The tip of Stein (Hinterweiler)
The pointed stone is a menhir near Hinterweiler in the Vulkaneifel district in Rhineland-Palatinate .
Location and description
The menhir is located northeast of Hinterweiler on a field on elevated terrain just below the highest point. It served as an important central meeting place. According to popular belief, it marked the center of the district until the middle of the 19th century. At the pointed stone the men who were patterned as fit for defense gathered and were brought from there to the garrison towns.
The menhir consists of basalt lava . It has a height of 73 cm, a width of 120 cm and a depth of 40 cm. It is irregularly plate-shaped. The stone probably originally had a point that was destroyed. Furthermore, it has been heavily covered with earth by plowing, so that it appears overall much lower than in its original state.
The menhir in regional sagas
There are two legends about the pointed stone . The first tells of residents of the village of Waldkönigen who did work in the surrounding towns and always passed the Spitz Stein on the way home. It was haunted there regularly . Some people saw a white horse galloping past, others saw figures, heard voices, rumblings or howls. A worker from Betteldorf was once on the way from Steinborn to Hinterweiler at night when a glowing ball appeared and accompanied him to the intersection in Hinterweiler. But suddenly she reappeared on the Hagelberg and chased the fugitive until he reached the valley. He then never wanted to take the route via Hinterweiler again, but instead ran long detours to Waldkönigen from there.
A second legend tells of a shepherd to whom a resident of a nearby village owed money. Since the shepherd knew that his debtor would pass the pointed stone in the evening, he pushed his cart to the stone, hid in it and waited for the debtor. When he passed, he jumped up and called out to him in a loud and disguised voice to pay his debts to the shepherd. It is not known whether this prank had the desired effect.
literature
- Peter Joseph Busch: Natural Monuments. A handbook of the Trier area. Recklinghausen 1952, pp. 271ff.
- Johannes Groht : Menhirs in Germany. State Office for Monument Preservation and Archeology Saxony-Anhalt, Halle (Saale) 2013, ISBN 978-3-943904-18-5 , pp. 288–289, 333.
- Horst Kirchner: The menhirs in Central Europe and the menhir thought. Academy of Sciences and Literature, Treatises of the Humanities and Social Sciences Class, Born 1955, No. 9, Wiesbaden 1955, p. 55.
Web links
- The top stone of Hinterweiler
- Entry on The Point of Stone in the database of cultural assets in the Trier region .
Individual evidence
Coordinates: 50 ° 14 ′ 28.8 " N , 6 ° 46 ′ 4" E