Holy forest
The holy forest is an old name for the Hagenauer forest ( Forêt de Haguenau ) in Lower Alsace ( Bas-Rhin department ). In France it was called Forêt Sainte . It used to be known as the Hagenauer Reichswald , as it was one of the imperial properties in Alsace. It is 40 km west of Baden-Baden, about 30 km west of the Rhine. With around 21,000 hectares, the Heilige or Hagenauer Forest is the largest contiguous forest in Alsace and the sixth largest in France.
The holy forest was preserved as a forest area between Pfaffenhofen ( Pfaffenhoffen ) in the west, Bischweiler ( Bischwiller ) in the southeast and Selz ( Seltz ) in the northeast, as its sandy soil is not fertile enough for agricultural use.
It got its name because of the numerous monasteries and churches that were built in it, including:
- Surburg Abbey in Surbourg , the oldest monastery in Alsace
- Sankt Walburga in Walbourg , the Benedictine abbey founded around 1074 , in which the father Friedrich Barbarossa is buried
- Marienthal (between Haguenau and Bischwiller, Carmelites ), the center of Alsatian devotion to Mary
- Koenigsbruck Monastery (Königsbrück), a Cistercian convent
A third of the Holy Forest was part of the dowry that Agnes von Waiblingen , the daughter of Emperor Heinrich IV , brought into her marriage to Friedrich I. von Staufen , Duke of Swabia . The other two thirds remained with the Salians or belonged to the Lords of Mömpelgard / Lützelburg . In the years that followed, the Holy Forest became a preferred hunting ground for the Hohenstaufen family . Friedrich's son, Duke Friedrich II. , Built a hunting lodge on an island in the river Moder , which his son, Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa , expanded to become a Palatinate , and around which the city of Hagenau developed.
In the 19th century there was a training area of the German Army for the XV. Army Corps .
As part of Operation Undertone , Allied troops attacked German Army Group G on a 75 km wide section of the front between Saarbrücken and Haguenau in March 1945 and pushed the Wehrmacht back.
Individual evidence
- ^ Alfred Overmann : The cession of Alsace to France in the Peace of Westphalia . Journal for the history of the Upper Rhine. New episode. Volume XIX. Heidelberg. Winter's University Bookstore. 1904. Digitalisat (Google) , p. 79 ff
- ↑ La foret de Haguenau. (No longer available online.) Office National des Forêts, archived from the original on September 24, 2015 ; Retrieved December 11, 2014 (French). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
literature
- Carl Eduard Ney: History of the Holy Forest near Haguenau in Alsace . BiblioBazaar, 2008, ISBN 978-0-554-54819-7 ( reprinted in Google Books [accessed August 29, 2010]).
- Carl Eduard Ney: History of the Holy Forest near Hagenau in Alsace edited from the sources. First part (1065–1648), Strasbourg 1888 in the Internet Archive
- Carl Eduard Ney: History of the Holy Forest near Hagenau in Alsace edited from the sources. Second part (1648–1791), Strasbourg 1889 in the Internet Archive
Coordinates: 48 ° 51 ′ 0 ″ N , 7 ° 53 ′ 0 ″ E