Just when a church was first built in Offenbach is unknown . What is known with certainty is that before the church , whose remnants are still preserved today , was built , another stood on the same spot , a Romanesque church whose foundations were discovered during renovation work in 1963 . According to the 1150 donation document , there was supposedly even a '' cella '' ( monastic cell ) on the estate that Reinfried had endowed . Although the monastery had been donated to the abbey in Metz , in terms of ecclesiastical organization it was subject to the Archbishopric of Mainz . The church was consecrated to the Virgin Mary . It first arose about the year 1225 ( Romanesque quire and apses ) and had other parts added at various widely spaced times . Because its building history is rather long , it clearly bears stylistic features from the transitional time between Romanesque architecture and Gothic architecture . The transept , with the south semitransept based on the French model and the north matching the domestic development in Germany , was completed about 1250 . The nave , akin in execution to the monastery church in Otterberg , was finished about 1300 . The last part added was the eight-sided crossing tower , which in conception is akin to that at Limburg Cathedral . The convent was , after dogged opposition from the provost , dissolved in the course of the Reformation . The monasterial estate passed into the ownership of the Counts Palatine ( Dukes ) of Zweibrücken , who had it administered through a stewardship . The local church community was henceforth and until 1800 tended together with the Lutheran one in Sankt Julian . After Catholic Christians had settled in the village beginning in the late 17th century , the big church became a simultaneous church . However , a newer publication ( Hein 2000 ) states that there was a '' Stadtkirche '' ( “ Town Church ” ) next to the monastery church in the 18th century , about which investigations were to be undertaken . Bit by bit , the provostry church fell into disrepair , and the unused nave was even used from the time of the French Revolution as a quarry . Eventually only the crossing with the crossing tower and the quire with the apses were left standing , and even those were threatening to fall down . As to the question of whether the rest of the building should be torn down or renovated , it was decided in 1894 that the latter was preferable . A special service in this endeavour can be ascribed to the then Evangelical pastor and later superintendent Karl Georg Merz . Further extensive restoration work followed from 1962 to 1970 under Pastor Erich Renk ’s oversight . As early as 1884 , north of the provostry church , Saint Peter ’s and Saint Paul ’s Catholic Parish Church was built , and thus the Evangelical parish could once again take over the provostry church as its own parish church . The post-Reformation Catholic parish in Offenbach was founded in 1684 as a branch of Lauterecken . To this day , most of the parishioners live in Offenbach itself , and only a few in neighbouring villages . Before the Second World War , some 15 % of the whole population adhered to the Catholic faith . There are good relations between the two Christian denominations , and there are quite often ecumenical events . The Evangelical parish , formerly a branch of Sankt Julian , acquired in 1800 the status of self-administering parish . Belonging to it in the nearby area were a few branch communities . After 1815 , a new order arose as a result of the territorial changes wrought by the post-Napoleonic Congress of Vienna . Offenbach , Niedereisenbach ( '' Ortsteil '' of Glanbrücken ) and Wiesweiler then together formed a parish . Since 1950 , the Evangelical Stewardship of the Church District of Sankt Wendel , which oversees the parish ’s finances , has existed in Offenbach . For centuries before they were driven out or murdered by the National Socialist régime , there were many Jews living in Offenbach . Records show that they were in the village as early as the 16th century . Of the not much more than 400 inhabitants in 1800 , some 100 clung to the Jewish faith . Most of the Jews in Offenbach were businessmen who held a great share in the upswing in economic life . The numerical relationship between Jews and Christians in the village had changed even before Nazi times . In 1938 , there were 33 Jews in eight families living in Offenbach . There were a synagogue , built in 1832 , and a Jewish school in the village , near today ’s marketplace . The municipality of Offenbach bought the synagogue in 1936 , after it had not been used as such for quite some time , thus saving it from being burnt down on Kristallnacht ( 9 – 10 November 1938 ) . Nonetheless , this building , which was also significant to building history , was torn down in 1955 . Now standing on the same spot is the parish hall
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
Offenbach-Hundheim