until after the Second World War. The entity known as the canton lost any meaning in the course of the 19th century. Imperial times In 1883, the Lautertalbahn (railway) was built, and in 1896/1897 came the now abandoned Lauterecken-Staudernheim line. In 1904, the strategic railway line from Lauterecken to Altenglan was built. Ten years later, troop transport trains were running on the line towards France, while hospital and prisoner trains ran in the other direction. It was similar in the Second World War. Seventy men from Lauterecken did not return from the fighting in the First World War, and in the Second, 167 either fell or went missing in action. Moreover, the town itself lost 56 women, old men and children in bombing raids. Three memorials, one at Veldenzplatz, one on the Igelskopf ("Hedgehog’s Head" – a mountain) and one at the new graveyard remind visitors to keep the peace. Weimar and National Socialist times In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Nazi Party (NSDAP) became quite popular in Lauterecken. In the 1928 Reichstag elections, 16.5% of the local votes went to Adolf Hitler’s party, but by the 1930 Reichstag elections, this had grown to 25.1%. By the time of the 1933 Reichstag elections, after Hitler had already seized power, local support for the Nazis had swollen to 50.3%. Hitler’s success in these elections paved the way for his Enabling Act of 1933 (Ermächtigungsgesetz), thus starting the Third Reich in earnest. In the Second World War in the town itself, roughly 60 people were killed in air raids. Since the Second World War The Palatinate’s split from Bavaria came about after the war through the new territorial order imposed in the French zone of occupation, and it was merged into the new state of Rhineland-Palatinate, formed in 1946 by French General Marie-Pierre Kœnig, and Lauterecken was grouped into the Regierungsbezirk of Pfalz ("Palatinate"), whose seat was at Neustadt an der Weinstraße. The town then experienced an enormous upswing. In 1954, "Progymnasium" (that is, Gymnasium that does not have the upper grades) came to Lauterecken, and in the years that followed, it became a full Gymnasium. In the 1968/1969 school year, it moved to a new building. In 1954, the textile mill began work as an offshoot of the company Vogtländische Spinnerei Hof. More businesses were brought to town, so that today, Lauterecken boasts more than 1,000 jobs. In the