page_title: Breitenthal, Rhineland-Palatinate
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Breitenthal, Rhineland-Palatinate / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Jammereiche, landmark just south of Breitenthal, Rhineland-Palatinate (Germany) in a wintery scenery with hoar frost. Deutsch: Die Jammereiche bei Breitenthal in einer winterlichen Szene mit Raureif.
context_page_description: Breitenthal is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Birkenfeld district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Herrstein-Rhaunen, whose seat is in Herrstein.
context_section_description: This timeline shows the holders of the territory in which Breitenthal has lain over the centuries, from the time of its first documentary mention:
  The village, which had its first documentary mention in 1282 as Breydendale, sprang from an estate established to supply the lordly family, and together with the neighbouring village of Oberhosenbach formed a Rhinegravial and Waldgravial high court in the Rhinegravial-Waldgravial Amt of Wildenburg. Once the French had auctioned off the lordly holdings to private owners as national property (bien national), Breitenthal could develop itself as a free village.
  Archaeological finds from the Bronze Age have led to the assumption that there was human settlement then within what are now the municipality's limits. In the cadastral area known as Hirtenbösch and in the Hardtwald (forest), traces of settlement and gravesites from early Hallstatt times and La Tène times have been unearthed. Furthermore, in the area of the now vanished village of Battenhofen, clear signs of a Roman presence have been found in several spots right near the Roman road.
  The estate of Breitenthal (Breidendale) was mentioned in a 1282 document with which Konrad von Schmidtburg transferred the estate to his brother Gottfried von Kyrburg. In 1318, the Dinghof (lordly estate with lower jurisdiction) of Breidindeil was transferred by the Waldgrave Friedrich zu Kyrburg to Archbishop of Trier Baldwin, who at once enfeoffed the Waldgrave with his own former holding as an Electoral-Trier fief. Beginning in 1409, Breitenthal belonged to the Amt of Wildenburg with which it passed in 1515 to the Rhinegrave and Waldgrave of Kyrburg. After the Old Kyrburg line had died out, it passed to the Old Dhaun line of the Rhinegraves and Waldgraves. After this line split, a three-fourths share of the ownership went to the Waldgraves and Rhinegraves of Grumbach, while each of the Salm-Salms and the Salm-Kyrburgs got a one-eighth share.
  The Waldgraviate and Rhinegraviate of Salm-Kyrburg – as of 1743 the Principality of Salm-Kyrburg – stood as an Imperially immediate territory from 1499 until the Treaty of Lunéville in 1801. The capital was Kirn. After the Principality of Salm-Kyrburg was conquered in 1794 and 1795 by French Revolutionary troops and annexed by France in 1798, the Holy Roman Empire ceded the country to France in the Treaty of Lunéville. The Princes lived mainly in Paris, where Prince Friedrich III of Salm-Kyburg was put to death by guillotine in the Reign of Terror in 1794.
  In the Thirty Years' War, the region was occupied by Spanish troops after the Catholic League’s victory over the Protestant Union at the Battles of Wimpfen and Höchst in 1620, whereafter it bore a heavy burden as Spain’s unwilling host. No documents about Breitenthal from this time are known, but according to oral history, a number of people from both Breitenthal and Niederhosenbach who had tried to flee were surrounded by Spanish (Brabantish) soldiers in the area of the Jammerseiche (“Moaning Oak”) on the boundary between these two municipalities and horribly killed.
  After the Thirty Years' War came Lorrainian invasions and French king Louis XIV's War of the Reunions with the Nine Years' War (known in Germany as the Pfälzischer Erbfolgekrieg, or War of the Palatine Succession). In the face of the Lorrainian troops, the local lords (the Rhinegraves, the Duke of Palatinate-Zweibrücken and the Lords of Oberstein) joined forces in 1651 and, for their small population, fielded quite a large army of 1,700 infantrymen and 300 cavalrymen, who were stationed at the Wildenburg (castle) and in Herrstein, and who were under Rhinegrave Johann Ludwig's overall command. Already in December 1651, and again in 1652, there were two battles between Herrstein and the Wildenburg, which was destroyed as a result of the encounters. The Lorrainians were, however, defeated in both battles, and driven away. A focal point in the struggle was the ridge between the Fischbach and Oberwörresbach, which is visible across the Schielenbach from Breitenthal. Only in 1713, though, with 
caption: The Jammerseiche in soft rime
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