Nassachtal / Diegelsberg
The entrance to the Nassachtal is in the Filstal between the towns of Ebersbach an der Fils and Uhingen .
In the valley is one of the last coal piles in Germany and probably the only private cemetery in Baden-Württemberg.
Geographical location
The valley, which is named after the Nassach , is only a few hundred meters wide at its widest point, but almost 10 kilometers long. The Nassachtalstraße, which connects the Filstal with the Remstal , leads through the whole valley past the village of Diegelsberg, which is located on a hill, and past the Nassachmühle at the entrance to the valley . Nassach / Unterhütt is in the middle . The open valley line then continues upwards along the right upper course of Lochbach to the fourth suburb of Baiereck on its banks, counted from below .
Since 1996, these four places together form the place Nassachtal / Diegelsberg , which belongs to the city of Uhingen in the district of Göppingen . The sub-towns have a total of around 1,700 inhabitants, their boundaries mainly include forests and agricultural areas. The four localities are accessed from Nassachtalstraße L 1152, which are connected to the Stuttgart area via the Nassachtal driveway on federal road 10 in Filstal.
Districts
Diegelsberg
The suburb of Diegelsberg with its 520 inhabitants is located on the western hill at the entrance to the valley. After Alemannic founding, it came into Württemberg ownership in the 14th century. During this time the castle stables were built, of which remains can still be seen north of the village. Diegelsberg recovered only slowly from the complete destruction of the village during the Thirty Years War . In 1844 the cherry spirit production was mentioned for the first time; Based on this tradition, the Diegelsberg is still called "Schnapsbuckel" or "Schwarzbrennerbuckel".
Nassachmühle
The village at the entrance to the valley at the foot of Diegelsberg got its name from the grinding mill that was built by the lords of the Diegelsberg castle stables. Due to inefficiency, it was converted into a paper mill in the 19th century and then into a sanatorium. It has been used as a residential building since the 1970s. After the incorporation in the 1930s, Nassachmühle belongs to the city of Uhingen . The Nassachmühle district itself has about 330 inhabitants (as of the end of 2008).
Nassach / Unterhütt
The Nassach, which flows through the valley, divides Nassach / Unterhütt into two places. On the left of the Nassach is the town of Nassach, on the right is Unterhütt. The suburb of Unterhütt has always belonged to Baiereck , which is four kilometers away, while the distance to Nassach is only about 10 meters.
Nassach, which was first mentioned in 1245, was founded during the reign of Emperor Barbarossa . The historical heyday of Nassach and Unterhütts was around 1500 . During this time, one of the three glass-blowing factories in the valley was located in Nassach between 1450 and 1550. This was soon followed by the Thirty Years War , at the end of which Nassach was almost completely destroyed; only two residents lived there. Until the 20th century, charcoal burning was almost the only source of income for the population. The industrialization of the Filstal led to an economic boom. Today about 240 people live in Nassach / Unterhütt. The tradition of charcoal burning has long survived in Nassach. In the Unterhütt district, Eugen Jung was one of the last commercial charcoal burners in Germany. Other special features of the place include a wooden house by the artist Kurt Gminder , which was built using only wood and glass over many years, and the only private cemetery in Baden-Württemberg.
Baiereck
Baiereck am Lochbach, the western source brook of the Nassach, lies at the upper end of the valley floodplain. It does not get its name from a "Baier" origin of the inhabitants, as is often wrongly assumed, but from the Swabian word Boier for wild boar. The place is about 450-475 m above sea level.
Baiereck, which was the seat of the third glass blowing factory in the Nassach Valley around 1470 , was first mentioned in a document around 1553. However, it should have been founded by the end of the 14th century at the latest. In addition to glass blowing, woodcutting and sand quarrying were the main sources of income for the population for centuries. Due to the industrialization of the Rems and Filstals and the construction of a road through the valley in the 19th century, Baiereck was able to free himself from poverty. On September 1, 1971, the place was incorporated into Uhingen.
history
Landscape history
The Nassachtal was created when the Nassach cut through the uppermost and more resistant Black Jurassic , which often occurs in the Schurwald , and beneath it could more easily erode the older and softer Keuper rock. In the course of time, a narrow valley ridge with steeply sloping valley edges was created, running approximately to the south-east.
The history of the settlement
Nassach was founded at the time of Friedrich I. Barbarossa (1150–1190). The first documentary mention dates back to the year 1245. The place changes into the ownership of the Adelberg monastery , Baiereck (founded in the 14th century) and Unterhütt belonged to the Grafentum Schorndorf. In 1450 the Greiner family of glassblowers settled here. After 100 years of prosperity in the valley, the glassblowers left the valley in the direction of Thuringia . During the Thirty Years' War , the entire Nassachtal was the victim of looting and epidemics; after the end of the war, 75% of all homes were destroyed and 90% of the population died. For 200 years, from 1650 to 1850, the Nassach Valley was considered one of the poorest areas in Württemberg. Because of the narrowness of the valley and the other natural conditions, agriculture yielded poor yields. The inhabitants of the valley mostly pursued day labor, charcoal burning and logging. Poverty was to be reduced through tax exemptions, but this was only achieved to a limited extent. In the 19th century it was decided to build a road through the valley to eradicate poverty. Due to emigration due to famine and poverty, the population in the valley decreased, in Baiereck z. B. from 372 to 198 inhabitants. Many of the emigrants went to North America or moved to the nearby cities, where new jobs had been created through industrialization.
The residents of the Nassachtal found work at industrial factories in Uhingen and Ebersbach . The working hours were 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. In addition, there was the "travel time" of more than an hour. The population of the place continued to decline at the beginning of the 20th century , as people now wanted to live close to their workplace. The valley towns were connected to the electricity grid in 194 (early 20th century). Furthermore, the population shrank due to resettlement to work places. Due to the admission of displaced persons (e.g. Sudeten Germans ) after the Second World War, the population increased by 50%. In the 1960s, the population decreased again due to the migration of the population to the cities. The population increased again in the 1970s , as the rural areas became more attractive due to improved infrastructure. As a result of the redevelopment of the town centers in the 1990s and thanks to their idyllic location, all four suburbs are considered attractive residential areas. The connection to Stuttgart and Ulm is very good thanks to the Nassachtal bridge and the associated driveway to federal highway 10 . The four sub-locations were merged under local law to form a common village with the official name "Nassachtal-Diegelsberg". This has a local council with ten members. The incumbent mayor has been Achim Klump since 1994. The population is around 1550. In the 2014 elections for the local council, Eberhard Hottenroth was elected as the new mayor. Thanks to three new development areas (Schönblick in Baiereck, Waldrain in Nassachmühle, Riebäcker in Diegelsberg) the population rose to around 1700.
Craft tradition
Glass blower
In 1450 glassblowers settled in the valley. The valley offered excellent conditions for glass blowing : there was enough wood as an energy source, potash and the quartz sand found in the Keuper area for the glass recipe. Christian Greiner was the first glassblower to move to the valley with his family, the other of only two families of glassblowers active in Württemberg at the time , besides the Wezel family.
The glassmakers, supported by tax privileges and exemption from military service, built three glassworks by around 1480 . The exact location of the first smelters is unknown, but excavations revealed a glassworks in Nassach and another in the salt marshes between Nassach and Baiereck. All were run by the Christian Greiners family. It was characteristic of medieval and early modern glassworks that they were laid as soon as the wood was used up for operation in the area. While the secret of the right mix of glass was reserved for the smelter, the villagers were employed as assistants (lumberjacks, ash collectors and sandbumpers). This also brought a slight economic improvement for them.
Despite the modest prosperity that the glassblowers brought with them, there were numerous violent clashes with the local population. After Christian Greiner's death, his sons gave up the glass blowing in Nassachtal due to the decline in wood and the low income from the huts; they moved with their families to the Welzheimer forest and to Thuringia . An important source of income was lost for the residents and the meager income from agriculture, charcoal burning and logging remained.
Charcoal burner
The first charcoal burning in Nassachtal was mentioned in a document around 1583. As a result of the shortage of wood around 1770, the number of charcoal burners decreased. When charcoal became scarce due to industrialization , their number skyrocketed. Buyers were the iron foundries in Ludwigsburg , Cannstatt , Göppingen and later WMF in Geislingen an der Steige . Around 1880, 27 piles were burning in Nassach / Unterhütt. The main reason for the decline since the middle of the 20th century was that hard coal replaced charcoal. The last active kiln in the Nassachtal was operated by Eugen Jung in Unterhütt.
Today this craft is still sporadically cultivated in the Baiereck district. Once a year the Hees family piles up their kilns and shows the interested viewer at the charcoal burner project days how it was with this old craft.
The Baiereck volunteer fire brigade has been burning their charcoal for their own consumption at irregular intervals on the same charcoal pile in the Herrenbachtal for more than two decades. Old firefighters have passed this old craft culture on to the next generation so that it does not go out. With the charcoal obtained, the “fire brigade steaks” and “red ones” are fried on the grill at the annual “Käs- und radichhock”.
Correct charring is a very laborious work process. The wood - beech is best - must be felled, split and then dried for at least two years. After the pile has been piled up, it is lit and sealed with the so-called "Gmühl" so that too much air can never enter, which would cause the wood to burn to ashes in an open fire. For this reason, the kiln must be checked for sufficient coverage every four hours for 5–6 days. If the wood is then charred, the kiln is opened and "gutted".
In the past, the kilns were located in the villages themselves to make them easier to keep an eye on. Later they were banned from the villages because of the heavy smoke development at the charcoal-burning plant and the kilns were stacked outside in the side valleys of the Nassach.
Bibliography
- W. Ziegler: The glass and smelter Hans Greiner from Nassach - ancestor of the Thuringian Greiner . In: Yearbook of the district of Sonneberg. 9, 2004, pp. 96-102
- W. Lang: Late medieval glass production in the Nassachtal, Uhingen, Göppingen district . Material booklets on archeology in Baden-Württemberg. 59. Stuttgart 2001. ISBN 3-8062-1569-3
Individual evidence
- ^ 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, Stuttgart / Mainz 1983, ISBN 3-17-003263-1 , p. 449 .
Coordinates: 48 ° 43 '32.9 " N , 9 ° 33' 37.8" E