 In 1592, the clergyman in Pfeffelbach received an order from the Duke to hold school for children from not only Pfeffelbach, but also Reichweiler and Schwarzerden, which likewise belonged to his parish.It may make for curious reading that a village councillor named Simon Brill was suspended from school service (this after his predecessor Pastor Pfeil had decided in 1651 that he was tired of school work) because it turned out that he himself could neither read nor write, or that Johann Fischer Barthel had to leave his post in 1663 because the village's elderly inhabitants feared that the children were becoming cleverer than they were.Oftentimes, the teaching post at the winter school (a school geared towards an agricultural community's practical needs, held in the winter, when farm families had a bit more time to spare) was left vacant.