Franzosenstrasse

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Franzosenstraße (F) hiking trail on the northeastern edge of the Vollmarshäuser Teiche nature reserve near Vollmarshausen (autumn 2017)

The Franzosenstraße or Franzosensteig, Franzosenweg is a medieval old street train in Waldhessen , which can still be documented by field names and monuments in its course between Kassel and Bebra and was connected to the road network (stage locations Gerstungen , Berka ) of the Werra Valley.

Original name meaning

The name Franzosenstrasse was probably derived from the dialect of the name Wrosenstrasse . Similar to the Weinstrasse (derived from Woinstrasse , for Wagen (Fahr-) straße), it was a type of road - here a roadway covered with lawn. It is related to the Frosenholz ; it was thrown into the marshy sections of the trail to improve the carrying capacity of the trail.

Route

The road runs parallel to the Sälzer Weg , the well-known trade route for the salt produced in the Allendorf salt pans to Central Hesse. The path is not to be confused with the direction parallel to the Werratal Napoleon Street , which also extends as a watershed or trail and the Sallmannsberg houses Rennsteig with the running in the same direction Rennsteig is directly connected via the Thuringian Forest. The age of the street goes back to the High Middle Ages, when the Thuringian landgraves and the monasteries Fulda and Hersfeld "expanded" the country with the construction of castles and settlements.

The section between Bebra and Hessisch Lichtenau has a division of the route: the western section leads over the begging oak coming from Bebra to the street marbling Schwarzer Stock . The eastern section, also coming from Bebra, leads first on Sontraer Straße to the corridor Drei Linden (a group of trees replaced by new planting in 1953), there the Franzosenstraße branches off to the Schwarzer Stock and then touches the Drei Kreuzes before it comes back to the Schwarzen Stock meets the main road to Kassel. The legend is remarkable because the three wooden crosses are supposed to remind of three French officers or soldiers who died there when they tried to steal their regimental treasury. Another version knows the three as perpetrators who were immediately tried and buried on the roadside. Further stages towards Kassel are the Mosenberg , the Stölzinger Kuppe , the Großer Steine and the Reichenbach castle ruins before reaching the city of Spangenberg .

Even later, the parallel and south-facing Hersfelder Strasse in the Fulda valley (today's B83 ) was expanded. Nevertheless, the Franzosenweg was supposedly still used as a supply route during the Napoleonic Wars, from which it can also get its (today's) name. However, the name used in the Middle Ages is unknown.

Franzosenstraße intersects with Adjutantenstraße ( coming from Rockensüß ) and the Sälzer Weg coming from Melsungen to Bad Sooden-Allendorf. The state road "through the Kurzen Hessen " runs through Berka .

Todays use

Today the Franzosenstrasse is an idyllic, approximately 70 km long forest and hiking trail, largely undisturbed by modern road constructions, mostly running through a forest landscape. It is looked after by the Hessisch-Waldeckische Gebirgs- und Wanderverein and marked with the sign F between Kassel and Bebra .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Eduard Brauns: The Franzosenstrasse, the Hessian Rennsteig . In: Hess. Waldeckischer Gebirgs- und Wanderverein (Hrsg.): Hessischer Gebirgsbote . tape 82 . Melsungen 1981, p. 122-123 .
  2. ↑ a b c Helmut Salzmann: Not only in earlier times, you can still see hikers on the “Franzosenstrasse” today . In: Hess. Waldeckischer Gebirgs- und Wanderverein (Hrsg.): Hessischer Gebirgsbote . tape 91 , no. 3 . Melsungen 1990, p. 100 .
  3. ↑ Alfred Schulze: The Westerburg over Sooden . In: Werratalverein (ed.): The Werraland . tape 24 . Eschwege 1972, p. 43-45 .
  4. ^ Georg Landau : Contributions to the history of the old military and trade routes in Germany. Bärenreiter, Kassel 1958, p. 86f.
  5. ↑ a b Heinrich Ćrede: On hiking trails between Sontra and Franzosenstraße . In: Werratalverein (ed.): The Werraland . tape 6 . Eschwege 1954, p. 18-20 .

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