Quedlinburg saddle

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The Quedlinburger Sattel is a geological anticline structure in Saxony-Anhalt .

geography

The approximately 30 km long and 3 to 5 km wide, hercynian trending Quedlinburger saddle extends today as air saddle of Langenstein in the northwest over Quedlinburg until after Badeborn in the southeast ( the district of Harz in Saxony-Anhalt ). The saddle core, which consists of rock that is not very weather-resistant , has been eroded in the course of the earth's history and today forms a morphological depression in which the old town of Quedlinburg is located today. The more resistant sub-Cretaceous sandstones form the saddle flanks. The structure includes the Hoppelberg and the Bar mountains as well as the Seweckenberge and the Ruhmberg to the southeast of Quedlinburg . The northern flank of the saddle is formed in the Quedlinburg area by the Hamwarte. The elevations on the saddle flanks formed important strategic points in the Harz foreland , such as today's Schlossberg. Here was Henry I built a royal palace.

Geological evolution

Lower Cretaceous sandstones dipping to the southwest on the southern flank of the saddle on the Schlossberg

From a regional geological point of view, the Quedlinburger Sattel is one of the saline structures of the subhercyne basin , which extends from the northern edge of the Harz to the Flechtinger ridge . Sediments from the Permian to Quaternary were deposited here. During the Saxon rock formation , which began with movements 190 million years ago, the Harz was lifted out as a basement block and pushed onto the northern foreland at the north edge of the Harz fault . Due to the fluidity of the Zechstein salt in the subsurface of the Subherzynen Basin as a result of the mountain load, salt cushions and salt domes formed . The layers overlying the salt were arched and narrow saddle zones and wide hollow zones were formed. The further movements of the salt in the subsurface partially broke the rock formation due to faults and thrusts . The Quedlinburger saddle is a narrow saddle structure in the northeast by the wide Halberstädter Mulde, in the southwest the saddle is pushed on the Westerhausen disturbance on the Blankenheimer Mulde. The oldest rocks from the Keuper and the Jura are exposed in the Sattelkern. Due to their low resistance to weathering, they have been eroded, so that morphologically a hollow structure has formed. The flanks of the saddle, on the other hand, are formed by hard, partly quartzitic sandstones in which thin layers of oolitic iron ore are embedded, such as on the Schlossberg . They form the temporal equivalent of the iron ore deposits mined near Salzgitter and Peine .

literature

  • Klaus Heimlich: On the stratigraphy and tectonics of the western Quedlinburg saddle (subhercynes basin). (= Treatises on Geotectonics. No. 11.) Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1956, OCLC 1022598 .
  • Henry Schroeder and Fritz Dahlgrün: Explanations on the geological map of Prussia and neighboring German countries , sheet 240 Quedlinburg, Berlin 1927.
  • Günter Möbus : Outline of the Geology of the Harz , Teubner, Leipzig 1966, 219 pp.

supporting documents

  1. ^ Gerald Patzelt: Collection of geological guides. Volume 96, Northern Harz Foreland (Subherzyn), eastern part. Bornträger Brothers, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-443-15079-9 .
  2. ↑ Quedlinburger Sattel on harzregion.de, accessed on February 18, 2014.
  3. ↑ Friedhart Knolle , Béatrice Oesterreich, Rainer Schulz, Volker Wrede: Der Harz - Geologische Exckursionen , Julius Perthes, Gotha 1997, ISBN 3-623-00659-9 , p. 12ff.
  4. ↑ Geopark - Schlossberg Quedlinburg ( Memento from February 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) on harzregion.de, accessed on February 18, 2014.

Coordinates: 51 ° 47 ′ 9.8 "  N , 11 ° 8 ′ 13.7"  E