Heerweg Cologne – Dortmund
The Heerweg Cologne – Dortmund was an old road between the Rhineland and Westphalia .
From the early Middle Ages to modern times, it was an important military route , pilgrimage route and trade route to the Baltic Sea region and the most important thoroughfare in the center of the Bergisches Land . Finds of Roman coins in the Beyenburg area indicate that the route already existed in antiquity. Even Charlemagne can during one of his campaigns against the Saxons only this captivity have taken in the 775th The sources say that he rode from the army's assembly point in Düren via Cologne to Hohensyburg near Hagen in three days ; that can only have been the routing of today's B 51.
course
The path began in Cologne, went via Dünnwald , Schlebusch , Blecher , Hilgen bei Burscheid , Wermelskirchen , Lennep , Beyenburg , Schwelm , Gevelsberg and Hagen to Dortmund , where it met the Westphalian Hellweg to Soest . A branch connected Schlebusch with the Rheinfurt near Manfort . To a large extent, the old route is still used today by federal and state roads (including federal road 51 , state roads 411 and 527).
history
On November 7, 1225, the attack and murder of Archbishop Engelbert I of Cologne took place on this old street near today's town of Gevelsberg . The stone cross near the Eschbachtalsperre is reminiscent of a robbery on the Altstrasse.
In the course of its more than a thousand years of use, the path always crossed a border formed by the Wupper near Beyenburg . The Beyenburger Bridge as a border crossing, customs and control station has been documented since 1336, the customs office since 1189. Even today, the current successor building spans the current border between Rhineland and Westphalia, before it separated the Duchy of Berg from the beginning of the 14th century Grafschaft Mark and before its territorial formation, Franconian and Saxon settlement areas as border area. A customs station (for road tolls ) with a ski jump and Landwehr has been in Wermelskirchen- Unterstrasse since 1398.
In addition to its function as a border station, Beyenburg was also the most important stopover in other respects. On the one hand, it was located in the middle between Dortmund and Cologne and was a day's journey away from both, so that a hospitality industry for accommodation and meals can be proven back to the 15th century. The nearby Beyenburg Castle offered protection and escort for the further journey to Cologne. For pilgrims on the journey to Cologne or Santiago de Compostela , the Steinhaus monastery was also an important stopover in the pilgrimage . Before it was built, the chapel in the nearby Steinhaus Oberhof had the same function. Today one of the Westphalian Way of St. James leads through the town again.
Towards the end of the 18th century, the path lost its importance, especially because the state of the path prevented many travelers from using it due to insufficient maintenance and meanwhile developed alternative routes along the Rhine and Ruhr could be used. Around 1775–1776, the route from Cöln to Lennep was expanded to Chaussee by Elector Carl Theodor, with a partially different route. After the French occupied Berg and Mark , the line between Lennep and Beyenburg was expanded into a Chaussee in 1813 . A first continuation to Schwelm was laid out by Napoleon's troops; that is why the openwork mountain spur through which the road leads today is also called “Napoleon's Gate”. After their expulsion, the road was only completed by Prussia , who took possession of Berg and Mark. Nevertheless, the main traffic flows continued to avoid the arduous route through the Bergisch hill country.
Individual evidence
- ^ Günther Voigt: Back then in Wuppertal . Wuppertal 1988.
- ↑ H. Krüger: The prehistoric streets in the Saxon Wars of Charlemagne . In: Correspondence sheet of the […] general association, vol. 80, no. 4.
- ↑ Erich Philipp Ploennies : Topographia Ducatus Montani , map series from 1715 and a comparison of the current topographic map 1: 25,000 (TK25)
- ^ A b Peter Schöller : The Rhenish-Westphalian border between the Ruhr and Ebbegebirge: its effects on social and economic areas and the central functions of the places. Aschendorff, Münster 1953.
- ↑ Klaus J. Breidenbach: Already 1398: A Landwehr with a customs office in Niederwermelskirchen. Rhein.Berg.Kalender, 1987.
- ↑ Gerd Helbeck: Beyenburg - History of a place on the Bergisch-Mark border and its surrounding area , Volume I (The Middle Ages: Basics and Ascent).