Eberstadt stalactite cave
| Eberstadt stalactite cave
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 The wedding cake |
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| Position: | Building land , Germany | |
| Height : | 341 m above sea level NN | |
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Geographical location: |
49 ° 28 '52 " N , 9 ° 20' 54" E | |
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| Geology: | Shell limestone - karst | |
| Type: | Stalactite cave | |
| Discovery: | 1971 | |
| Show cave since: | 1973 | |
| Lighting: | electric (since 1973) | |
| Overall length: | 645 meters | |
| Level difference: | 39.29 meters | |
| Length of the show cave area: |
588 meters | |
| Average annual number of visitors: | 59,500 (2014-2018) | |
| Current visitors: | 59,406 (2018) | |
The Eberstadt stalactite cave is a stalactite cave in the building land at the transition to the southeastern Odenwald in the north of Baden-Württemberg . It is located near Eberstadt , a district of Buchen , about 70 kilometers east of Heidelberg and 100 kilometers north of Stuttgart . The cave is approximately 600 meters long, 341 meters above sea level and is estimated to be three to five million years old. It was discovered in December 1971 during blasting work in a shell limestone quarry and opened to the public until 1973. Since then it has been used for tourism as a show cave and is one of the attractions of the Bergstrasse-Odenwald Geo-Nature Park .
The cave passage is angled several times and in places only 1.5 meters high, but elsewhere has halls up to six meters high. It is located in the Lower Muschelkalk and contains rich stalactite decorations such as slim and conical floor stalactites , sintered flags , sintered terraces and crystals. Since the cave was closed after its discovery and guided tours were carried out under electric lighting from the start, the stalactites are still predominantly chalk white, unlike in most of the older German show caves, where the use of candles and torches blackened the stalactites. The Eberstadt stalactite cave is one of the most beautiful show caves in Germany.
geology
Emergence
The cave lies on the edge of the shell limestone landscape of the building land. Around 240 million years ago, a shallow marginal sea of what was then the world's ocean Tethys covered Central Europe and large amounts of mussel shells were deposited , which later condensed and formed the limestone. Since the Tertiary , the rock strata have been tilted slightly at an angle and now drop to the southeast. The reason for this is the movement of the tectonic plates in connection with the folding of the Alps and the formation of the Upper Rhine Rift . The shell limestone layers are criss-crossed by hard banks alternating with softer marly or clay layers. Tensions in the earth's crust caused cracks, so-called fissures , and the infiltration of carbonated water and the subsequent lime solution formed cavities in the rocks of the lower shell limestone. Because of their fragility, there are hardly any larger cavities in these, but in the area around Eberstadt the Lower Muschelkalk is criss-crossed by so-called foam limestone banks, which are very resistant to lime dissolution. They thus form the “supporting roof” of the cave and thus protect the cavities created here from being buried.
Because the streams flowing into the Ur- Neckar , especially the nearby Gewesterbach, which today flows into the Jagst via the Seckach, deepened over time and the groundwater level sank as a result, the cavities finally fell dry. As the water drained away, the cave profile expanded through lateral erosion and deepening and took on the keyhole contour typical of the cave: the upper part of the cross-section was created as a rift cave, the lower as a river cave. After heavy rainfall or when the snow melted, floods and backwater occurred in the underground drainage system. The groundwater level then rose by several meters, so that the cave rooms were at times completely under water. In the process, cave clay was deposited up to the ceiling in places. Over time, the cave creek dug in like a gorge, stalactites formed in the upper dry area. These karstification processes are still ongoing; they were also controlled by the change between cold periods and warm periods : during the warm periods the fissures for calcareous water are continuous and stalactites form, during the cold periods the process rests.
The cave is a so-called secondary cave , so it was created a long time after the rock formation. In the later stages of the cave, unstable rock packages fell from the cave ceiling and the walls and piled up on the floor to form collapse mountains. This happened mainly in places with changes of direction, where the water attacked more strongly, undermined cave walls and caused parts of the walls to collapse. The increased limescale dissolving effect ( corrosion ) also results from the mixing of water with different carbonate concentrations ( mixed corrosion ). If saturated solutions - e.g. B. over fissures and layer joints - so the mixture can loosen limestone again. The cave walls look in places as if they were hewn, they are remnants of the cleft walls . The opposite wall was worn away by corrosion and the effect of the draining water.
Comprehensive cave system
The Eberstadt stalactite cave runs almost parallel to two neighboring caves. The " Hohle Stein " has been measured over a length of over 3000 meters, but is not generally accessible. As early as 1953, the then known area was to be operated as a show cave. The project failed, however, as the cave was filled with water and clay during heavy rainfall, which had to be removed again and again. Almost exactly 35 years after the discovery of the Eberstadt stalactite cave, another large 220 meter long cave, the Kornäcker cave, was discovered in March 2006, again during blasting in the quarry . It is difficult to access and not open to the public.
The three caves have similar changes in direction, they are presumably linked by common clefts along the lines.
Description of the cave passage
The visitor's path leads past various stalactite formations deep into the interior of the cave; only the extreme end is no longer accessible. In the front part of the cave, the height-dependent differences in the shape of the cave walls are noticeable. In the upper wall area there are round shapes, so-called pools , usually arranged in rows at different heights above the floor. Underneath there is crumbly corrugated lime . The upper parts of the wall were created by the corrosive force of the water, the flowing force of the cave brook acted below. Water that penetrated through furrows and cracks gave rise to multifaceted stalactite shapes of various sizes; Stalactite garlands adorn the cave walls.
On the floor of the cave, dripping water created flat sinter and candle-shaped stalagmites . Depending on whether more or less water was flowing in, one or the other shape was formed. A brilliant white stalactite of great purity, known as the White Lady of Eberstadt , stands on a sinter barrier above today's cave floor . It grew under a chimney when the water supply decreased. His foot shows streaky layers that were created by changing growth phases and thrusts. In the younger phase of the cave, a stronger water ingress undermined the sinter and created a deeper level for the cave stream. The white woman and the sintering barrier are therefore clearly above the sole.
Overhanging wall and ceiling material had fallen in some areas of the cave. Such a fall, called the Big Family , covered the calcareous water with sinter. A large number of stalagmites of different sizes also formed in the process. On Vesuvius , a large sinter cone, the interplay between sinter formation and lime dissolution can be seen particularly well. When the dripping water was saturated with lime, the stalagmite grew up as a sintered cone. A crater was dug into the top by sapping water. The outer surfaces of the cone do not have the smooth, rounded surfaces characteristic of sinter formation, but rather rough and sharp-edged shapes, an indication of recurring phases of corrosion: From the surface of the earth water penetrated into the cave over a short distance through fissures and a chimney. At the same time, it still had little lime dissolved, was still very carbonated, slowly dissolved the existing lime sinter and, as the water supply from the chimney gradually decreased, dug the sharp-edged crater into the tip of the cone of Vesuvius .
When Vesuvius , the visitors' shares. There is a large rock step that can be climbed by stairs. At the top, the passage between stalactite formations is very narrow, then another staircase leads back down to the bottom. To bypass the bottleneck, a short tunnel has been broken through at sole level so that disabled people and wheelchair users can visit all the accessible parts of the cave.
Behind it, in the cathedral , the largest room in the cave, the keyhole profile typical of the cave is clearly visible. At the top, the chalk was widened to a wide cavity by the lime solution, and the flowing water created a deepening at the bottom of the cave. At one point in the wall, massive sintering spills out of a gap, known as the pulpit . In the cathedral, two walls meet almost at right angles. The clefts crossing here follow the two main local cleft directions; the course of the cave usually follows these alternately.
A small, water-filled sinter basin follows. This cave lake is about two meters long, one meter wide and has no inflow or outflow. It is only fed by the dripping water from the stalactites on the sloping cave wall. Because of the climatic conditions in the cave, hardly any water evaporates. The sinter basin and the wall stalactites are still growing. At the bottom of the basin, spherical pearl sinter was formed. Originally, several macaroni-shaped stalactites hung from the ceiling to the surface of the water. Rare sinter rosettes, rhombohedral , radially diverging single crystals formed. Below the water level four were cluster crystals of calcite formed, even crystal flowers called. Thieves stole them all after the show cave was opened. A rosette could be secured and reattached. The entire area is now protected from further damage by barbed wire barriers.
The wedding cake is a sintered structure that extends almost to the ceiling of the cave on several floors, probably one of the largest and most beautiful stalactite formations in Germany, created by phases of differently strong water supply. Dropping drops and running water created numerous floors. Past Nikolaus , a stalactite sculpture about one meter high, and the cave organ , a waterfall-like sintered mass on the cave wall, it goes to the shark throat , a bizarre stalactite landscape above a mountain of collapse. There the cave forks, which clearly consists of a branched system of passages. A small and inaccessible branch of the cave, which is about 30 meters wide, runs in the previous direction of walking.
The visitor path continues past the shower , one of the few places in the cave where the supply of water almost never runs dry. Behind the shower you can see masses of eccentrics in a crevice on the eastern wall of the cave between dripstones , delicate, sometimes needle-shaped, hook-shaped to spiral-shaped structures growing in any direction, the way in which they originated has not yet been fully clarified. They develop, apparently independent of gravity, under the dominant influence of the crystallization driving force in all directions.
About 600 meters from the cave entrance, the cave tour ends at a wooden barrier. The rest of the cave has been left almost as it was when the speleologists discovered it. The cave floor there is still completely covered with cave clay. The visible remaining corridor of about 30 meters in length is covered with numerous stalactites, has an initial height of one meter, then becomes lower and lower and forks into several no longer accessible crevices.
Cave data
The cave consists largely of a single, long and tube-like cave passage, which kinks about twenty times at the intersections of the main cleft lines (see also Saxon clod tectonics ) and is often narrowed in cross section. The cave width varies between two and seven meters with a height of 2.5 to 9 meters. The cave runs through the southwest slope of the 401.8 m above sea level. NN tall winter wood . It follows the main rift lines, which run predominantly from south-south-west to north-north-east and from south-east to north-west. Its entrance is at 341.48 m above sea level. NN , at the end it rises to 380.77 m above sea level. NN , so around 39.29 meters. The cave ceiling is consistently 10 to 30 meters below the surface of the terrain. The total volume of the cave is given as 7794.09 cubic meters.
While the cave was being developed, it was precisely measured by the Chief Surveyor, Ulrich Köpf from Ehingen. He made a precise plan of the cave. According to these measurements, the cave had a total length of 600 meters. The front approximately 30 meters of the initially found cave are not taken into account, as they were broken off when the cave was opened up due to insufficient stability. After remeasurement, a total length of 645 meters is currently given, including the side passage at the shark's throat with a length of 30 meters. The part of the show cave up to the wooden barrier at the end of the guide path is 588 meters long, the explored but undeveloped part behind it to a siphon at the end of the cave is another 28 meters.
Cave climate
The closed cave has temperatures between 9 and 11 ° C all year round, with a very high relative humidity of 95%. The temperature difference between summer and winter never exceeds 2 degrees, although outside the cave the temperature fluctuates by almost 20 degrees over the year. The external temperature curve hardly influences the cave temperature.
Measurements showed that the temperatures at different points in the cave are not the same, but differ from each other by more than 1 degree. The reason for this is the cave profile with its numerous changes of direction and cross-sectional constrictions, which hinders the temperature equalization.
During visiting hours, lighting and visitors also heat the cave, more in the rear, higher area than in the front, where an exchange of air takes place through the entrance. Measurements on June 28, 1975, once at seven o'clock in the morning, then again at ten o'clock after one hour of lighting and the passage of the first 150 to 200 visitors, showed a temperature increase from 11.5 ° C to 14.5 ° C; meanwhile, the relative humidity fell to 80%. By the end of the day of measurement, the temperature at the end of the cave even rose to 16.3 ° C.
story
Discovery of the cave
In the Eberstadt quarry on December 13, 1971, a larger cavity was drilled in preparation for a blast. After some of the blasted material had been cleared aside, a cave opening about two meters wide and one meter high appeared on the fresh quarry wall, which ran from east to west, about eight meters above the quarry floor and about ten meters below the upper level of the terrain. The floor of the cave was covered by a layer of clay about one to one and a half meters thick. The water was 10 to 15 centimeters above the soft, clayey bottom. The ascent was therefore arduous at first. The most difficult passage was at Vesuvius , where a rock step had to be overcome with a rope ladder, later with wooden ladders.
The press was notified, and on the same day the news of the cave discovery spread throughout the village. Many residents went to the quarry to get a personal impression. Photos at that time show still intact stalactites that were later damaged. The press and television reported the discovery as early as December 14th. The television broadcast several special programs over the following days, which made the cave widely known. In January 1972, the television stations made further recordings of the cave, which they show in their original, as yet undeveloped condition. Immediately after the discovery, the rumor spread that the cave was not stable and would be closed again. To get souvenirs, people broke into the cave several times and knocked off stalactites.
Because the cave was particularly large and beautiful and the stalactites showed a wealth of shapes, it was found to be worthy of preservation and expansion. The Buchen District Office placed it under nature protection by means of an interim injunction , and a year later it was designated as an extensive natural monument (FND).
On December 15, 1971 decreed the District Office Book setting the blasting in the quarry. However, according to a later report, the blasting in the quarry could be resumed, but a minimum distance of 50 meters from the cave had to be maintained. The examination of the stability of the cave ridges and the stalactites showed that the quarry could be maintained while the cave was being used. An important employer in the community was thus retained. On December 16, 1971, the local council decided to convert the stalactite cave into a show cave. To protect it from further damage, the entrance was initially walled up and a door was installed. This too was unsuccessful as the thieves abseiled down from above and broke the door open. Only barbed wire barriers below and above the entrance and an additional patrol duty by the state police, who drove into the cave every night, brought success. Geologists and speleologists came to visit the cave. Experts from the State Geological Office, the Association of German Cave and Karst Researchers and the district's nature conservation officer gave valuable advice on expanding the cave.
Development
The cost of the first phase of construction was estimated at 200,000 German marks. Since the municipality could not finance the cave expansion on its own, the district of Neckar-Odenwald and the state of Baden-Württemberg promised aid. The district took on the task of paving the county road to Seckach so that the expected flow of visitors could be handled. The community decided on the name Eberstadt stalactite cave early on , so that the place name would always be mentioned with the cave in the future.
In the summer of 1972, the expansion of the cave began. The mayor of the then independent town of Eberstadt, Wilhelm Eberle, also supervised the planning and the work as technical manager from the start. Residents of the community worked in the cave for an hourly wage of four DM. The rock lying above the bottom of the cave in the foremost part of the cave at that time had to be removed over a length of about 30 meters, as it had become brittle from the blasting in the nearby quarry and threatened to collapse. Various teams were working on the cave expansion. An advance command crushed the obstructive fall masses on the spot, the gravel obtained was used for road construction. Another group dug the drainage ditch along the entire length of the cave as well as the visitor path.
The rock barrier at Vesuvius was overcome first with a ladder and later with a staircase. However, since this was unsuitable for the handicapped and wheelchair users, an alternative path through the rock was blasted and widened to a comfortable passage. In the further course of the cave, occasional corrections were made to the ceiling and difficulties in draining off the water were eliminated. With the shark's throat , an intervention was necessary at a point with strong sinter formation in order to be able to overcome this via steps. From this point on, the rest of the cave interior work progressed quickly and was finally completed on schedule. In front of the cave, a slope was poured up, which was stabilized by plants and bushes, and a forecourt was created. A solid entrance door was attached to the cave entrance and a wall was built on both sides of the cave entrance. The drainage of the quarry was turned off so that the water rose slowly and today's lake was created in front of the cave. A fountain was built in the groundwater-fed lake, which the newly founded sports fishing club leased, and fish were used.
96 helpers worked inside and outside the cave during the development work. They worked a total of 7,500 hours.
Almost two years after the cave was discovered, it was opened for viewing on September 9, 1973. For the village it was a big festival that lasted three days. On the opening day, 3400 visitors toured the cave. There were also high-ranking guests such as District President Dr. Munzinger, also a representative of the state government. District Administrator Geisert opened the cave gate. Over 4,000 visitors came on the following Sundays. Before the end of the first year, the 250,000. Visitors are honored. The show cave was registered as the thirty-seventh in 1973 by the Association of German Cave and Karst Researchers , which records all German show caves.
The cave belongs since 2004 to UNESCO - Geo-Bergstraße-Odenwald . The cities of Buchen and Walldürn were committed to including the cave in this geopark .
Flora and fauna
Lamp flora
In the Eberstadt stalactite cave lighting has become a conspicuous very and diverse, as since the establishment lamp Flora designated plant community formed. While absolute darkness prevents plants from thriving in a cave , the artificial lighting in show caves offers undemanding plants an opportunity to exist far away from the cave entrance. Algae , mosses and ferns in particular can settle in low light . Often, however, it is a question of miserable forms. In mosses, the stalks and the tips of the leaflets are usually elongated. More demanding flowering plants appear only rarely and then mostly in the form of pale, short-lived seedlings. Spores and seeds enter the cave with seepage water.
Despite careful investigations, no traces of plant life could be found before the official opening of the cave. One year after the opening, after long periods of lighting, there were blue-green shimmering algae colonies and fresh green moss pads not only at the cave entrance, but also at the end of the accessible part of the cave. At that time, plants had settled on 17 of a total of 112 light sources. Although the lamp flora is repeatedly reduced by cleaning actions, 19 types of moss have been identified. Twelve of them occurred only around the front light sources.
During an inspection in October 1981, germs of ferns were found in the vicinity of the light sources near the entrance and at Vesuvius . These were wall rue , forest lady fern and real worm fern . From the winter of 1982 to the spring of 1983 a new inventory of the flora in the cave took place. 32 new species of moss and two new species of fern were found. Follow-up examinations in March 1998 showed that 50 of the total of 112 light sources had meanwhile formed moss vegetation. The blue-green algae of the lamp flora belong to the orders Chroococcales , Oscillatoriales and the family Scytonemataceae . Among the mosses there were representatives of 15 different families of deciduous mosses . Specifically, these are Amblystegiaceae , Aulacomniaceae , Brachytheciaceae , Bryaceae , Cratoneuraceae , Dicranaceae , Ditrichaceae , encalyptaceae , Entodontaceae , Fissidentaceae , Funariaceae , Grimmiaceae , Mniaceae , Polytrichaceae and pottiaceae . Basin mosses are the only liver mosses that have been identified. Genera of the ferns (Pteridophyta) are lady ferns , shield ferns and the striped ferns found earlier .
Cave animals
Shortly after the discovery, no evidence of fossil or recent animal species was found in the cave . A more detailed search in the seepage water and bottom sediment was not carried out at the time. Even during a first expert inspection on August 13, 1973, no land-dwelling animal species was found. During more intensive investigations of the course of the brook, however, copepods belonging to the Stygobionta (real groundwater animals) were discovered .
Later, it was noticed in the cave three trogloxene (cave alien) species of beetles from the family of Rove and three troglophile (also caves dwelling) species of flies, including two from the family of dung fly (Scathophagidae). In the clay puddles at the end of the cave there were several living specimens of snails belonging to the troglobionts (exclusively cave-dwelling animals) and almost 100 empty shells. Other possible small habitats for animals have been greatly changed or destroyed by the construction of the roads.
Further investigations were carried out in the cave until November 3, 1974. It was possible to detect other animal species that presumably had immigrated through the show cave entrance, including beetles , flies , mosquitoes , arachnids (such as harvestmen ) and mites . In a kolkartigen deepening of the cave floor also lived springtails and amphibians . Seven live, one to three millimeter large snails of the species Bythiospeum acicula were sieved out of several kilograms of cave clay. It is believed that this groundwater species lived in the cave before it was discovered. On October 31, 1981, three cave shrimps of the genus Niphargus were discovered .
tourism
The cave is located about 1.5 kilometers west of Eberstadt on the Eberstadt – Seckach road, a clasp between the L 519 Adelsheim - Seckach - Buchen and the L 582 Osterburken –Eberstadt – Buchen. It is also well developed for larger numbers of visitors. There is a large parking lot at the foot of the cave next to the road, and there is also parking space for tourist buses. The visitor center, which was newly built in 2011, is located near the car park. The architecture of the building is intended to symbolize the crevices and faults of the shell limestone. In the visitor center, information is provided about the development of the landscape in the karst of the building land and the formation of the Eberstadt cave worlds. Guided tours through the cave last almost an hour and take place every day from the beginning of March to the end of October, in the winter months only on weekends and public holidays. Special tours outside of the opening times are possible all year round by prior arrangement. A geological educational trail established in 1995 begins at the visitor center . On information boards, it explains the formation of the stalactite cave and the most important geological formations in Baden-Württemberg, also using the rock samples on display. The nature trail is almost a kilometer long and offers an insight into the mining areas of the neighboring quarry. The Seeterrasse restaurant is located above the quarry pond next to the cave entrance .
In the years 2008 to 2012, an annual average of 58,948 visitors visited the cave. With this value, the show cave is in the upper range of the show caves in Germany. Of the 30 or so show caves in southern Germany, only the Teufelshöhle near Pottenstein (156,100 visitors on average between 2006 and 2010) and the Karls- und Bärenhöhle ( 90,728 visitors annually ) are more frequented. In 2008 there were 59,326 visitors to the cave, 2.3 percent of them severely disabled - a high proportion for a show cave. In 2012, 56,324 people visited the cave. From the opening of the cave to the end of 2012, a total of 3.83 million people have visited the cave.
literature
- Klaus Dobat, Horst Eichler, Herbert W. Franke, Gerhard Fritz and editor Hans Binder: The Eberstadt stalactite cave . In: Association of German Cave and Karst Researchers e. V. (Ed.): Treatises on karst and cave research . 5th expanded edition. Series A, Speleology, Issue 12. Fr. Mangold'schen Buchhandlung, 1998, ISSN 0567-4956 .
- Wilhelm Eberle: Discovery and expansion of the Eberstadt stalactite cave . Odenwälder Buchen printing house, Buchen 1987.
- Bernd Fischer, Wolfgang Hauck, Gabriele and Walter Kammerer, Jochen Schwab and Felicitas Zemelka: Eberstadter Höhlenwelten . In: Der Wartturm - Heimatblätter of the Bezirksmuseum Buchen e. V. Association Bezirksmuseum Buchen e. V., 2006, ISSN 0723-7553 .
- Horst Eichler, C. Mahn and A. Scheuerbrandt: The Eberstadt stalactite cave - a study of the geography of foreign traffic . In: Association of German Cave and Karst Researchers e. V. (Ed.): Treatises on karst and cave research . Series A, Issue 16, 1977.
- Horst Eichler: Cave climate and speleometeorological phenomena of the Eberstadt stalactite cave. At the same time a contribution to the thermal load on show caves due to high visitor numbers (= karst and cave . Volume 1978/1979 ). 1980, p. 75-82 .
- P. Henne: Geological-physical studies on the Eberstadt stalactite cave . In: Association of German Cave and Karst Researchers e. V. (Ed.): Treatises on karst and cave research . Series A, Issue 16, 1977.
- Petra Schad: The "lamp flora" of the Eberstadt stalactite cave (Neckar-Odenwald district) . Tübingen 1983 (unpublished state examination thesis of the University of Tübingen).
- Ernst Waldemar Bauer: Wonderful world of the caves . Bechtle Verlag, Esslingen 2001, ISBN 3-7628-0565-2 , p. 151 .
- Stephan Kempe, Wilfried Rosendahl (Ed.): Höhlen - Verborgene Welten . Primus Verlag, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-89678-611-1 , p. 155 .
- Hans Binder , Anke Luz, Hans Martin Luz: Show caves in Germany . Aegis Verlag, Ulm 1993, ISBN 3-87005-040-3 , p. 66-67 .
- World full of secrets - caves . In: Stephan Kempe (Ed.): HB Bildatlas special edition 17 . HB Verlags- und Vertriebs-Gesellschaft, Hamburg 1997, ISBN 3-616-06739-1 , p. 99 .
Web links
- Official website of the Eberstadt stalactite cave
- Eberstadt stalactite cave in the Odenwald Geopark www.geo-naturpark.net
- Environment theme park: Eberstadt stalactite cave
- Show caves in Germany - Eberstadt stalactite cave www.showcaves.com/
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Bernd Fischer, Wolfgang Hauck, Gabriele and Walter Kammerer, Jochen Schwab and Felicitas Zemelka: Eberstadter Höhlenwelten . In: Der Wartturm - Heimatblätter of the Bezirksmuseum Buchen e. V. Association Bezirksmuseum Buchen e. V., 2006, ISSN 0723-7553 .
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Klaus Dobat, Horst Eichler, Herbert W. Franke, Gerhard Fritz and editor Hans Binder: The Eberstadt stalactite cave . In: Association of German Cave and Karst Researchers e. V. (Ed.): Treatises on karst and cave research . 5th expanded edition. Series A, Speleology, Issue 12. Fr. Mangold'schen Buchhandlung, 1998, ISSN 0567-4956 .
- ↑ a b The Eberstadt stalactite cave. City of Buchen in the Odenwald, archived from the original on January 3, 2012 ; Retrieved October 18, 2011 .
- ↑ Topographic map 1: 25,000 Baden-Württemberg North, State Surveying Office Baden-Württemberg, single-sheet cut of map No. 6522 Adelsheim.
- ↑ a b c according to information provided by the tourism company and Eberstadt stalactite cave of the city of Buchen.
- ↑ Diploma thesis from the Stuttgart University of Applied Sciences, Department of Surveying and Geoinformatics.
- ↑ Expert opinion by Andrea Hoydem from the Muschelkalkkarst working group from 2003.
- ↑ M. Linnenbach: Eberstadt stalactite cave. Retrieved September 18, 2008 .
- ↑ ND 3 Karst cave Eberstadt stalactite cave , Buchen / Eberstadt. In: Geological natural monuments in the administrative district of Karlsruhe. State Institute for Environmental Protection Baden-Württemberg, archived from the original on September 13, 2009 ; Retrieved August 24, 2009 .
- ↑ a b Wilhelm Eberle: Discovery and expansion of the Eberstadt stalactite cave.
- ↑ Geopark. Buchen im Odenwald, archived from the original on September 20, 2012 ; Retrieved October 8, 2012 .
- ^ Fränkische Nachrichten , Buchen / Walldürn edition, October 7, 2011, p. 17
- ↑ Geotourism. University of Freiburg, archived from the original on September 14, 2009 ; Retrieved November 27, 2008 .
- ↑ M. Linnenbach: Geological trail near the stalactite cave. Baden-Württemberg Ministry of the Environment, accessed on October 9, 2012 .
- ↑ Gutekunst family: Restaurant at the cave - lake terrace - nothing is closer ... Accessed on November 11, 2008 .
