Konken is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Kusel district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Kusel-Altenglan, whose seat is in Kusel.
Geography
Location
The municipality lies in the highlands in the Western Palatinate. With 833 inhabitants, Konken is, after Kusel and Pfeffelbach, the third biggest municipality in the Verbandsgemeinde. The long village of Konken lies roughly 330 m above sea level in a broad, flat-bottomed, seashell-shaped dale that opens towards the east and through which flows the Konker Bach in that same direction. The district seat of Kusel lies to the northeast. In the south and east the dale abuts a vista of four separate hills, known as the Hettersberg, the Rundwieshübel (404 m), the Harzberg or Harzhöhe (412 m) and the Konker Wart or Konker Warte (414 m). To the north, the other side of the dale is formed by a ridge coming from the west, on whose south slope most of the village stands. This climbs rather steeply up to an elevation of roughly 350 m above sea level. In the village’s east, where the ridge flattens out, the Konker Bach flows round in a broad bow into which the Weiherbach, coming from the south, empties within the village itself. Right near the church is found the core of the village. On the village’s north side, the Konker Bach empties into the eastward-flowing Albessbach at the Hasenmühle (“Hare’s Mill”), which stands within Konken’s municipal limits. To the village’s north runs Autobahn A 62 (Kaiserslautern–Trier) with its Kusel interchange, which lies partly within Konken’s municipal limits. The major woodlands spread out to the village’s east and in the far west. The municipal area measures 704 ha, of which 10 ha is wooded.
Neighbouring municipalities
Konken borders in the north on the municipality of Ehweiler, in the east on the municipality of Schellweiler, in the southeast on the municipality of Hüffler, in the south on the municipalities of Wahnwegen and Herschweiler-Pettersheim, in the southwest on the municipality of Langenbach and in the northwest on the municipality of Albessen. Konken also meets the municipality of Selchenbach at a single point in the west.
Constituent communities
Also belonging to Konken are the outlying homestead of Rundwieserhof and the commercial park Erlenhöhe.
Municipality’s layout
Originally, Konken was a long, narrow linear village (or by some definitions, a “thorpe”) along its through road, which is nowadays called Bundesstraße 420. There were, however, already settled sidestreets by the turn of the 19th century. Sprouting off the main street to the north are Kirchstraße (“Church Street”), at whose corner stands the church with its mediaeval tower, Friedhofsstraße (“Graveyard Street”), at whose upper end lies the graveyard, and Hohlstraße (“Hollow Street”), at what was then the village’s western end. Likewise as far back as the early 19th century, residential developments sprang up on Wahnweger-Straße and Straße Im Eck. All these residential areas spread in the course of the 19th century and early 20th century. In the time after the Second World War, new building zones opened up, mainly in the village’s north. The old, long settled neighbourhoods are still characterized by a few of the Einfirsthäuser (houses with a single roof ridge), which as a rule stand with the eaves facing the street, and which are so typical of the Westrich, an historic region that encompasses areas in both Germany and France. An old schoolhouse, which was used as such until 1965, stands on the through road. It has served as a savings bank (Sparkasse) and a postal agency, but is now used by a newspaper business. A new schoolhouse, dedicated in 1965, stands at the village’s northern edge. Farther northeast lies the sporting ground. Outside the village’s own built-up area, near the Kusel Autobahn interchange, is a commercial-industrial area called Erlenhöhe. The outlying Rundwieserhof homestead lies on the Rundwieshübel’s northern slope on Langenbacher Weg (a road), while the Hasenmühle (“Hare’s Mill”) can be found just outside the built-up area on the Konker Bach right before the Autobahn.