Gasthaus Ritter (Fürfeld)
The former Gasthaus Ritter in Fürfeld was the post office of the town that is now incorporated into Bad Rappenau from 1737 to 1860 . The building, rebuilt after a fire in 1849, was the local rectory from 1870 to 1970 . The Evangelical Church of Fürfeld was built on the site of its outbuildings in 1871/73 .
Since the building served as a rectory for 100 years, it is also called the old rectory . Below the Fürfeld Castle , another old parsonage has been preserved on site with the previous rectory used from 1589 to 1844 .
history
The imperial knighthood place Fürfeld was on Hohen Strasse , a section of the old long-distance route from Heilbronn via Mannheim to Frankfurt am Main . This street was also used by the post office in the early modern period, which is why post stations were set up at various locations along its route. In keeping with the character of the early modern post, not only mail was handed over here, but mail riders could also change horses or move into quarters and stagecoach travelers could refresh themselves or stop off. The post office was therefore usually given to innkeepers who had sufficiently large inns and stables.
The post office in Fürfeld was set up on March 28, 1737. The first post holder was the mayor and innkeeper Herbst, who sold his property and inventory in 1739 to the post holder Merker from Bietigheim. Merker got into a dispute with the authorities because in August 1743 a team of soldiers was billeted with him and he was left with the costs. Since the local rule of the barons of Gemmingen did not want to promise him any exemption from such burdens in the future, Merker sold his goods to the Rößles landlord and blacksmith Johann Christoph Faiß.
Under Faiß, the post office and with it the Gasthaus Ritter flourished. For 1763, 3188 liters of wine are mentioned, which Faiß served in his inn, more than in any other Fürfeld inn. The Fürfeld bailiff König described the postman Faiß as the richest citizen of the place. Faiß repeatedly had arguments with the authorities, which could no longer be resolved in his time as a postman. It was not until his son-in-law and successor, Johannes Strauss, that an agreement was reached in 1767 with the congregation and rulers on some of his father-in-law's disputes.
In Strauss's time, the section of the Hohen Strasse from Fürfeld to Steinsfurt to Chaussee was expanded, the course of which is still largely followed today by the corresponding section of the B 39 . On his trip to Switzerland in 1797, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe praised the roads and beautiful fruit trees as far as Fürfeld , even if he only called the place a small country town .
After Strauss' death on February 17, 1789, his widow continued the post office. Her second husband Georg Immanuel Lauer died in 1795, after which the widow initially ran the post office alone. The business was so profitable that she was able to buy 120 acres of farmland. In 1799 she entered into a third marriage with Ludwig Braunwarth from Karlsruhe, who took over the post office, but was dismissed in 1809. He was followed by Johann Ludwig Ludwig Strauss, a son of the widow Strauss's first marriage, but who was suspended after about a year due to insufficient performance. He was followed by Philipp Heinrich Redwitz from Malmsheim in 1810 as the postman.
In the meantime, after the repeal of the imperial knighthood , Fürfeld had come to Württemberg in the course of the imperial deputation main conclusion and became a border town to the neighboring state of Baden , for which a customs station was built near the Gasthaus Ritter in 1812 (today's Gasthof Traube ).
As a border town situated on an important trunk road, Fürfeld played an important role on the travels of numerous regents and celebrities. Even if they didn't stop at the inn, at least their horses were changed there. When King Friedrich I of Württemberg passed through in 1806, the postman Braunwarth did not have enough horses for the royal entourage, so that more horses were requisitioned from farmers from Fürfeld and the surrounding Württemberg towns. Something similar happened when King Jérôme Bonaparte passed through in 1807 and when his wife Katharina passed through in 1808. In less good memories, Carl Maria von Weber might have kept the place, who was deported across the border to Baden in 1810 with his father near Fürfeld .
Post owner Philipp Heinrich Redwitz had taken over when buying the property and was bankrupt in 1813. His brother Johann Jakob Redwitz then bought the property and ran the post office until 1818. He was followed by Franz Andreas Imhof, who handed the post over to his son Jacob Heinrich Imhof in 1836. In that year the German Customs Union was founded, which made the nearby customs station superfluous.
In October 1848 the post office and its outbuildings burned down. Post holder Imhof had the building rebuilt by the following year, as indicated by an inscription stone on the back of the building. In 1860 the post office was relocated from Fürfeld to the Gasthaus Krone in the neighboring village of Bonfeld , while horse mail in that area experienced its decline with the expansion of shipping on the Neckar and the railway lines. In 1869 the parish acquired the postman's property. In 1870, the rectory of the village was set up in the old post house and Gasthaus Ritter, and the Evangelical Church of Fürfeld was built on the site of the outbuildings.
In the 1960s, the route of the B 39 was changed to connect the A 6, which was being built, and the new commercial areas to be developed in the northeast of Fürfeld. Instead of the previous of Heilbronn on the Heilbronner street leading from the south to the old coaching inn over the place, making the highway since a bow and leads from the east via the Bonfelder road to Fürfeld and then west over the Sinsheim road on to Kirchardt . Since then, through traffic has no longer passed the former post office.
literature
- Fürfeld - from the past and present of the former imperial knighthood town. City of Bad Rappenau, Bad Rappenau 2001, ISBN 3-929295-77-6
- Julius Fekete : Art and cultural monuments in the city and district of Heilbronn . 2nd Edition. Theiss, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-8062-1662-2 , p. 93.
Coordinates: 49 ° 12 ′ 33.3 " N , 9 ° 3 ′ 25.2" E