Frankenweide
The Frankenweide is a low mountain range in Rhineland-Palatinate . It forms in the Pfalz the central part of the Palatinate Forest .
geography
Location and limits
The Frankenweide is a closed forest area with an area of over 200 km² today. It essentially consists of one at about 380 to 450 m above sea level. NHN- lying plateau, which rises continuously from north to south. Individual mountain peaks protrude from the plateau, which is framed by deeply cut valleys, reaching a height of 610 m . In the south the Frankenweide is bounded by the valley of the Queich , in the east by that of the Wellbach and its imaginary extension to the north. This is where the Imperial Forest of Kaiserslautern joins. In the north-west the Moosalb forms the boundary, in the south-west the Graefensteiner Land .
From north to south, the area is divided into the Untere Frankenweide with the community of Waldleiningen , the Middle Frankenweide with the Eschkopf and the Obere Frankenweide around the hamlet of Hermersbergerhof , which belongs to Wilgartswiesen .
Surveys
In the Middle and Upper Frankenweide are the four highest peaks, all of which rise more than 600 m: the Eschkopf ( 608.3 m ), the Mosisberg (about 610 m ), the Hortenkopf ( 606.2 m ) and the Weißenberg ( 609 , 9 m ). In a high-altitude trough southeast of Mosisberg summit there used to be a peat bog , which Mosisbruch , which was powered by a 2 km long stream which shortly thereafter from the right opens into the upper Wellbach, a left tributary of the Queich.
Waters
Three of the four major drainage systems in the Palatinate have their origin in the area of the Frankenweide, through which the Palatinate main watershed runs between the Rhine and the Moselle . The Lauter (which is still called Wieslauter here in the upper reaches ) and the Speyerbach flow directly to the eastern Upper Rhine , while the Schwarzbach makes its way westwards via Blies , Saar and Moselle to the Rhine - here to the Middle Rhine . Initially, the watershed is directed roughly from north to south and crosses one after the other Eschkopf, Mosisberg and Hortenkopf. From there it turns to the southwest in the direction of Castle Gräfenstein , so that the Weißenberg is no longer on the watershed.
history
As the name suggests, the Franconian pasture originated in Franconian times, at the latest in the 6th century. At that time the forest area was still uninhabited and was partly used as pasture , mainly for pigs and goats . When the presumably Frankish Counts of Leiningen were first mentioned in the 12th century, they were already responsible for the administration of the Frankenweide. In the 13th century, the quarrelsome knight Johannes von Wilenstein caused local feuds several times . According to him, the hamlet is Johanniskreuz named, where he is a serving for property marking Flurkreuz - let change in his sense - allegedly unlawfully.
Although the Wittelsbach family from Pfalz-Zweibrücken also had possessions and claims in the Frankenweide for a while, the Liningian Oberamt remained administratively responsible for the Falkenburg near Wilgartswiesen. In 1785 the Frankenweide fell as a whole to Leiningen. In the 1790s, after the French Revolution , the territories of the Electoral Palatinate on the left bank of the Rhine were conquered by France ; In 1801 the areas were formally annexed and incorporated into the French state. After the Congress of Vienna (1815), the Palatinate came under the Treaty of Munich in 1816 to Bavaria , which held the administration until after the Second World War .
In the course of its history, the Frankenweide has repeatedly lost parts, a total of around 100 km². In the east, the Elmsteiner Wald, which lies on both sides of the upper Speyerbach valley , was cut off in the 12th century . In 1304 King Albrecht von Habsburg donated the large area in the southeast, which extends between the valleys of Wellbach and Eußerbach from the forester's house Taubensuhl in the north to the Queichtal in the south, to the imperial city of Annweiler ; the area today forms the Annweiler Bürgerwald . In 1602 the Esthaler forest in the northeast was added to the fief of Erfenstein .
The current area of the Frankenweide belongs mainly to the districts of Kaiserslautern (northern part) and south-west Palatinate (southern part).
Economy and Infrastructure
Settlement
When more and more monasteries were opened in the Palatinate, which at that time still belonged to Lotharingia, from around the 9th century , a gradual settlement began from the edges of the Palatinate Forest, which, however, did not reach the Frankenweide in the core zone. For a long time the Hermersbergerhof, founded by the Hornbach Monastery and mentioned in 828, was the only outpost of civilization. Over the centuries, forest houses and charcoal burners 'huts as well as - by the Liningian administration - the forest workers' base Hofstätten , which can be verified for the first time in 1379 , have been built here and there . Excavations at the Mosisbruch near the Wellbachtal revealed that there must have been a settlement here from the 11th to the 14th century. However, the administration in Wilgartswiesen, which is too remote and which still includes large parts of the Frankenweide, was not able to bring about a planned development. As a result of the Thirty Years' War , the few inhabited places also fell desolate in the first half of the 17th century. It was not until around 1785 that the forest workers' village of Waldleiningen was established in the Lower Franconian pasture at the instigation of Prince Carl Friedrich Wilhelm von Leiningen-Hardenburg .
The village remained the only independent community on the Frankenweide. In total, fewer than a thousand people live on the entire Frankenweide today.
traffic
With the central traffic junction Johanniskreuz , the Frankenweide represented a transit area for traffic between the Rhine plain and today's Lorraine from the very beginning . Back then, when roads were led over the mountain ranges as far as possible, paths branched from the main axis towards the Weissenburg and Hornbach monasteries as well as to the Kaiserpfalz Kaiserslautern . The northern route of the Palatinate Way of St. James crossed the northern part of the Frankenweide, where it had its highest point at Johanniskreuz at 470 m .
Even today, hiking trails and connecting roads often follow the old routes. However, the Frankenweide is no longer mainly developed in a west-east direction, but via the winding B 48 , which climbs from the B 10 in the south through the Wellbachtal to Johanniskreuz, the only settlement point on the whole route, and then to the B 37 at Hochspeyer in the north.
Leisure and Tourism
The plateau with its closed forests is a destination for hikers. All long-distance hiking trails of the Palatinate Forest Association marked with a cross , which are laid out in a star shape across the entire Palatinate, meet in Johanniskreuz in the heart of the Frankenweide. There are observation towers on the Weißenberg and the Eschkopf. For mountain bikers there are routes through the Frankenweide and the neighboring Holzland .
Johanniskreuz, with the House of Sustainability and its few other houses, mostly hotels and restaurants, is the tourist center of the Frankenweide. The Palatinate Catholic Day and forest services took place here, and hundreds of motorcyclists meet on Sundays, especially when the weather is good . At Hermersbergerhof, whose 6 km long access road, Kreisstraße 56, branches off from the B 10 between Wilgartswiesen and Hauenstein and then continues as a narrow road over 10 km to Landesstraße 496 ( Leimen –Johanniskreuz), winter sports are practiced when snow conditions are favorable; Because the winters are getting milder, the ski lift was dismantled in the 1990s, but a toboggan run is still available.
A point of attraction for tourists is the landmark installed by the Kingdom of Bavaria on the 459 m high Kleiner Roßrück near Waldleiningen, which was popularly known as the Pälzer Weltachs . She later inspired the local poet Paul Münch to write his well - known dialect poem passage about her alleged lubrication:
"Thou the world-ax will be smacked un uffed that nothing basseert."
In 1964 the saying was carved into a stone block at the landmark. Since then, the property has actually been “lubricated” with public sympathy.
literature
- August Becker: The Palatinate and the Palatinate . 7th edition. Pfälzische Verlagsanstalt, Landau / Pfalz 1975, ISBN 3-89857-193-9 (1st edition 1857).
- Karl Heinz: Palatinate with Wine Route . Landscape, history, culture, art, folklore. Glock and Lutz Verlag, Heroldsberg 1976.
- Emil Heuser: New Palatinate Leader . 14th edition. Waldkirch Verlag, Ludwigshafen / Rhein 1979 (1st edition 1900).
- Heinz Wittner: Great Palatinate Leader . German hiking publisher Dr. Mair & Schnabel & Co, Ostfildern 1981, ISBN 3-8134-0106-5 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Heinz Wittner: Big Palatinate leader . S. 249 (card).
- ↑ Map service of the landscape information system of the Rhineland-Palatinate nature conservation administration (LANIS map) ( notes )
- ↑ Utz Kastenholz: Hofstätten. A portrait of the place. August 6, 2011, accessed on November 15, 2016 (SWR Fernsehen Rheinland-Pfalz).
- ↑ a b August Becker: The Palatinate and the Palatinate . S. 354-358 .
- ↑ Heinz Wittner: Big Palatinate leader . S. 248 .
- ↑ a b Landesamt für Vermessung und Geobasisinformation Rheinland-Pfalz (Ed.): Topographic maps 1: 25,000 with hiking trails - Hauenstein and the surrounding area . Self-published by the State Office for Surveying and Geographic Base Information Rhineland-Palatinate, Koblenz 1999.
- ↑ Heinz Wittner: Big Palatinate leader . S. 258-263 .
- ↑ The World Ax. Waldleiningen community, accessed on November 15, 2016 .
Coordinates: 49 ° 19 ′ N , 7 ° 50 ′ E