Grebensteiner Landwehr
The Grebensteiner Landwehr was created by the Landgrave Hessian town of Grebenstein , northwest of Kassel , to protect against attacks from the neighboring Mainz Hofgeismar . It crossed today's Grebenstein-Hofgeismar road and was carried out in its final form between 1376 and 1428 after the settlements of Stroford, Helpoldessen, Ober- and Niederhalnte and their districts had passed into Hessian ownership.
The Landwehr consisted of a heaped earth wall, which was built up with the excavation of two trenches on both sides of the wall. The wall was densely planted with thorn hedges and hornbeams (rose bushes ). The rose bushes were hacked with axes and bent over (the " pecking "). So they grew together - underplanted with blackberries , dog roses and other thorn bushes (the "dry thorn") - to form impenetrable obstacles.
course
The Landwehr was about 20 km long. It ran east of today's Udenhausen - Carlsdorf road in a general northbound direction to the Lichte Heide, where it turned west and went north of today's Hof Butzbach over the Fiddelberg down into the Essetal. It ran east of the Esse along the then and now Grebenstein-Hofgeismar boundary, then to Papenberg and Hornebeck south of Offenberg. Then it went through the Stroforder Grund in the direction of Veckerberg, but turned off beforehand in the direction of Rixen (already desolate in 1455 ) and ended at the Westuffel'schen Warte.
Waiting
The Landwehr was at strategic points through five Wait backed that have disappeared all today:
- the Hohe Warte in front of the Reinhardswald (Udenhäuser Warte), southeast and above Udenhausen in the direction of Mariendorf at an altitude of 308 m, about 4.5 km from the city, where it protected the way to Veckerhagen ;
- the Hombresser Warte (waiting room at Radebusch, Geißmar Warte, Alte Warte in front of the Hombreßer Berg), about 3 km from the city in front of the Webelsberg, southwest of Udenhausen;
- the Langeberg-Warte (Grebensteiner Warte, Rixer Warte, Warte am Rondshorn), two km northwest of Grebenstein;
- the Linder Warte, in today's district of Westuffeln at the height 295 southwest of the Rixer Busch, about 5 km west of the city;
- the Hohe Warte (Westuffel'sche Warte) on the Wartberg (305.5 m) near Westuffeln, 5 km southwest of Grebenstein.
Entertains
The maintenance and care of the Landwehr was the responsibility of the Grebenstein citizens, who had to break the hedges and maintain ditches. Damage to the Landwehr was severely punished. The passages through the Landwehr on the traffic routes were secured by heavy barriers (called flaps or flaps) that remained closed at night.
Border disputes
One of the culverts was on the road to Hofgeismar. Landgrave Hermann II of Hesse met representatives of Archbishop Adolf I of Mainz on June 25, 1383 at the local painting site on the border between Hessian and Mainz territory to negotiate disputed points concerning the Landwehr. However, no agreement was reached and attacks on farmers, merchants, grazing cattle, etc. continued. For example, the knight Konrad Spiegel zum Desenberg , Mainz bailiff and bailiff in Hesse and Westphalia, entered the districts of Grebenstein and Immenhausen from Schöneberg Castle in July 1388 and stole flocks of sheep from the pastures there. Only after pressure from the landgrave did he declare himself ready on September 17, 1388, to pay 250 guilders as reparation. In 1424, the Mainz bailiff Johann Spiegel undertook several raids on Hessian territory, during which he drove away herds and kidnapped people for the purpose of ransom . Landgrave Ludwig then appeared with an army in front of Hofgeismar, broke through the Landwehr, destroyed some waiting towers, devastated many fields and overran the city fortifications.
Even after Hofgeismar became Hessian after the Mainz collegiate feud (1461–1463), the dispute between the two cities over the Landwehr dragged on for almost 300 years. When Hofgeismar had some oaks felled by the Landwehr in 1573 to use them in the construction of the road embankment at the Kelzer Ponds, this led to a sharp complaint on the part of the council and mayor of Grebenstein, as the Landwehr and their use have been around since ancient times Grebensteinern belongs. There is also a complaint from the Grebensteiner council from 1679 that Hofgeismar citizens illegally felled and stolen wood on the Landwehr between Esse and Veckerberg with the permission of the local council; this is inadmissible, because only Grebenstein has the right to use the Landwehr, be it because of the wood or because of the hats and drifts of cattle. The dispute was only settled by a government decision of November 22, 1749, which assigned the Landwehr to 1/3 Hofgeismar and 2/3 Grebenstein, but the hat areas only to the city of Grebenstein.
Current condition
The former Landwehr can only be seen in a few places today, be it as a wood or as traces of moats. So between Grebenstein and Friedrichsthal, near the L 3233 and not far from the lost Langenberg-Warte, there are traces of the old Landwehr in the form of still visible remains of trenches. The course of the double trench system can still be seen very clearly on aerial photographs and can be followed up to a few hundred meters.
Coordinates: 51 ° 27 ′ 1.8 ″ N , 9 ° 23 ′ 15 ″ E
literature
- Wolfgang Tölle: The Grebensteiner Landwehr . In the yearbook of the district of Kassel 1989 , district committee of the district of Kassel, Kassel, 1989, pp. 93–96