Location

The municipality lies in the North Palatine Uplands in the Western Palatinate. The village sits at an elevation of roughly 280 m above sea level in a hollow on the banks of the Rötelbach at the edge of a plateau. Elevations around the village reach heights of about 350 m above sea level. The municipal area measures 287 ha, of which 6 ha is settled and 40 ha is wooded.^[3]

Neighbouring municipalities

Buborn borders in the northeast on the municipality of Hausweiler, in the southeast on the municipality of Wiesweiler, in the south on the municipality of Offenbach-Hundheim, in the west on the municipality of Deimberg and in the northwest on the municipality of Herren-Sulzbach. Buborn also meets the municipality of Grumbach at a single point in the north.

Constituent communities

Also belonging to Buborn are three outlying Aussiedlerhöfe (a farming settlement established most often after the Second World War).^[4]

Municipality’s layout

Buborn is a clump village that has been thrust together, one with old buildings, and with a north-south through road cutting through it. The small graveyard lies at the village's south end. All together, there is very little in the way of new building.^[5]

Antiquity

While it is assumed that the area around the village was already settled in prehistoric times, there are no archaeological finds bearing witness to this. What is known, however, is that the foundations of a Roman villa rustica are to be found within the municipality. Unearthed there were wall remnants, urns and pots from Roman times.^[6] In this vicinity, too, it is likely that a village known as Guckenhausen later lay, although it is not thought that this represents a continuity in settlement from Roman times to the Early Middle Ages.^[7]

Middle Ages

It is likely that Buborn arose in the later expansion phase that took hold in this area, thus in the 10th or 11th century. Until the early 12th century, the village belonged to the Nahegau, and then to the County of the Waldgraves, who can be considered the Nahegau counts’ successors. From a judicial point of view, Buborn lay within the jurisdiction of the Hochgericht auf der Heide (“High Court on the Heath”). Records tell of a knight named Albert from the Nahegau, who in the early 12th century unrightfully took ownership of the Remigiusberg (a mountain with a like-named monastery). Later, though, after the monks had bought the mountain back, Albert himself took orders at the newly founded monastery there, and, among other things, bequeathed two estates in Buhrbur to it.

In 1319, the Waldgraves of Kyrburg raised a claim to the jurisdiction in Buborn, which also stretched out to the surrounding villages. At the Kyrburger Hof, an estate held by the Waldgraves of Kyrburg in the Buborn area, the Waldgraves held court (they called it the Eicher Gericht). No sooner had Buborn ended up in the Waldgraves’ hands than a whole series of surrounding villages subject to the Hochgericht auf der Heide were pledged by Johann von Dhaun to the County of Sponheim-Starkenburg. It is known, however, that the village itself was pledged at this time as Hof in Bopporn (Hof means “estate”) to Reinfried von Reipoltskirchen. The exact date of the deed is unknown. Nevertheless, Buborn was in his hands in 1408 when Waldgrave Gerhard V died. The pledge was further passed on in 1431 to Friedrich von Rüdesheim, Reinfried von Reipoltskirchen's son-in-law. Shortly thereafter, the Waldgraves must have redeemed the pledge, for in 1448, Waldgrave and Rhinegrave Gottfried zu Dhaun sold the village, along with others in the Grumbacher Tal (dale), while reserving the right to buy them back, to Count Palatine Stephan of Zweibrücken. The Waldgraves exercised this right in 1477. It is likely that in the early 16th century, Buborn belonged to the Waldgraves and Rhinegraves of Grumbach. In 1515, Buborn was firmly in this county's hands, and the Waldgraves and Rhinegraves of Grumbach thereby also held the jurisdiction. From this year comes a Weistum that states that both jurisdiction (that is, the court's power) and the lordship were held not by Kyrburg, but rather by Grombach (a Weistum – cognate with English wisdom – was a legal pronouncement issued by men learned in law in the Middle Ages and early modern times).

The village's mediaeval history, just like neighbouring Herren-Sulzbach’s and the Schönborner Hof’s, is tightly bound with the Knights of Saint John. The order’s original seat was the Schönborner Hof (estate) near Homberg, before later moving to Herren-Sulzbach, and later still, in the 14th century, to their new administrative hub in Buborn, where they built a manor building that they then called the Commenturhof (“Commendator's Estate”). The land where this once stood is today known in Buborn as the Kirchgarten (“Church Garden”).

The origin of the Knights of Saint John was a hospital for pilgrims and the sick in Jerusalem. Raymond du Puy de Provence (1083-1160), the order's first Grand Master (1120-1160) enacted sometime about 1155 the order's first constitution. The order first quickly spread in Mediterranean Europe. Beginning in 1137, the Knights also took on the task of armed border protection, thereby becoming an ecclesiastical knightly order. In 1309, the order founded on the island of Rhodes a sovereign knightly state. After the Reformation there was, besides the original Catholic branch a new Protestant branch, the Bailiwick of Brandenburg of the Chivalric Order of Saint John of the Hospital at Jerusalem, which persists to this day. Since 1859, the Catholic branch has borne the name Order of Malta.^[8]

Modern times

The presence of Knights of Saint John also characterized the history in the 16th and 17th centuries. Until the time of the French Revolution, Buborn belonged to the Lordship of the Counts of Grumbach. During the Thirty Years' War, marauding troops repeatedly plundered the village, and only a few people survived the war. Likewise, the village suffered in French King Louis XIV's wars of conquest.^[9]

Population development

The village has a rural structure to this day. Until a few decades ago, most of the villagers earned their livelihoods in agriculture. Besides farmers, there were also farmhands, forestry workers, quarrymen and a few craftsmen. There were hardly any other jobs to be had. Even today, the municipal area is under agricultural use. Nevertheless, a great number of people in Buborn need to seek work outside the village. As early as 1955, out of 52 members of the workforce, 46 held jobs outside the village. Worthy of note is that Buborn's population rose less markedly than neighbouring Homberg's in the course of the 19th century, and since the turn of the 20th century, Buborn's population has remained hardly changed.

The following table shows population development over the centuries for Buborn:^[11]

Municipality’s name

About 1120, the village was mentioned in a document as Burbur, and in a 1290 original document as Hof zu Bopure (the first two words meaning “estate at”). The name's form underwent a number of changes in older documents: Buhrbur (1127), Buppura (1152 and 1154), Potbor (1315), Butbure (1351), Boppren (1459), and in the local speech Buwere. Only in 1797 did the current name Buborn appear. The first syllable is drawn from a personal name, “Burdo” or “Burto”, while the placename ending, although resembling the common placename ending —born, apparently does not mean “spring”, but rather “house” or “dwelling” (the root still appears in the German word Vogelbauer, meaning “birdcage”, and it even has a cognate in English: “bower”^[12]). Thus, the name may be interpreted as meaning “Burdo’s house”.^[13]

Vanished villages

Rural cadastral names within Buborn's limits point to a former village named “Guckenhausen”. This village, whose former existence is only assumed, may well have been older than Buborn, but its name never appears in any mediaeval documents, but rather is only attested in these rural names. The ending means “house” while the prefix is drawn from a personal name, “Gucko” or “Kucko”. Thus, the name may be interpreted as meaning “Gucko’s house” or “Gucko’s small settlement”.^[14]

Municipal council

The council is made up of 6 council members, who were elected by majority vote at the municipal election held on 7 June 2009, and the honorary mayor as chairman.^[16]

Mayor

Buborn's mayor is Philipp Kreischer.^[1]

Coat of arms

The municipality's arms might be described thus: Per bend sinister Or a lion rampant sinister gules armed and langued azure and azure a handpump-well argent.

The lion charge on the dexter (armsbearer's right, viewer's left) side is an heraldic device formerly borne by the village's mediaeval lords, the Waldgraves. The charge on the sinister (armsbearer's left, viewer's right) side, the handpump-well, is a canting element and refers to the latter syllable in the village's name, —born, which, although historically referring to a spring, can also refer to a well (the more usual form is Brunnen). This is, nevertheless, a false assumption. Historically, the last syllable in the village's name refers to a dwelling, not a well.

The arms have been borne since 23 July 1964^[17] when they were approved by Rhineland-Palatinate’s Ministry of the Interior.^[18]

Regular events

Buborn’s kermis (church consecration festival) is held each year on the third weekend in July. Old customs, such as were formerly practised in all villages in the Glan region, are seldom if at all observed today.^[19]

Clubs

Buborn has long enjoyed its men’s singing club and its gymnastic club.^[20]

Economic structure

In the time following the Second World War, the number of agricultural operations shrank dramatically, though lands useful to agriculture remained mostly intact. The farming operations that did not shut down therefore expanded. Primary occupations, though, became secondary occupations. For the last decade or so, however, farms have gradually been being given up.^[21]

Education

As in all the other villages in the Amt of Grumbach, there likewise arose in Buborn in the late 16th century, owing to the effect of the Reformation, efforts to teach children to read and write. At first, though, schoolchildren had to attend classes in neighbouring Herren-Sulzbach. There, lessons for all the parish’s schoolchildren were taught at a herdsman’s house. Only about 1814 did every village get its own school. Buborn’s tiny schoolroom was only equipped with two tables. A further, smaller room next door served the teacher as a dwelling. Only in 1865 did the municipality have its own one-room schoolhouse built. On this schoolhouse hung a bell with the inscription “Wer mich nimmt verliert” (“He who takes me loses”). This warning was even enough to dissuade the Nazis from seizing the bell to use its metal in the war effort, and unlike many other bells, it was still there by the time the Second World War ended. The one-room schoolhouse lasted until the late 1960s. Thereafter, primary school pupils attended the Grumbach-Hoppstädten primary school, which itself lasted until 2010, whereas the Hauptschule students began attending school in Lauterecken right away. Once the old primary school closed, the primary school pupils, too, began attending school there. The Lauterecken Gymnasium’s buildings stand only a few kilometres from Buborn.^[22]

Transport

Buborn lies on Kreisstraße (District Road) 37, which links it to Bundesstraße 270. To the southeast runs Bundesstraße 420, which can be reached over Kreisstraßen 37 and then 63. The nearest Autobahn interchange, near Kusel, is 25 km away. Serving Lauterecken, some 5 km away, is a railway station on the Lautertalbahn.^[23]