Birnbaumer forest
| Birnbaumer forest (Hrušica) | |
|---|---|
 Location of the Birnbaum Forest (Hrušica) |
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 View from the Nanos mountain range to the Birnbaumer Wald |
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| Highest peak | Lovrenc ( 1019 m. I. J. ) |
| location | Goriška / Notranjsko-kraška , Slovenia |
| part of | Karst / Southern Alps |
| Coordinates | 45 ° 50 ′ N , 14 ° 10 ′ E |
| rock | limestone |
The Birnbaumer Wald , Hrušica in Slovenian , is an approximately 100 km² medium-mountain plateau in the south-west of Slovenia . It lies on the northern edge of the Karst landscape and on the south-eastern edge of the Julian Alps and forms a mountain pass in the eastern Alpine region for the connection between Slovenia and Italy near Gorizia, which has been important until recently .
Surname
The name of the region is of ancient origin. It is derived from the station that was located on the top of the pass in Roman times: It had the Latin name Ad Pirum , which was translated as "To the pear tree". The Slovenian name Hrušica (from hruška , Slovenian ' pear ') and the Italian name Selva di Piro refer to it. However, it cannot be proven that the ancient name is actually derived from a pear tree. According to another reading, the name is said to come from the ancient Greek word πύρ (pýr) for fire, as there should have been beacons in this area for the transmission of messages. In the early modern period the region was called the Pyrpamerwald .
geography
location
The Birnbaumer forest in Lovrenc reaches a height of up to 1020 m. In the south-west it is bounded by the 1313 m high Nanos mountain range . As part of the Dinaric Mountains, together with the Ternowaner Forest (Slov. Trnovski Gozd ) to the northwest, it belongs to the Inner Carniola karst area . Both regions mark a part of the southern edge of the Alps as a south-alpine low mountain range , to which they are assigned according to the traditional border at the Adelsberger Pforte .
Geology and hydrology
Geologically, the Birnbaumer and Ternowaner Wald are steps of the southern alpine ceiling system that is pushed over to the south . The area is assigned to the Alpine Karst or Hochkarst and is traversed by many cave systems that are among the longest in the world. Here there are sinkholes up to 100 m deep with an inversion of the vegetation levels .
The Birnbaum Forest, together with the Nanos, the Schwarzenberg plateau (Slov. Črni vrh), the hinterland of the Hubelj River, the western parts of the Ternovan Forest and the Banjšice Plateau form a hydrogeological unit whose karst water bodies are determined by Mesozoic Dachstein limestone and limestone breccias is. These form highly porous karst aquifers with high hydraulic conductivity . All of them are deep karsts. The karst aquifer is bounded on three sides by Birnbaumer Wald and Nanos by flysch and borders on the Predjama Fault in the northeast. The aquifer , which also consists of flysch, is about 0 m below the Birnbaumer forest. Almost the entire area is drained to the source of the Wippach. The European main watershed runs through the area between the catchment areas of the Adriatic and Danube (see also watersheds in the Alps ).
Climate and vegetation
Climatically, the Birnbaumer Wald lies on the border between the moderate continental climate and the inland-sub-Mediterranean climate of the Wippach valley. The area is one of the wettest regions in Slovenia (up to over 2000 mm).
The vegetation of the still sparsely populated region is part of the Dinaric fir-beech forest , which is used for forestry. Until modern times, an important line of business was the production of charcoal . On the high Karst accumulations occur ice in pit caves, which in the past by mining was mined and exported.
Mountain pass
Due to its location in the narrow area between the upper Adriatic Sea and the south-east and central European inland, the plateau with the Birnbaumer Saddle next to the Postojna gate has been an important mountain pass in the eastern Alpine region since ancient times. The pass lies at an altitude of 883 m and connects the Slovenian capital Ljubljana via the localities Logatec , Podkraj , Col and Ajdovščina with the border town of Nova Gorica and Gorizia in northeast Italy . In earlier times, the main traffic in the snow-free period passed over the pass. Since the expansion of the road and the construction of the Spielfeld-Straß-Trieste railway line in the 19th century, both of which lead from Ljubljana to Trieste via Postojna south around the Birnbaumer Forest, things have become quieter here.
Due to its geographical and strategic location, the area has been a borderland for thousands of years. This can still be seen today through the sudden change in the character of the landscape, vegetation and the forms of settlements and houses.
history
Antiquity
The fact that the area or the central area of the Birnbaumer Wald was an important traffic route to and from Italy in ancient times is shown by the connection with the Greek world of legends: the Argonauts are supposed to flee up the Danube , those from Colchis on the Black Sea to the Adriatic Sea , have passed here. The legend hides the idea that the ancient Greeks believed that the Danube, due to a bifurcation, not only flowed into the Black Sea, but also into the Adriatic. The legend refers to early trade contacts between the Greeks and the peoples of the upper Adriatic . The Amber Road also ran across the region from the Baltic Sea to Aquileia in northeast Italy.
The Greek geographer Strabon calls the area the Okra Mountains. This includes the Nanos mountain and the surrounding regions. According to him, the Illyrian - Celtic tribe of the Japods settled here . In Roman times, the Birnbaumer Forest was assigned to the Julian Alps . Here was the border between Italy and the province of Pannonia . Strabon reports that goods from Aquileia were transported on trucks through the Okra Mountains to Nauportus ( Vrhnika ). From there they were transported by ship across the Ljubljana and Sava rivers to the east. At that time the path led through the gate of Postojna south around the Nanos . At that time there was a station at the pass of Razdrto .
Under Emperor Augustus , the Via Gemina between Aquileia and Emona ( Laibach ) was expanded through the Birnbaumer Forest, which shortened the route to and from Italy. This probably came in response to the Pannonia uprising in 6 AD. The new road was so steep in places that wagon tracks and stairs for horses had to be carved into the rock. Civilian stations were built along the road to change horses and take care of travelers.
The highest point of the pass was secured by the Ad Pirum (Zum Birnbaum) station. From the 1st century AD there was a post office here and from the 2nd century a guard post for beneficiaries , i.e. soldiers with civilian duties who took over customs control and were supposed to protect travelers from robbery. A trip on this pass road could obviously be a dangerous affair without appropriate escort, as the inscription on a tombstone of a centurion of Legio XIII Gemina , Antonius Valentinus, found near Ajdovščina reports. The station was part of the cursus publicus , the public transport system that was primarily available to government employees.
During the Marcomann Wars under Emperor Marcus Aurelius , the Birnbaumer Forest was part of the Praetentura Italiae et Alpium military administration zone . In 170 Marcomanni and Quadi advanced from Pannonia through this area to northern Italy, besieged Aquileia and destroyed the neighboring Opitergium ( Oderzo ). When in the course of the 3rd century intensified the attacks on the Roman Empire, were in the late antiquity of the emperor at the beginning of the 4th century under the rule of Diocletian the claustra alpium iuliarum set up a blocking system of walls and fortifications in the Julian Alps, should secure access to Italy.
The center of this defense system was the Ad Pirum station in the Birnbaumer Wald, which was converted into a military facility and expanded into a stone fort. The fort was 250 m long, 75 m wide and surrounded by a 2.70 m wide and 8 m high wall. The eastern entrance was protected by two towers about 10 m high. It had a permanent crew of 500 men. The Claustra also included the Burgi of Lanišče and Martinj Hrib and the Nauportus (Vrhnika) and Castra ( Ajdovščina ) stations on both sides of the pass.
In the Tabula Peutingeriana , the Birnbaumer forest is recorded as "in alpe Iulia" ; it lies between "fluvio frigido" (Ajdovščina) and the hostel ( mansio ) "Longatico" (Logatec). In Itinerarium Burdigalense , a guidebook of an anonymous Christians , the first documented in writing, of the year 333 Bordeaux outgoing pilgrimage to Jerusalem undertook's Ad Pirum listed as a stage station.
The Birnbaum forest also played a role in military conflicts within the Roman Empire: In 351, Emperor Constantius II ended the fight against his rival Magnentius by conquering the fortress Ad Pirum . In 394 Theodosius I , the emperor of the eastern part of the empire, undertook a campaign with 100,000 men against his adversary Eugenius , who was supported by the pagan senators of Rome. Archaeological evidence suggests that the army of Theodosius, commanded by the Magister militum Stilicho , including a contingent of 20,000 Goths under their leader Alaric , took the fortress by force. According to another account, the top of the pass had been cleared by the western army before the arrival of the eastern troops. The emperor is said to have spent the night of September 6th here, waking and praying. In the morning he moved downhill towards Italy and met the main army of Eugenius at the Fluvius frigidus , today's Hubelj river, in the valley of the Vipava (Wippach). It came to one of the last great battles of the Roman Empire, in which Theodosius won the day and thus fate decided in favor of Christianity ( Battle of Frigidus ). After this dispute, the fortification system in the Birnbaumer Forest was abandoned and the facilities fell apart.
Especially during the time of the Great Migration , the barrier system was out of order and no longer had any significance when the Birnbaum Forest served various peoples as a gateway to Italy. Alaric had become acquainted with the terrain and the weaknesses of the defense system during the campaign of Theodosius. In 401 he and the Goths invaded Italy over the pass and besieged Milan . In 408 he invaded again and called his brother-in-law Athaulf from Pannonia , who in the same year crossed the Julian Alps with an army made up of Goths and Huns .
In 452 the Huns under Attila moved through the Birnbaumer forest without resistance and destroyed the fortified Castra (Ajdovščina) in the Wippach valley . Even Theodoric the Great , who moved to Italy with the Ostrogoths in 489 , found no resistance at the top of the pass, only when crossing the Isonzo did he meet his adversary Odoacer . With the procession of the Lombards under their leader Alboin in 568 over the pass of the Birnbaumer forest and the occupation of northern Italy, the migration of peoples finally ended.
middle Ages
Around the year 590, the southern Slavic Slovenes moved into the areas abandoned by the Lombards . During the early Middle Ages , the Birnbaumer forest was off the main traffic routes. Coin finds show that the upswing in long-distance trade that began in the High Middle Ages revitalized the old route; a hostel, a post office and a chapel of St. Gertrudis , the patron saint of travelers , were built on the top of the pass amid the Roman ruins . Towards the end of 1096, one of the armies of the First Crusade , consisting of southern French under the leadership of Raymond IV of Toulouse, marched overland across the region towards Constantinople . However, it is not certain whether they went through the Birnbaumer forest or took the route south of the Nanos.
In the Middle Ages, the border between the territories of Aquileia and Trieste ran through the Birnbaumer Forest. After the Counts of Gorizia died out , the region came to the Habsburg Empire as part of Carniola in 1335 and remained part of Inner Austria for all inheritance divisions .
Modern times
At the beginning of the modern era, the Birnbaumer Wald came into the focus of topographers , cartographers and historians . In 1557 Wolfgang Lazius mentioned the "Pyrpamerwald" in his work De gentium aliquot migrationibus next to the Gottscheer Land as a settlement area for a German-speaking population . In the same context, the region was mentioned in the Annales Carinthiae published by Hieronymus Megiser from 1612. In 1689, Baron Johann Weichard von Valvasor described in his book Die Ehre des Hertzogthums Crain the station for mail between Ljubljana and Gorizia that existed at the top of the pass at that time , quoting from a travel description by Martin Zeiller .
After the defeat by Napoleon Bonaparte's troops in the Italian campaign , part of the Austrian army withdrew in 1797 under the command of Archduke Karl through the Birnbaumer Wald via Laibach and Krainburg to Klagenfurt . Between 1809 and 1814 the region belonged to the Illyrian provinces of France as part of the Carniola .
In the 19th century, the post office building that still exists today was rebuilt on the top of the pass amid the Roman ruins. After the construction of the railway line from Ljubljana to Trieste in the years 1856–1857, it served as the hunting lodge of the Counts Lanthieri and then housed the state forest ranger.
After the Italian army occupied the Birnbaumer Wald in 1918, a plaque was set up on the top of the pass at the east entrance of the old Roman fort with the inscription “ROMA REDIT PER ITINERA VETERA” (“Rome has returned on the old ways”). The location and course of the Roman fortifications also played a role at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, when it came to drawing up the border between the Kingdom of Italy and Yugoslavia . In the Rapallo border treaty of 1920, the western Slovenian Karst area fell to Italy as the province of Venezia Giulia . The Birnbaumer Wald became a direct border area. In the 1930s and early 1940s, it and the surrounding areas were included in the eastern part of the Vallo Alpino , a system of bunker systems against neighboring Yugoslavia, the remains of which are still visible in the area today. In the Italo-Yugoslav peace treaty, which was signed at the Paris Peace Conference in 1947 , most of the former province of Venezia Giulia, including the Birnbaumer Wald, fell to Yugoslavia.
The modern pass road through the Birnbaumer Wald partly uses the old Roman road route and also leads through the old fortifications, the remains of which were excavated by Austrian archaeologists before the Second World War and conserved by Italian archaeologists. They can still be viewed in the area today.
Between 1991 and 1995 the former post house was converted into the Stara Pošta inn (Old Post Office) with the support of the Slovenian monument protection authority . It houses a small museum on the history of the Birnbaumer forest with archaeological finds from the Roman fortress.
literature
- Ivan Gams : Geografija Slovenije. Ljubljana 1998, ISBN 961-213-060-4 .
- Norbert Krebs : The Eastern Alps. Vol. 2: Regional part. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1961, p. 272 f.
- Thilo Ulbert (Ed.): Ad Pirum (Hrušica). Late Roman fortification of the pass in the Julian Alps (= Munich Contributions to Pre- and Early History. Vol. 31). Beck, Munich 1981, ISBN 3-406-07981-4 .
Web links
- Postcard from 1913 with "Panorama aerial photo"
- www.zaplana.net/Izleti/Namigi/StaraPosta/ - Stara Pošta in the Birnbaumer Forest (Slovenian)
- www.ars-cartae.com - Claustra Alpium Iuliarum (English)
- www.borg-op.asn-bgld.ac.at - Ad Pirum
Remarks
- ↑ The height information varies depending on the scale of the official Slovenian map from 1020 m over 1019 m to 1018.9 m; according to more recent data only approx. 1003 m.
- ^ Strabo: Geographica 4, 6, 1.
- ^ Strabo: Geographica 4, 6, 10.
- ^ Strabo: Geographica 7, 5, 2.
- ↑ Jana Horvat, Alma Bavdek: okra. Vrata med Sredozemljem in Srednjo Evropo (Ocra. The gateway between the Mediterranean and Central Europe) . Opera Instituti Archaeologici Sloveniae, Ljubljana, 2009.
- ↑ Rufus Festus : Breviarium rerum gestarum populi Romani 7, 51.
- ↑ Inscriptiones Latinae selectae 2646: "[Valentinus was] slain by muggers in this ominous place in the Julian Alps, [...] in Alpes Iulias loco quod appellatur Scelerata interfecto a latrionibus."
- ↑ Jaroslav Šašel : About the extent and duration of the military zone Praetentura Italiae et Alpium at the time of Mark Aurel. In: Museum Helveticum 31, 1974, pp. 225-233.
- ↑ Tabula Peutingeriana , Segmentum III, 5.
- ↑ Itinerarium Burdigalense 560, 3f.
- ↑ Thilo Ulbert (ed.): Ad Pirum (Hrušica). Late Roman fortification of the pass in the Julian Alps (= Munich Contributions to Pre- and Early History. Vol. 31). Beck, Munich 1981, ISBN 3-406-07981-4 .
- ↑ Hartmut Leppin : Theodosius the Great, on the way to the Christian empire (= shaping the ancient world ). Primus Verlag, Darmstadt 2003, ISBN 3-89678-471-4 , p. 217.
- ↑ Zosimos : New Story 5, 45, 5.
- ^ Annales Carinthiae , printed in Leipzig by Abraham Lamberg. MDCXII, p. 5: “One finds even with the credible Authoribus that the most noble peoples from the Swabians, called Sennones, lived in this opposite and country style: Then they sat down for the first time in Liburnia, by the corner of the Adriatic Sea , namely next to Histerreich (Istria), Dalmatia and Friuli. We call this place in the country the Pyrpamer Wald , Karsch, Wippach, Gottschee and the Windische March. Strabo and Pliny call these Swabians Cenomanos and their surviving descendants are still today in Gottschee and around there, which inhabitants in the middle of the Windische use the German language and have a Swabian pronunciation. "
- ↑ Johann Weichard Valvasor: Die Ehre des Hertzogthums Crain , Nuremberg 1689, pp. 259-260 [1] .
- ^ Remo Bitelli: Claustra Alpium Iuliarum, il confine di Rapallo e fascismo. Archeologia come esempio di continuità. Koper 1999, pp. 27-39.
