Berg Freiheit (Bad Wildungen)

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Mountain freedom
City of Bad Wildungen
Coordinates: 51 ° 3 ′ 0 ″  N , 9 ° 5 ′ 34 ″  E
Height : 351 m
Area : 4.6 km²  [LAGIS]
Residents : 336  (Dec. 31, 2018)
Population density : 73 inhabitants / km²
Incorporation : December 31, 1971
Postal code : 34537
Area code : 05626
View of the place with Snow White sculpture

Berg Freiheit is a state-approved health resort in the Kellerwald and southwestern part of Bad Wildungen in the north Hessian district of Waldeck-Frankenberg .

geography

The village of Berg Freiheit, located in the southeast of the Kellerwald, is surrounded by the Kellerwald-Edersee Nature Park and is located 320 m above sea level north of the Keller ridge , in which the desert garden (675 m above sea level) is the highest mountain, and south-southeast of the Auenberg (611 m). The place is tangent to the middle course of the Urff . The place counts with the villages Albertshausen , Armsfeld , Braunau , Frebershausen , Gellershausen , Hüddingen , Hundsdorf , Odershausen and Reinhardshausen to the so-called forest villages (not to be confused with the Hamburg forest villages ).

history

Former copper ore mine, now a visitor mine with upper and lower sole

The former mining village in the Urff valley was the center of mining in the Kellerwald in earlier centuries . The place name is based on the concept of mountain freedom .

In 1252 mining was first mentioned in the current village of Berg Freiheit, when mining rights were granted to Cistercian monks from Haina . As planned, copper ore has been mined by miners since 1552 and smelted on site . The mining settlement, originally known as "Neusess", was granted the right to freedom of the mountains in the Urff Valley in 1561 through an edict of Count Samuel von Waldeck -Wildungen. This drew many miners to the place, which was first called "Berg Freiheit" in 1584. With the mountain freedom, the miners enjoyed extensive rights, such as license and duty, hunting and timber rights, exemption from military service and from tension services . They also had the right to move freely in and out and to freely elect a mayor and council. In the entire valley of the Upper Urff there were mining facilities (especially tunnels) as well as facilities for further processing (hammer mills, foundries) and infrastructure in the 16th and 17th centuries. Already in 1577 drainage by the water art took place in the mining of Berg Freiheit ; the first system had two surface and one underground artificial wheel in the tunnel with a diameter of 7 m. After mining ceased, the Wasserkunst was discarded in 1662.

In the heyday of the place around 1,000 people lived in Berg Freiheit. The mining period in Berg Freiheit ended as early as 1590 after around 40 years. Due to decay and relocation, the 19 ironworks gradually went into decline, and by the end of the Thirty Years War there were only 15 residents.

A resumption of ore mining at high cost from 1651 failed and was given up only 10 years later. Further development attempts between 1728, initially by Ludwig Balthasar Müller , mining inspector of Thalitter , and 1737 resulted in losses. After that there was only research between 1850 and 1900. In 1908 the mine field came to the Krupp company from Essen. It has belonged to the Harz-Lahn-Erzbergbau GmbH since 1968.

In 1965, local residents founded an association to research local mining. Since 1974 the former Bertsch copper ore mine has been open to the public as a visitor mine. The remaining pit system at Berg Freiheit today has about 20 km long corridor systems.

On December 31, 1971, Berg Freiheit was incorporated into the city of Bad Wildungen.

Attractions

A 5 km long ecological nature trail leads around Berg Freiheit . It presents the cultural landscape around the former miners' village at 17 signposted stations. The themes are mining, settlement development, flora and fauna, orchards and village renewal.

Buildings

Sights in the village are the Snow White House , the historic mining office , which has been converted into a museum, and the half-timbered church .

Snow White Village

The tourism advertisement gave Berg Freiheit the title Snow White Village in the Kellerwald . The Hessian local historian Eckard Sander traces the fairy tale of the Brothers Grimm von Schneewittchen back to the village of Berg Freiheit. Snow White is said to have been the Waldeck Princess Margaretha von Waldeck , who was known as particularly beautiful at the time . In this context, the seven dwarfs who work in the mountain with shovels are traced back to the child labor in mines that was common at the time . Every year, theatrical performances of the fairy tale take place on an open-air stage in the village.

  • Half-timbered house from 1736, declared as Snow White House

  • In the Snow White House: scene of the princess with the 7 dwarfs

  • church

  • Historical Mining Authority Museum

Economy and Infrastructure

Today tourism and agriculture are the main economic basis. There is a gemstone cutting shop . She owns the mining rights for the locally occurring Kellerwald agate , which she processes into pieces of jewelry.

literature

Web links

Commons : Berg Freiheit  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikivoyage: Mountain Freedom  - Travel Guide

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ City of Bad Wildungen in figures , accessed on February 8, 2019
  2. ^ Cultural discoveries in Northern Hesse; Volume 1: Landkreis Waldeck-Frankenberg, Schwalm-Eder-Kreis , Sparkassen-Kulturstiftung Hessen-Thüringen, 1999, pp. 26-27.
  3. ^ Federal Statistical Office (ed.): Historical municipality directory for the Federal Republic of Germany. Name, border and key number changes in municipalities, counties and administrative districts from May 27, 1970 to December 31, 1982 . W. Kohlhammer GmbH, Stuttgart and Mainz 1983, ISBN 3-17-003263-1 , p. 408 .
  4. ↑ Information on the Mining Authority Museum
  5. ↑ Website for Snow White Village