Mont-Tonnerre (or Donnersberg in German).

From this epoch, only a few noteworthy events are recorded: The Roßbacher Weistum (1544 – a Weistum – cognate with English wisdom – was a legal pronouncement issued by men learned in law in the Middle Ages and early modern times) reported about yearly meetings of the Gemeinsmannen resident in Roßbach, Imzmannßhausen (about 1250: Ziermannshusen; today: Immetshausen), Melhausen (since vanished), Stohlhaussen (today: Stahlhausen) on Saint Dionysius’s Day (9 October) on the “Dionysiusberg (mountain) near the chapel to the saint, Dionysius” (today: Auf dem Mühlacker).

The small house of worship was a chapel of ease in the parish of Tiefenbach, which found itself in the hands of the Order of Saint John from the early 15th century until the Reformation as a donation from the Counts of Veldenz.

After feudalism was abolished, the Ducal Württemberg Minister of State Emich Johann von Üxküll bought the estate for 22,500 Gulden.

In connection with the 1832 Hambach Festival and the later Palatine Uprising, there is a story: On the republican-liberal citizenry’s side was the 23-year-old tanner’s son Jakob Krieger, who fled to the United States, where he founded a trade and banking company in Louisville.

Monarchy came to an end in Bavaria with the last Bavarian king’s abdication in 1918 (he had reigned since 1913), after the First World War, in which 35 soldiers from Wolfstein and 19 from Roßbach fell.

By the time of the Reichstag elections in 1924, though, the SPD’s share of the vote had sunk to 9%, while the Nationale Rechte earned 34%, the Communists (KPD) 4%, the Völkischer Block 30%, the BVP 12% and the Freiwirtschaftsbund 11%.

At the first town council election after the Nazis seized power in Germany (21 April 1933), the NSDAP won 8 of the 10 seats, and in the same year, town council bestowed honorary citizenship upon President Paul von Hindenburg, Reichskanzler – he did not yet bear the title Führer – Adolf Hitler and Reichsstatthalter Franz Ritter von Epp; the same honour was awarded to the local poet Pauline König.

Arising in Wolfstein about the middle of the 16th century, under the pledge-lords Schwickard von Sickingen's (1549-1562) and Georg Johannes I's (Palatinate-Veldenz, 1543-1592) influence, were a Reformed community and a Lutheran one alongside each other.

From the late 17th century, the Catholic parish of Wolfstein grew into a broad, scattered community taking in the villages of Rutsweiler, Kreimbach, Kaulbach, Olsbrücken, Neumühle, Katzweiler, Hirschhorn, Obersulzbach, Untersulzbach, Tiefenbach, Oberweiler and Roßbach, with all together 381 souls.

Today (2000), the Catholic parish comprises Kaulbach (with a chapel of ease), Kreimbach, Roßbach, Rutsweiler an der Lauter, Rothselberg, Eßweiler, Schneeweiderhof, Oberweiler im Tal, Aschbach, Reckweilerhof and Oberweiler-Tiefenbach, with all together roughly 900 souls, half of whom live in Wolfstein/Roßbach.

As early as 1898, the members built themselves their own “clubhouse” with a meeting room and a dwelling for the (itinerant) preacher that the club hired and his family.

Belonging to the broad missionary region are Bosenbach, Frankelbach, Hefersweiler, Hirschhorn (with its own mission hall), Lauterecken, Morbach, Niederkirchen, Olsbrücken, Reipoltskirchen, Relsberg, Seelen and Wörsbach.

[21][22] The German blazon reads: Im goldenen Schild ein rechtsgewendeter schwarzer rotbewehrter Wolf, der einen roten Forsthaken (Wolfsangel) in den Tatzen hält.

The Glan-Lautertal-Höhenweg, part of the Großer Westpfalzwanderweg (“Great West Palatinate Hiking Trail”) leads through the town's municipal area.

In the late 18th century, improvement came with the mining of cinnabar-bearing stone that yielded quicksilver on the Princely-Electoral side of the Königsberg, a pursuit promoted by Prince-Elector Karl Theodor.

Nevertheless, the mining lasted no longer than 30 years before coming to a complete end in the 19th century, with destitution and hardship as the upshot for the now jobless miners and their families.

While it was true that new ventures arose in the 19th century through Wolfstein citizens’ initiatives, such as chalk mining, coalmining, tanning, brewing, linen and cotton article manufacturing, bricks, and so on, these fell far short of employing everybody who sought a job.

For a time, more than 750 professional musicians from the Canton of Wolfstein tried their luck “on the world’s roads”, in circus orchestras, on Siberian noblemen's estates, aboard pleasure boats and elsewhere.

In the early 20th century, the economic situation generally improved: for one thing, the Lauter Valley Railway (Lautertalbahn), which had been opened in 1883, made it possible for workers to commute to the nearby quarries or to jobs in Kaiserslautern, and for another, new commercial establishments in Wolfstein and across the river in Roßbach offered earning potential.

Currently, the greater part of Wolfstein's inhabitants work in the secondary sector of the economy (all figures are rounded): 1,200 persons, or 67% of the workforce, of whom 1,030 employees and 60 trainees are at KOB KG alone, Europe’s biggest bandage factory, which recently gave up part of its independence to coöperate with the biggest distributor of bandage material, Paul Hartmann AG.

About the middle of the 19th century, a Protestant teaching assistant was hired who took over classed for the girls in the then existing six school age groups.

Beginning in the 1962/1963 school year, all seventh- and eighth-year pupils from Roßbach, Rutsweiler, Kreimbach, Kaulbach, Frankelbach and Oberweiler-Tiefenbach were taught in grade-level-differentiated classes in Wolfstein, which led to great difficulties in allocating room for everybody.