Berger waiting

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The Berger Warte stands at the highest point in Frankfurt on the Berger ridge
Berger Warte around 1820. Drawing by Friedrich Philipp Usener. Right in the picture two piles of the mountain gallows
Text sheet in the local history museum in Bergen-Enkheim with the history of the place of execution at the Berger Warte
Berger Warte, May 2020

The Berger Warte is a guard tower built in the middle of the 16th century, about 12 meters high and made of red Main sandstone . The tower with a circular floor plan is at the highest point ( 212.4  m above sea level ) of today's urban area of Frankfurt am Main , in the area of ​​the eastern district of Seckbach . There it is on the border with the Bergen-Enkheim district , a few meters west of the federal highway 521 , on the low mountain range Berger ridge .

Unlike the four other late medieval waiting towers that have been preserved in the city of Frankfurt , the Berger Warte does not belong to the Frankfurter Landwehr system , but was an observation post and an escort station on a historic road between Frankfurt and the village of Bischofsheim . The escort provided by the city of Frankfurt to traveling merchants began or ended at the control room . At the time of their function, the control room was on the territory of the Lords and Counts of Hanau , to whom the County of Bornheimer Berg was assigned in 1320 by pledge and in 1434 at the latest by means of mortgage lending .

The Berger Warte is under monument protection according to the Hessian Monument Protection Act .

History of the watchtower and its surroundings

A first, wooden control room can be traced back to 1340 as a vulture observation point (gyris observation point) . In 1552 this building was burned down during the siege of Frankfurt in the prince uprising by the troops of Margrave Albrecht Alcibiades von Brandenburg-Kulmbach (→ Second Margrave War ), but then in 1557 at the behest of Count Philip III. rebuilt from stone by Hanau-Münzenberg .

The entrance to the tower is on the first floor and was accessible via a ladder before the construction of an access staircase in the 19th century, which could be pulled in in the event of a crisis. A circular wall with a simple moat and wooden palisades built on the raised earth enclosed the tower about twelve meters away.

During the Seven Years' War , the French general Marshal de Broglie commanded his troops in the Battle of Bergen on April 13, 1759 from the Berger Warte . With his victory he prevented Prussia from invading Frankfurt.

From September 23 to October 17, 1790, the 5,000 to 6,000 men (1700 according to other sources) army of the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel under the leadership of Landgrave Wilhelm IX were encamped at the Berger Warte . (the later Hessian elector Wilhelm I ). The army was supposed to protect the emperor's election in Frankfurt from revolutionary activities. On September 30th, 300 cannon shots from Frankfurt announced the election of Leopold II as Roman-German Emperor. The Hessian troops responded with a salvo of 21 guns. On October 11, two days after his coronation, the emperor, the electors and other high-ranking guests of the event visited the Hessian landgrave at the Berger Warte. The Leopold Column , which the Landgrave had erected not far from the control room, reminds of this.

The place of execution of the High Court of the County of Bornheimer Berg was located near the control room from 1484 to 1834 . 36 death sentences were carried out there on the gallows . Until the division of the county between Frankfurt and Hanau in 1484, the place of execution in Bornheim was on the Galgenberg. In 1735 the wooden gallows of the high court was replaced by a stone structure. These stones were used for the stairs to the tower entrance on the first floor after the gallows were demolished in 1834 (according to other sources in 1844). The gallows was allegedly torn down because the sight of it "from the breakfast table [...] was a disgusting sight to the Hessian-Kassel electors in Rumpenheim Castle " . The street and area name Am Galgen is noted in the current city maps of Frankfurt up to the present day .

On June 4, 1848, several members of the Frankfurt National Assembly , including Friedrich Ludwig Jahn ("Turnvater Jahn"), gave speeches to an audience of gymnasts from the stairs of the Berger Warte. The watch tower was damaged in the Second World War ; the damage to the building was repaired in the 1950s.

The mountain Berger Warte of the same name

The Leopold Column , approx. 370 m as the crow flies from the Berger Warte
New Bergen Jewish Cemetery, view from the west

The Berg Berger Warte, on which the watch tower stands, is 212.4  m above sea level. NN ( dominance 11.45 km, prominence 50 m) also the highest of the four peaks that can be counted as peaks in the urban area of ​​Frankfurt am Main, followed by the Gisisberg ( 202  m above sea level ), a little further to the northeast, and the Monte Scherbelino peaks in the south of Main ( 169.9  m above sea level , former waste dump) and Sachsenhausen waiting at 159  m above sea level. NN .

In addition to the watch tower, the hill on the north side is built on with a transformer station and a few residential buildings (street name Am Galgen ). The Leopold Column, the honorary column on the occasion of the coronation of Leopold II, is located at the northwest corner of the substation area; from there you have an unobstructed view of the Taunus low mountain range located west-northwest of Frankfurt . The summit of the Berger Ridge is crossed from north to south by the federal highway 521 - local street name Vilbeler Landstraße - which, seen from the north, turns left to Büdingen before the Frankfurt district of Bergen-Enkheim . On the eastern side of the B 521 opposite the control room is the now closed Jewish cemetery in Bergen-Enkheim , which was used from 1925 to 1942 . The area around the Berger Warte has been part of the north-eastern part of the landscape protection area of the Frankfurt Green Belt since 1991 .

Below the highest point of the hill of Berger Warte ran an old street called Via Regia (later also called Hohe Straße or Diebsgrundweg in Frankfurt ) - a historic trade route from Mainz via Frankfurt to Silesia .

Transport links

The Berger Warte can be reached on foot or by bike from the west / south-west, from Seckbach via the Lohrberg , from Bergen to the south and the northern Bad Vilbel via the Vilbeler Landstrasse (B 521). With each variant, there are sometimes considerable inclines to overcome. There is a public parking lot on site for motorized individual traffic. The RMV bus line 551, Berger Warte stop, serves as a feeder for local public transport . From there, access to the watch tower is relatively at ground level.

literature

  • Walter Gerteis: The unknown Frankfurt , Volume I. Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt 1961, ISBN 3-920-346-05-X , pp. 64-72.
  • Folker Rochelmeyer: Seckbach and its surroundings. Frankfurter Sparkasse from 1822 - Polytechnische Gesellschaft (Ed.), 1972.
  • Folker Rochelmeyer (Chronicle): Festschrift 1100 Years of Seckbach, 880–1980. Festival committee 1100 years of Seckbach e. V. (Ed.), 1980.
  • Lino Masala, Volker Rödel, Heike Risse, Heinz Schomann: Monument topography City of Frankfurt am Main, City Council of Frankfurt. Published by the City of Frankfurt am Main. Vieweg, Braunschweig 1986, ISBN 3-528-06238-X , p. 739.

Web links

Commons : Berger Warte  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Friedrich Philipp Usener was a son of Johann Heinrich Usener, bailiff in Bergen from 1776 to 1815
  2. ↑
    Commons : Berger Warte  - collection of images, videos and audio files
    - see photos there with interior views of the building
  3. ↑ a b c d City of Frankfurt am Main, Environment Agency (ed.): The Green Belt Leisure Card . 7th edition, 2011
  4. ^ Fried Lübbecke , Hanau. City and county, Cologne 1951, 40.
  5. ↑ a b Berger Warte on the website of the city of Frankfurt am Main
  6. ^ Heinrich Reimer: Hessisches Urkundenbuch. Section 2, document book on the history of the Lords of Hanau and the former province of Hanau. Vol. 2, 1301-1349. Publications from the royal Prussian state archives, Hirzel, Leipzig 1892, p. 543, no. 553.
  7. ^ A b Karl-Heinz Heinemeyer: Circular route through Bergen-Enkheim - A historical view. Working group Heimatmuseum Bergen-Enkheim e. V. (Ed.), Frankfurt am Main 1991, p. 19
  8. ^ A b Arbeitsgemeinschaft Heimatmuseum Frankfurt-Bergen-Enkheim e. V. (Hrsg.): Rundweg durch Bergen-Enkheim - A historical view, p. 11 ff. Frankfurt, 1991
  9. ^ Johann Heinrich Usener: Chronick from the Bornheimerberg office started in 1796 . Edited by Walter Reul, 1998. Editor: Arbeitsgemeinschaft Heimatmuseum Frankfurt am Main - Bergen-Enkheim e. V. page 10 f.
  10. ↑ a b c d e City of Frankfurt, Office for Green Space: Information stele of the Frankfurt green belt on site. At the buildings of historical importance around the Berger Warte, several of these steles, typical of the green belt, are set up with text panels that provide information about the history of their locations.
  11. ^ Johann Heinrich Usener: Chronick from the Bornheimerberg office started in 1796 . Edited by Walter Reul, 1998. Editor: Arbeitsgemeinschaft Heimatmuseum Frankfurt am Main - Bergen-Enkheim e. V. page 49
  12. ↑ Quoted from Karl-Heinz Heinemeyer: Rundweg durch Bergen-Enkheim - A historical view. Working group Heimatmuseum Bergen-Enkheim e. V. (Ed.), Frankfurt am Main 1991, p. 19
  13. ↑ Falk map of Frankfurt a. M./Offenbach a. M. - Falk Verlag, Ostfildern 2011
  14. ^ Rhein-Main-Verkehrsverbund / traffiQ (ed.): General route plan Frankfurt am Main, 2012

Coordinates: 50 ° 9 ′ 35 ″  N , 8 ° 44 ′ 18 ″  E