Empfertshausen

coat of arms	Germany map
	Coordinates: 50 ° 40 ′  N , 10 ° 6 ′  E
Basic data
State :	Thuringia
County :	Wartburg district
Fulfilling municipality :	Dermbach
Height :	460 m above sea level NHN
Area :	4.9 km 2
Residents:	546 (Dec. 31, 2019)
Population density :	111 inhabitants per km 2
Postal code :	36452
Area code :	036964
License plate :	WAK, SLZ
Community key :	16 0 63 023
Address of the municipal administration:	Grundacker 7 36452 Empfertshausen
Mayor :	Carsten Brand (FFW)
Location of the community of Empfertshausen in the Wartburg district

Empfertshausen is a municipality in the Wartburg district in Thuringia . The municipality of Dermbach is the fulfilling municipality for Empfertshausen . Empfertshausen was especially known as a carving village and is located in the UNESCO Rhön Biosphere Reserve.

geography

Geographical location

The community of Empfertshausen is located in the Auersberger Kuppenrhön and is part of the Rhön Biosphere Reserve .

Neighboring municipalities and towns

The community borders on Dermbach to the north and east , and Kaltennordheim to the south and west .

mountains

The landscape around Empfertshausen is determined by the mountains and valleys of the Vorderen Rhön. The highest point in the municipality is the Horbel ( 665.4  m above sea level ).

Rivers

The Schmerbach is a source brook of the Felda ; it rises on the border with Hesse on the western slope of the Horbel. The water flow was sufficient to be able to operate the Schmerbachmühle located on the northern edge of the village. A Mühlbach, which guaranteed the supply, still exists.

history

Entrance

The Evangelical Church ( Location → )

View from the Gläserberg to Zella / Rhön , Empfertshausen and Klings (vvnh)

middle Ages

In 825 the place was mentioned for the first time in a deed of donation to the Fulda monastery . The donors known as “Orentil” and “Francswind” handed over 3 serfs and 30 untamed horses in addition to other properties in the village on September 22nd, 825. In 1284, a register of the Zella monastery names the place "Empenfrideshusen 5 men , 3 half-men, 2 hooves , 2 cows, 13 pigs and 20 goats as belonging to the monastery". In 1317 the place was mentioned as part of the Dermbach tithe . From 1328 the official and administrative seat of the Fuldischen Amt Fischberg , to which Empfertshausen was now counted, was in the neighboring village of Klings. The parish for Empfertshausen was in the neighboring town of Fischbach.

Early modern age

Because of their participation in the Peasants' War , the recipient houses were fined, they had to pay 15 Malter oats to the monastery in addition to the taxes due . The Reformation also reached Empfertshausen: In 1544 Nicolaus Dietrich became the first pastor in the Fischberg office to convert to the Protestant faith. The Fulda abbot Balthasar von Dernbach began a first attempt at recatholicization as early as 1570 ; This resulted in numerous social tensions and conflicts between the places Zella and Föhlritz as Catholic enclaves on the one hand and their neighboring towns with a predominantly Protestant population until the middle of the 18th century .

Empfertshausen was hard hit in the Thirty Years War : in 1649 the place had only 18 houses and 15 inhabitants, in 1631 there were 54 houses with (?) 51 inhabitants. As a result of the plague , 86 people died in the village in 1635.

The portal with the coat of arms of the former Catholic Church

18th century

As part of the Henneberg inheritance, the Fischberg office came to the Duchy of Saxony . In 1707 the Abbey of Fulda got the office of Fischberg back and immediately began a process of recatholicization ; The Zella provost's office, built in the neighboring village in 1718, and the newly created monastery in Dermbach played an important role.

Prince Abbot Constantin von Buttlar had a massive stone church built in the village at the same time; it was consecrated in 1719, the tower, actually just an octagonal roof turret made of timber, was added in 1776. The interior of the church measures 17.6 m in length and about 8 m in width. The organ gallery decorated with fretwork is located in the chancel. The pulpit, baptismal font and reading pulpit are rather simple works.

Because of the harsh climate of the Rhön, the agricultural yields were low, so cattle breeding and the cultivation of flax were preferred. Empfertshausen was initially a village specializing in weaving and blueprint; for this purpose, artistic print models were produced on site by talented carvers. There was evidence of carving as a trade in the town as early as 1780. Today's coat of arms cites this craft with a horse as a motif. Around 1790 there was a very close collaboration with companies from Ruhla who were involved in the manufacture of tobacco pipes. The receiving houses initially only supplied handcrafted pipe heads to order; later the carving of whips, baking and butter models as well as nativity figurines were added. The carving developed into a handicraft.

19th century

With the territorial changes after the Congress of Vienna , the Dermbach area again became part of the Eisenacher Oberland and in 1815 came to the Grand Duchy of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach , district court district of Kaltennordheim. In July 1866, heavy fighting between Prussian and royal Bavarian units took place in the German War in the Feldatal; these events were part of the Main campaign .

In 1835 the very talented pipe head carver Adam Bley founded his own workshop, and in 1875 there were already 50 carving workshops in the village.

Gasthaus zur Linde

In 1879, based on the census of 1875, statistical information on the location was published for the first time. This year Empfertshausen had 86 houses with 448 inhabitants. The size of the fields was 418.0 ha, of which farms and gardens 8.9 ha, meadows 141.1 ha, arable land 172.9 ha, forest 24.4 ha, ponds, streams and rivers 0.02 ha. Trifte, wasteland and orchards accounted for 70.7 hectares. The village had livestock of 4 horses, 204 cattle, 171 sheep, 63 goats and 9 pigs. The Schmerbachsmühle was also included in the village.

The construction of the Feldabahn in 1884 resulted in a noticeable economic upswing for the Feldatal villages. A visit by Grand Duke Carl Alexander of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach in 1878 resulted in the establishment of the first carving school in the Rhön; it was under the direction of the sculptor Reinhold Giese and was opened as a vocational school.

20th century

As early as 1898, the state carving schoolempfertshausen opened in the premises of the old village school. Journeyman's examinations and, from 1903, also master’s examinations were held there. The early years of the new century were also successful in carving. The First World War brought a serious setback. The majority of the craftsmen were called up, 16 residents fell at the front. During and after the war, hand, arm and leg prostheses had to be made for the disabled. The traditional range was expanded with toy production. In the mid-1920s, Professor Blechschmidt came to Empfertshausen, taught in the carving school and introduced the production of perfectly designed small wood sculptures.

In 1937 the National Socialist State Carving School in Empfertshausen was relocated to a spacious, modern new building above the town on Andenhäuser Straße. The head was the sculptor Erich Sperling, who did not return from later war deployment. In 1943 the school was closed.

At the beginning of 1945 some of the paintings in the Weimar art collections were moved from the city, which was endangered by air raids, to the state carving school in Empfertshausen. In March 1946, a Soviet general selected 22 particularly valuable paintings, including those by great Dutch masters that were sent to the USSR . Soviet agencies then borrowed paintings from the depot, others were stolen. When the Soviet headquarters was dissolved in 1948, another 68 paintings were missing.

The school building served the occupying powers as a barracks, then it was a home for the homeless and old people. The carving benches and tools had been stolen. In 1947, the carving school was reopened with a lot of improvisation, with the sculptor and art teacher Otto Schmidt, who had returned from captivity, made a special contribution. He became director of the school in 1949. In the same year, an extension could be used as a boarding school.

GDR times and the present

During the administrative reforms in 1950 and 1952, the village of Empfertshausen was incorporated into the Suhl district and the newly created Bad Salzungen district. During the GDR era, the community was in the restricted area on the border with the Federal Republic of Germany until 1972 and could only be reached by the surrounding residents with a pass. Rumors about a planned deportation of unpopular people from the border region around Kaltennordheim in June 1952 caused great unrest among the population . An unusually large number of freight cars had arrived there at the station; As a result, numerous families left their homes in a panic and fled across the still open border to Hesse.

An LPG was set up in the village . The amalgamation of the numerous handicraft businesses to form VEB Rhönkunst took place between 1953 and 1976 through agitation, and later also by compulsory nationalization. The approximately 660 employees of this business manufactured not only handicrafts but also small pieces of furniture, most of which were sold in the Federal Republic and the Scandinavian countries for foreign currency were.

The carving school was from 1951/52 a technical elementary school for applied arts. When a student was sentenced to seven years imprisonment in Bautzen prison for political reasons, there was a petition from the master class to the Chairman of the State Council, Walter Ulbricht, with subsequent repression. In 1963 two schoolgirls overcame the border fortifications with the help of a border soldier who was killed in the process. In the same year the technical school was closed and the training as a wood sculptor was transferred to the local VEB Rhönkunst Empfertshausen. The previous carving school became a normal central school, which existed until 1992.

In 1986 the carved panel of the fallen and missing of the Second World War (1939-1945) was consecrated in the church. In November 1989, pressure from the population led to the opening of the border barriers. A provisional border crossing was built near Andenhausen.

The vocational training as woodcarver was about the personal involvement of teachers and other responsible persons turn be saved permanently.

Religions

Since 1999, Empfertshausen has been the seat of an Evangelical Lutheran parish . The parish is responsible for the villages of Empfertshausen with Andenhausen, Neidhartshausen , Brunnhartshausen as well as for the Protestant believers in Zella / Rhön , Steinberg and Föhlritz .

The local Catholics belong to the parish of the Assumption of Mary of the Fulda diocese , based in Zella / Rhön.

Population development

Development of the population:

• 1995: 690
• 2000: 670
• 2005: 649
• 2010: 607
• 2015: 577

Data source: from 1994 Thuringian State Office for Statistics, values ​​from December 31

politics

Municipal council

The local council of Empfertshausen consists of eight councilors:

• CDU : 2 seats
• Voting group FFW Empfertshausen : 3 seats
• Free voters Empfertshausen: 2 seats
• Voting group Rhöner Holzbildhauer eV: 1 seat

(As of: local election on May 26, 2019 )

mayor

In June 2016 Carsten Brand (volunteer fire brigade) was elected mayor of Empfertshausen with 82.7% of the vote.

coat of arms

The municipal coat of arms shows a jumping horse and the year 825 in a coat of arms-shaped blue shield.

Culture and sights

• 

  Evangelical village church

• 

  War memorial 1914/18

• 

  At the church

• 

  Old carving school from 1898 (museum)

• The Protestant church is in the center of the village . It was built in 1719; the last interior restoration took place in 1984.
• In front of the church there is a large basalt block war memorial for the fallen soldiers of the First World War from the community, and in the church there is a carved plaque commemorating those who fell in the Second World War.
• Across from the church, in the school yard of the elementary school, at the entrance to the cemetery and in other prominent places, wooden sculptures were set up. This reminds of the living tradition of wood carving in the village. The sculptures are also a result of the annual Rhön wood sculpture symposium, which is accompanied by the music association of the recipient houses musicians and other artists. It is visited by artists from home and abroad.
• The renovated old school, Hauptstrasse 32, which housed the carving school from 1898 to 1936, was expanded in 2000 as a carving museum and meeting place. The supporting pillar is the Rhön wood sculptors association. In addition to the exhibition and sale of carvings, there are also lectures and show carving demonstrations. During the renovation of the old school, the former half-timbered facade was covered with insulation panels so that one no longer has the impression of a monument.
• The carving school from 1936 above the village
• The linden tree on the old schoolyard was designated a natural monument in 1988 , as were the two linden trees on Rodweg.

tourism

The place is close to the nationally important " Hochrhöner Wanderweg". The mountain Horbel in the south of the municipality is a popular hiking destination, where you can also come across remnants of the former inner-German border.

economy

Good transport connections and a qualified workforce were crucial for Empfertshausen when company settlements were prepared after reunification. This is how the “An der Lange Elze” industrial park came into being. The companies include two companies specializing in window and door construction:

• Rhönfenster GmbH Empfertshausen
• Euro Systematics GmbH, Empfertshausen

Data source: Federal company register

Today the following companies are located in the industrial park:

• Master blacksmith and locksmith Hartmut Endter
• Z-Bau group of companies
• WEKO Wertstoffkontor GmbH.

Most of the agricultural land is managed by the Rhönland Agrargenossenschaft eG based in Dermbach and the agricultural cooperative "Rhönperle" e. G. Kaltennordheim / Bremen managed.

There are some woodworking craft businesses in the village, such as B. several wood carvings and joineries. You can also see a number of larger, disused production facilities.

• 

  Old wood carving production facility (building is currently fallow)

• 

  Old wood factory Gustav Möller, owner Willy Möller, Empfertshausen / Rhön

• 

  Manfred Vogel carving

• 

  Old carver's house ( dismantled in 2014 for use in the Thuringian open-air museum Hohenfelden )

In the carving school built in 1936 and opened in 1937 above the village, the entire training as a wood sculptor and master wood sculptor can take place.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

traffic

Road traffic / public transport

The B 285 runs through the neighboring town of Diedorf , two kilometers away, in the Dermbach - Kaltennordheim section .

Bus routes 132 and 133, which connect the town with Dermbach and the neighboring towns, run to Empfertshausen.

Rail transport

The Feldabahn ceased operations in 2003, and the dismantling of the track system began in 2008. The nearest train stations are now in the district town of Bad Salzungen and to the east in Wasungen , both in the route network of the Süd-Thüringen-Bahn .

societies

• Volunteer Fire Department Empfertshausen
• NABU Empfertshausen
• Hunting association Empfertshausen
• Rhöner Holzbildhauerverein e. V.
• Shooting club Germania Empfertshausen e. V.
• Rhöner Feuerschützenverein Empfertshausen e. V.
• Volleyballverein Empfertshausen eV
• Small animal breeding association T 630 Empfertshausen eV
• Carrier pigeon club, Empfertshausen

literature

• Günter Wermusch : spoils of war from the Goethe city . In: The time . November 30, 1990, No. 49.
• The history of the development of wood carving and the carving school in Empfertshausen . Text: Gerda Hesselmann. Ed .: Municipal administration E. Börner PR Werbung und Druck GmbH, Meiningen

Individual evidence

1. ^ Population of the municipalities from the Thuringian State Office for Statistics  ( help on this ).
2. ↑ Thuringian Land Survey Office Wartburgkreis and District-Free City of Eisenach. Erfurt 2002, ISBN 3-86140-250-5 .
3. ↑ ^{a b} Thuringian Land Surveying Office TK25 - sheet 5326 Tann (Rhön), Erfurt 1999, ISBN 3-86140-090-1 .
4. ^ Municipal administration 1175 anniversary of the Empfertshausen leaflet with extracts from the village chronicle. Empfertshausen 2000. p. 2.
5. ^ Paul Lehfeld: Architectural and art monuments of Thuringia. In: Grand Duchy of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach. Booklet XXXVII, Jena, 1911, p. 190.
6. ^ Adelbert Schröter: Land on the road. The history of the Catholic parishes in the Thuringian Rhön. P. 77ff.
7. ↑ Erich Schreiber: The rural life and morals in the upper and middle Feldatale. In: Contributions to the folklore of the Thuringian Rhön. Würzburg, 1935, p. 77.
8. ^ ^{A b} Paul Lehfeld: Architectural and art monuments of Thuringia. In: Grand Duchy of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach. Booklet XXXVII, Jena, 1911, p. 216.
9. ↑ ^{a b} Gerd Bergmann: The Eisenacher Land and its changing dimensions in the course of time. In: EP Report 2 - Heimatblätter des Eisenacher Land. Marburg 1992, ISBN 3-924269-94-7 , pp. 60-64.
10. ^ Leopold Höhl flax construction and linen industry. In: Rhönspiegel. Ebern, 1892, p. 30 ff.
11. ↑ Municipal administration 1175 anniversary of Empfertshausen. Leaflet with extracts from the village chronicle. Empfertshausen 2000, p. 8.
12. ^ C. Kronfeld: Regional studies of the Grand Duchy of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach. Second part. Weimar 1879. p. 52 ff.
13. ^ Research by the museum director Walter Scheidig .
14. ^ City administration Kaltennordheim (ed.): 1200 years Kaltennordheim. Meiningen 1995 p. 91 ff.
15. ↑ Elections of the community and city council members. Preliminary results. The regional returning officer, accessed on June 3, 2019 . 
16. ↑ wahlen.thueringen.de
17. ↑ Main statute of the community of Empfertshausen , § 2, accessed on October 8, 2014.
18. ^ Biedermann: Natural monuments in the Wartburg district; District Office Wartburgkreis, 2014, page 97
19. ↑ Empfertshausen . Media Group Verlagsgruppe Industrie- und Handelsverlag GmbH & Co. KG. Retrieved March 26, 2019.
20. ↑ Verkehrsgesellschaft Wartburgmobil - regional transport offers and current timetables from June 1, 2019

Web links

Commons : Empfertshausen  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Official journal of the Upper Feldatal administrative community with news from the community of Empfertshausen - portal of the University of Jena with issues archived online.
• Information on the recipient house carving school