Kusel, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany

🇩🇪 Kusel is a town in the Kusel district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is the seat of the Kusel-Altenglan Verbandsgemeinde and is also the district seat.

Location Kusel lies on the Kuselbach in Rhineland-Palatinate's south-west, in the North Palatine Uplands roughly 30 km north-west of Kaiserslautern. The Kuselbach rises in the outlying centre of Diedelkopf where the Bledesbach and the Pfeffelbach (or Aalbach) meet. The dale is hemmed in by a row of mountains, on the left bank the Ödesberg (375 m), and on the right the Gaisberg (355 m), the Roßberg (314 m) and the Herrchenberg (385 m). The floor of the dale lies roughly 220 m above sea level. Prominent landmarks just beyond the town's limits are Lichtenberg Castle to the west and the Remigiusberg (368 m) and the Potzberg (562 m) to the east.

Neighbouring municipalities Kusel borders in the north on the municipalities of Körborn and Blaubach, in the north-east on the municipality of Altenglan, in the east on the municipality of Rammelsbach, in the south-east on the municipality of Haschbach am Remigiusberg, in the south on the municipality of Schellweiler, in the south-west on the municipality of Ehweiler, in the west on the municipality of Pfeffelbach and in the north-west on the municipality of Ruthweiler.

Constituent communities The town of Kusel is divided foremost into the Kernstadt (Inner Town) and the historic Altstadt (Old Town), with the former ringing the latter, and also into the Stadtteil of Diedelkopf, which has melded onto the Inner Town, the residential area “Am Holler” and a further Stadtteil, Bledesbach.

Economic structure Given the town's central location, many markets were held in Kusel even as far back as the Middle Ages, although these often had to put up with stiff competition from other traditional markets in other nearby places. The town's economic life in the late 18th century was characterized by many small craftsmen's workshops. There were wool and linen weavers, doublet and hose knitters, clothmakers and hatters as well as walking mills and gristmills, tanneries and several breweries. At the same time, dealers travelling overland from the town did a brisk trade with these products. In the age of industrialization, few of these craftsmen managed to expand their workshops or to switch to new, effective production methods. Thus, many small craft businesses had to cease work, and production was soon concentrated in a few bigger companies. Establishing themselves as such were a few businesses in textile manufacturing. In 1857, the Fink Brothers (their name is actually German for “Finch”) opened a cloth factory on Trierer Straße that had what were then state-of-the-art looms. This factory burnt down in 1865 and was never restored. Besides the Fink Brothers’ factory, two other great textile mills set up shop in Kusel, the Zöllner plant and the Ehrenspeck plant. At the former, it was mostly durable material that was made, for work clothes, such as tirtey (“midweight woollen fabric in twill weave, with a combination of carded woollen yarns in the weft and cotton yarns in the warp. Mostly used for work trousers.”) and buckskin cloth (not leather, but rather a “thick, smooth cotton or woollen fabric”). In 1885 the Zöllner plant, too, burnt down, but unlike the Fink Brothers’ factory, it rose from the ashes and in the years before the First World War, it even underwent an important expansion. It flourished until about 1930, when the Great Depression set in. It was then taken over by Karl Hermann and run until 1958 as the Westpfälzische Tuchfabrik (“West Palatine Cloth Factory”). The Ehrenspeck plant arose from a craft business. It was built on Trierer Straße in 1867. Here, fine knitted wares were made, but this plant, too, burnt down, in 1928. Later, in a portion of the plant, vigogne spinning was temporarily done (this fabric is made of natural, sometimes along with artificial, fibres in imitation of vicuña wool). Moving into the factory after the Second World War was the Tuchfabrik Kahnes, which specializes in making synthetic non-woven fabrics. About 1960, the factory was moved to Haschbacher Straße. The Kahnes Cloth Factory is the only such factory that is still in business in Kusel. Besides the textile works, there were the Schleip nail factory and the Christian Gilcher machine factory in Kusel, both of which are now gone. From the several small breweries originally in town, two grew into major businesses, Koch and Emrich. Koch merged in 1972 with the Bayerische Brauerei in Kaiserslautern, and afterwards was closed. After the building was torn down, a great vacant lot was left, which later saw only minor building (an underground parking garage and the Café Rothenturm). The Emrich Brewery continued as a private brewing company until 1998, when it, too, was closed. A major production business in Kusel today is the high-speed printing machine factory, a subsidiary of Albert in Frankenthal. A computer industry production facility has also located in Kusel, the firm Owen Electronics, as has an important software business, Transware, inpremises formerly occupied by the cloth factory. The town's economic life is otherwise represented foremost by supermarkets and retail businesses, which are housed in an industrial park beside Bundesstraße 420 between Kusel and Rammelsbach.

Authorities Kusel is seat of the town, Verbandsgemeinde and district administration of Kusel, a financial office, a forestry office, a surveying and cadastral office and a branch of the Bundesagentur für Arbeit. The Rhineland-Palatinate weights and measures authority (Eichbehörde) once kept an office in Kusel, but this has disappeared. It was housed in the Luitpoldschule building. Stationed in Kusel is the Artillerielehrregiment 345 (“Artillery Teaching Regiment 345”; formerly the Panzerartillerielehrregiment 345), although within the framework of Bundeswehr reform, this is supposed to be moved to Idar-Oberstein. There is an Amtsgericht that belongs to the Landgericht (state court) region of Kaiserslautern and the Oberlandesgericht (superior state court) region of Zweibrücken.

Transport Kusel was from the Middle Ages an important way station on the through road leading from Zweibrücken to Meisenheim. In the 19th century, this road lost its original importance with the laying of the Landstuhl–Kusel railway that linked Kusel to Kaiserslautern, which at first was used mainly to transport crushed stone from the quarries in Rammelsbach. The railway was demanded by industrialists and businessmen from Kusel. A further improvement was brought by the Glan Valley Railway when it arrived in the early 20th century. There were rumours, too, that a north-south railway line through Kusel was to be built, but this was never done. Roads of regional importance, foremost among them the Glantalstraße (Glan valley road), were expanded in the 19th century. Fundamentally improved were the transport conditions in the time before the Second World War, when the Westwall (Siegfried Line) was built. The railway was extended to Türkismühle with a spur to Ottweiler (Ostertalbahn), although abandonment of this line began in 1963 and was completed by 1969. More effective was the building of an army road from Oppenheim to Neunkirchen in the Saarland. This is the road now known as Bundesstraße 420 and it runs through Kusel, leading from Nierstein in Rhenish Hesse to Ottweiler in the Saarland. Roughly 7 km to the east, in Konken, is an interchange onto the Autobahn A 62 (Kaiserslautern–Trier), whose completion finally furnished a link to a north-south road. Local public transport is integrated into the VRN, which offers service using Rheinland-Pfalz-Takt (“Rhineland-Palatinate scheduling”). Run since the timetabling change in December 2008 are Deutsche Bahn AG trains of the Talent type. Since line closures in 1970 (Westrichbahn) and 1981 (part of the Glantalbahn), Kusel station has been the terminus of the Glantalbahn rail service, which runs to Kaiserslautern over the Landstuhl–Kusel railway.