Hartmannswillerkopf

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Hartmannswillerkopf
Hartmannswillerkopf in the evening from the town of Cernay

Hartmannswillerkopf evening from the place Cernay ago

height 957  m
location Haut-Rhin department , Grand Est region , France
Mountains Vosges
Coordinates 47 ° 51 '40 "  N , 7 ° 9' 40"  E Coordinates: 47 ° 51 '40 "  N , 7 ° 9' 40"  E
Hartmannswillerkopf (Haut-Rhin)
Hartmannswillerkopf

The 957 meter high Hartmannswillerkopf ( French: Vieil Armand , German originally Hartmannsweiler Kopf ) is a hilltop in the South Vosges in the Haut-Rhin department in Alsace , near the towns of Hartmannsweiler and Berrweiler .

geography

View from the Storkenkopf to the southeast: on the left the Große Belchen , in the middle of the picture the Hartmannswillerkopf, on the right the Molkenrain; in the background the Upper Rhine Plain

The Hartmannswillerkopf lies roughly in the middle between Colmar and Belfort and, as seen from the A 35 autoroute , exactly west of Ensisheim . The Gutenbach rises on its northwest side . On the south side , the Siehlbaechle and the Silberlochrunz have their source areas towards the Molkenrain .

From the south you can reach the Hartmannswillerkopf from the starting point Cernay and from the north via the Vosges ridge road Route des Crêtes ( D 431 ) . This runs over the mountain saddle , through which the Hartmannswillerkopf is separated from the higher mountain top Molkenrain.

The summit area is in the area of ​​the communities Hartmannswiller, Wuenheim , Wattwiller and Uffholtz .

history

The Hartmannswillerkopf was fiercely contested between the Germans and the French during the First World War because of its exposed and strategically favorable location with a view of the Alsatian and Upper Rhine plains.

The battle for the summit began on December 31, 1914. The heaviest fighting took place on 19/20. January 26th, March 25th and 26th April and 21./22. December 1915. During the four years of the war the hilltop changed hands four times. From about mid-1916 both sides reduced their troops there; more intense fighting took place in the northern sections of the front. From 1916 there were essentially only artillery duels . Both sides limited themselves to keeping their lines.

30,000 French and German soldiers died in the hill battles at Hartmannswillerkopf; about twice as many were injured. They did not lead to a result for either side and now stand for the futility of war. The Hartmannswillerkopf has occasionally been called the "mountain of death".

On August 3, 2014, the 100th anniversary of Germany's declaration of war on France ( World War I ), Federal President Joachim Gauck and French President François Hollande met at Hartmannswillerkopf. On November 10, 2017, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and State President Emmanuel Macron inaugurated a joint Franco-German museum to commemorate the battles.

Relics

The four years of the war left traces and relics still visible on the Hartmannswillerkopf to this day. Originally forested, the hilltop is now overgrown with grass and sparse trees. Especially in the first two years of the war, the forest completely disappeared as a result of the attacks. A well-preserved system of around 6,000 tunnels and shelters and 90 kilometers of trenches , wire entanglements and shell holes still bear witness to the frozen trench warfare.

The battlefield, including the fortifications, has been listed as a Monument Historique since 1921 .

memorial

The crypt

The Hartmannswillerkopf memorial located on the access road commemorates the fallen soldiers: it consists of the French national cemetery Nécropole nationale du Silberloch - Hartmannswillerkopf and a crypt with a Catholic, Protestant and Jewish altar each and was one of four French monuments after the armistice of 11 Built in November 1918 and placed under monument protection in 1921 . With around 250,000 visitors (2009) on the freely accessible platform of the military cemetery and around 20,000 paying visitors in the crypt, the memorial is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Alsace.

In November 2017, the Franco-German Museum (Historial) , a symbol of reconciliation, was opened by the presidents of both countries, Emmanuel Macron and Frank-Walter Steinmeier .

See also

literature

  • Karlheinz Deisenroth: Upper Alsace and southern Vosges. 2nd Edition. Mittler, Hamburg et al. 2001, ISBN 3-8132-0763-3 ( Military History Travel Guide ), pp. 49–82 and 103–105.
  • Karlheinz Deisenroth: Alsace - land between the fronts. 1699-1870, 1914-1918, 1939-1945. Theaters of war in the Vosges and Upper Rhine. 2nd Edition. Morstadt, Kehl a. Rh. 2015, ISBN 978-3-88571-374-6 , pp. 101-180, 184-189, 214-225.
  • Armand Durlewanger: Theaters of War in Alsace. Lingekopf, Hartmannsweilerkopf, Buchenkopf, Schoenenbourg, Esch, Marckolsheim, Grassersloch, Struthof. La Nuée Bleue, Strasbourg 1992, ISBN 2-7165-0151-3 ( Kaléidoscope d'Alsace ).
  • Detlef Bussat: Hartmannsweilerkopf 1914/18 - Mountain of Death . Epubli, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-7418-6942-6 .

Web links

Commons : Hartmannswillerkopf  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

supporting documents

  1. ↑ Werner Lacoste: German Storm Battalions 1915-1918 - The Kaiserstuhl and the Markgräfler Land as the birthplace and location of German storm battalions of the First World War. Helios Verlags- und Buchvertriebsgesellschaft, 2010 Aachen, ISBN 978-3-86933-013-6 , p. 17.
  2. ↑ see also here (English; further links at the bottom of the page)
  3. ↑ a b Isabell Michelberger: Hartmannsweilerkopf: Place of common remembrance . In: Südkurier of July 29, 2015
  4. ↑ bundespräsident.de: Text of Gauck's speech
  5. ^ Spiegel.de: Gauck and Hollande on World War II commemoration: a hug, a message
  6. ↑ Rheinische Post : Gauck and Hollande: Common Europe as a lesson in history (title of the print version: Peace meeting on the "Menschenfresserberg" )
  7. ↑ elysee.fr: Discours à l'occasion de la cérémonie de commémoration franco-allemande du centenaire de la Grande Guerre au Monument National du Hartmannswillerkopf ( Memento of March 26, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (Hollandes speech)
  8. ↑ Eckart Lohse , Michaela Wiegel : Gestures of trust. Macron and Steinmeier step over the Hartmannsweilerkopf. 30,000 soldiers lost their lives here in the First World War. The memory of it should stay alive. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , November 10, 2017, p. 2.
  9. ↑ Champ de bataille de l'Hartmannswillerkopf dans la forêt communale in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
  10. ^ Bärbel Nückles: War relics for tourists. In: Badische-Zeitung.de. April 28, 2012, Retrieved May 2, 2012 .
  11. ^ Dirk Kurbjuweit: Morning Briefing: Old Europe. In: Spiegel Online. November 10, 2017. Retrieved November 10, 2017 .
  12. ^ Hartmannsweilerkopf in Alsace. Steinmeier and Macron open memorial. In: SWR.de. November 10, 2017, archived from the original ; accessed on November 10, 2017 .