Heidelberg in Roman times
In the area of today's city of Heidelberg there was already a settlement in Roman times . The Roman Heidelberg - its name at that time is unknown - consisted of a fort founded around 70 AD in today's Neuenheim district and a civil settlement ( vicus ) that formed around the fort and also extended to today's Bergheim district . The originally wooden military camp was replaced by a stone fort around the year 90. From 80/90 onwards a wooden bridge led over the Neckar , and finally from around 200 onwards a stone pillar bridge . Even after the occupation of the Heidelberg fort had been withdrawn around 135, the civil settlement continued to flourish thanks to its favorable geographical location and developed into a prosperous pottery center . Nevertheless, Heidelberg always remained in the shadow of the neighboring Lopodunum (today Ladenburg ), which was the main town of the region at that time. As a result of the Alemanni invasions , Roman Heidelberg was abandoned in the 3rd century.
Topography and name
Heidelberg lies at the exit of the Neckar from the Odenwald into the Upper Rhine Plain . Located around 20 kilometers from where the Neckar flows into the Rhine , Heidelberg is part of the area on the right bank of the Rhine. The location at the intersection of the Neckar and the mountain road that runs along the edge of the mountain is extremely favorable in terms of transport. While the old town , the nucleus of today's city, is wedged between the river and mountains at the foot of the castle , the narrow and flood-prone river valley was avoided before the Middle Ages and the plains, fertile thanks to the loess soils , were preferred as a settlement area. The 440 meter high Heiligenberg , which rises opposite the old town on the edge of the Odenwald, has attracted people for thousands of years because of its favorable protective location. Roman Heidelberg was just under two kilometers west of the old town in the plain on the north bank of the Neckar in what is now the Neuenheim district . The opposite bank of the Neckar in Bergheim was also settled in Roman times.
The name of Heidelberg in Roman times is unknown. It cannot be said whether the Romans adopted an old Celtic toponym or gave the place a Latin name. Proposals such as Traiectum ad Nicrem (“Neckar crossing”; analogous to Traiectum ad Mosam , today Maastricht ) must be regarded as purely speculative. The Rufiana , mentioned by the ancient geographer Ptolemaeus as the location of a fort, is in any case associated with Ludwigshafen-Rheingönheim today , while the also proposed Piri Mons is the name of an unknown mountain on the right bank of the Rhine, possibly Heidelberg's Heiligenberg, but not the settlement on the site of Heidelberg was.
history
Pre-Roman times
The area of today's Heidelberg has been permanently settled since the Neolithic Age. The predecessors of the Romans in the Heidelberg area were the Celts during the La Tène period . According to the tradition of the ancient authors Ptolemaeus and Tacitus, the Celtic inhabitants of the south-west of Germany were members of the Helvetii tribe . In the 5th century BC The Celts founded a fortified city ( oppidum ) on the summit of the Heiligenberg . Two centuries later, the hilltop settlement was abandoned for unknown reasons. In the plain at the foot of the mountain there were numerous Celtic small settlements on both sides of the Neckar. In the 1st century BC The Helvetii gave up their traditional residences under the pressure of the advancing Germanic tribe of the Suebi under Ariovistus . In Heidelberg, this is evident from the abrupt breakdown of archaeological finds from the Late La Tène period.
Neckarsueben
After their mass emigration, the Helvetii tried to gain a foothold in Gaul . This served Gaius Iulius Caesar as the occasion for the Gallic War . 58 BC BC the Romans under Caesar defeated the Helvetii at Bibracte , conquered until 51 BC. BC Gaul and so penetrated to the Rhine. The area known as Agri decumates east of the Rhine remained largely uninhabited for almost a century and is described by Ptolemaeus as a " Helvetic wasteland ". After the attempt to conquer Germania magna, which had begun under Augustus , failed, the Romans expanded the Rhine as an external border at the time of Emperor Tiberius from 17 AD and began to settle Germanic ethnic groups loyal to the Romans in the area on the right bank of the Rhine to protect the Rhine border. A sub-tribe of the Suebi settled on the lower reaches of the Neckar. The Neckarsueben received the status of a civitas and were thus incorporated into the Roman administrative system. The main town of the Civitas Ulpia Sueborum Nicrensium was Lopodunum, today's Ladenburg .
The Neckarsueben initially retained their Elbe Germanic culture and settled in their own village communities. In Heidelberg, Neckarsuebian villages can be found in today's districts of Bergheim, Wieblingen and Kirchheim . Under the influence of Roman culture, the Neckarsueben were Romanized until the 2nd century.
Heidelberg as part of the Roman Empire
Heidelberg was finally incorporated into the Roman Empire and the Roman fort was built under Emperor Vespasian (69–79). After he emerged victorious from the turmoil of the Four Emperor's Year and had put down the Batavian uprising on the Lower Rhine in 70 , he had the Kinzigtalstrasse built in 73/74 in order to shorten the approach from the Danube to the Middle and Lower Rhine. At the same time, the Roman external border was also pushed to the east on the northern Upper Rhine. The Romans replaced the Neckarsuebian militias with their own troops and built several forts to secure the border: In addition to Heidelberg, new forts were built in Aquae ( Baden-Baden ), Lopodunum (Ladenburg) and Groß-Gerau .
In Heidelberg, the first fort, the so-called Ostkastell, was abandoned after a few years and relocated a few hundred meters further west. The wooden west fort, built in 74, was destroyed by fire and replaced by a stone fort in the same place around 90. The first Pfahljoch bridge over the Neckar was built around 80/90. Settlements (vici) arose around the fort on both sides of the Neckar, which soon grew and prospered economically thanks to Heidelberg's favorable geographical location.
In the year 85 the upper and lower Rhine army districts were converted into civil provinces . This made Heidelberg part of the province Germania superior (Upper Germany), the capital of which was Mogontiacum (Mainz). In response to an uprising by the provincial governor Saturninus in Mogontiacum, the Romans considered it necessary to further improve the traffic situation between the Rhine and the Danube. Therefore , a new military road between Mogontiacum and Augusta Vindelicorum (Augsburg) was laid out between 100 and 120 at the same time as the Neckar-Odenwald-Limes was built . This route also led via Heidelberg and crossed the Neckar here.
In the 2nd century, the Roman border was pushed forward again with the construction of the Upper German-Raetian Limes . At around 135 the unit previously stationed in Heidelberg was withdrawn and transferred to the Limes in Butzbach in Wetterau . The civil settlement prospered even after the soldiers withdrew. The old wooden bridge was replaced by a stone pillar construction around the year 200.
Germanic invasions and withdrawal of the Romans
In the 3rd century the Roman Empire experienced a serious imperial crisis when external threats and internal unrest shook the Roman state. In the east, the Romans saw themselves threatened by the Persian Sassanid Empire , on the Danube the Goths exerted pressure, and on the Rhine there was an onslaught of the Alemanni . In 233 this Germanic tribe overran the Limes for the first time and led a raid into Roman territory. Despite several campaigns against the Alamanni, the Roman emperors did not succeed in stabilizing the situation, so that raids and pillages increased in Upper Germany over the next few decades. At the same time as the usurpation of Postumus , who founded a special Gallic empire in 260 , there was a devastating incursion by the Alemanni, Franks and Juthungen . Around 260/70 the Romans had to give up the Limes and withdrew to the Rhine and Danube ( Limesfall ). Although Emperor Diocletian (284–305) succeeded in consolidating the Roman Empire, the provincial area on the right bank of the Rhine was finally lost.
Heidelberg was also affected by the Alemannic raids. Archaeological evidence shows that the vicus burned down several times around the middle of the 3rd century - probably as a result of the Alemanni pillaging. In response to the incursions, the gate towers of the stone fort were reinforced. Evidence of the crisis situation are also the finds of a ceramic and metal depot in a Roman cellar as well as a coin treasure that was buried at the western gate of the fort in the 1930s for fear of the Teutons and never lifted again. A milestone from the year 253 is the latest known Roman inscription in Heidelberg and (together with another milestone from Lopodunum) in the area on the right bank of the Rhine. At the latest with the withdrawal of the Romans from the Limes, the military base in Heidelberg was finally given up.
Post-Roman times
After the abandonment of the Limes, the Alemanni began to settle the land that had become free, as can be seen in grave finds from the 4th and 5th centuries in Heidelberg. The Roman fort and the vicus were abandoned and the bridge fell into disrepair. Unlike in neighboring Lopodunum, where the Romans built a Burgus as a military bridgehead on the right bank of the Rhine in the 4th century , the Romans did not renew their presence in Heidelberg. The oldest districts of Heidelberg go back to the founding of villages from the time of the Franconian conquest in the 6th century, while the actual city was only founded in the Middle Ages at the foot of the castle and was first mentioned in 1196. Thus, in contrast to many other German cities, whose history goes back to antiquity, there is no continuity between Roman times and today's Heidelberg.
Heidelberg in Roman times
Fort
A succession of several Roman forts can be identified in Heidelberg . The first systems were made of wood. As a result, they did not have a long lifespan and had to be replaced every 10–15 years. In the eastern area of Neuenheim there are four consecutive wooden forts. The so-called Ostkastell was located on both sides of today's Ladenburger Strasse between Keplerstrasse and Werderstrasse. The exit gate ( Porta praetoria ) on the south side was aligned directly to the Neckar bridge. Already during the reign of Emperor Vespasian (69–79) the east fort was abandoned and leveled. For an unexplained reason, the Romans moved the location of the fort around 500 meters to the west. The first three western forts were also made of wood.
Around the year 90 the wooden structure was replaced by a stone fort. It was located roughly in the area of today's streets Posseltstraße, Kastellweg, Gerhart-Hauptmann-Straße and Furchgasse and had an almost square shape with a side length of 176 and 178 meters respectively. From red sandstone blocks built camp wall was about 5 feet high, from 1.80 to 2.20 meters thick. A mound of earth had been piled up behind the wall, and in front of it was a pointed ditch 5–8 meters wide and 3.50 meters deep . There were four trapezoidal corner towers and 16 intermediate towers on the wall. The Heidelberg fort was laid out according to the typical scheme of Roman military camps: On each of the four sides there was a gate, at the point of which the moat was interrupted and which was protected by two massive stone towers. The center of the camp was the staff building (principia) with its office, armory and sanctuary. Via praetoria , the main axis of the right-angled street network, led from the headquarters building to Porta praetoria in the south. The two side gates (Porta principalis dextra and sinistra) were connected by the Via principalis . The Via decumana to the north gate, the Porta decumana, ran at right angles to this. The soldiers were housed in barracks with ten residential units for eight soldiers each and a separate apartment for the centurion, each offering space for one centurion . The barracks, like the stables, were built in half-timbered construction. The commander's house ( praetorium ) including the bathing facility, a storage building ( horreum ) and probably also the hospital ( valetudinarium ) were built of stone .
The discovery of the final bone reinforcement of an arch in the area of the east fort suggests that a unit of archers was temporarily stationed in Heidelberg. Since the bow and arrow were not used by the Romans, they must have been auxiliary troops from Syria , Thrace or Spain . Finds of brick stamps as well as an inscription and an iron ax stamp show that two cohorts of auxiliary troops were stationed one after the other in the western fort : the Cohors XXIIII Voluntariorum and the Cohors II Augusta Cyrenaica . The latter consisted of 480 foot soldiers and 120 horsemen and originally came from Cyrenaica in what is now Libya. At 135 this unit was withdrawn and relocated to the Limes in Butzbach .
Vicus
After the Heidelberg fort was founded, smaller civilian settlements ( vici ) were built around it . At the beginning of the 2nd century the camp villages grew and merged into a large vicus on both sides of the Neckar. Even after the garrison had withdrawn from the fort, the vicus continued to exist and even flourished. Nevertheless, Heidelberg never developed an urban character and always remained in the shadow of the nearby Lopodunum (Ladenburg), which never achieved the legal status of a municipality , but was clearly urban thanks to the basilica , forum and theater .
The vicus extended along the country road and took up a fairly large area of about 30 hectares . The appearance of the vicus was shaped by the striped houses typical of Upper Germany . These buildings were half-timbered, built from stone from the 2nd century onwards and were characterized by their narrow floor plan: The narrow side, which was always facing the street, was only 6–12 meters wide, while the length of the house could be up to 38 meters . In addition to residential buildings, shops and workshops, the vicus also had public buildings such as several temples and a bathhouse . The water supply to the settlement was probably ensured by a pressure pipe made of clay pipes.
The inhabitants of the Roman vicus lived mainly from trade and handicrafts. Because of the rich clay deposits in the area of today's Ziegelhausen , pottery was operated in Heidelberg . The wood required for burning was won in the Odenwald and the Neckar herbeigeflößt are the convenient location facilitated the distribution. Thus the vicus of Heidelberg developed into an important pottery center. A total of 60 pottery kilns have been identified. The tools of blacksmiths, joiners, tanners, painters, bricklayers, carpenters and butchers, which were found in Heidelberg, bear witness to other occupations.
Most of the Heidelberg Vicus has been built over, so much archaeological material has been destroyed. Larger area excavations could never take place, only in the area of Ladenburger Strasse 80-84 four strip houses were excavated.
Neckar Bridge
The Roman Neckar Bridge crossed the river at the point of a ford that was already crossed in prehistoric times, approximately at the level of today's Keplerstrasse on the Neuenheimer side and the Thibautstrasse on the Bergheimer Ufer. The first bridge was built no later than 80/90. Perhaps it was created at the time of Emperor Nero (54–68), when the Romans had not yet permanently incorporated Heidelberg into their empire, but had already set up strategic outposts to the right of the Rhine. This first construction was a wooden pile yoke bridge . Around the year 200 it was replaced by a stone pier bridge.
The Roman Bridge consisted of a wooden superstructure that rested on seven stone pillars and was 260 meters long. The roadway, like the trunk road leading to the bridge, was likely nine meters wide and ten meters above mean water level. The pillars were 34.50 meters apart and had a floor plan of 15.80 meters in length and 7.20 meters in width. The red sandstone ashlar of the pillar was founded on post gratings , which consisted of oak posts with iron post shoes . On the central pillar was a Neptunus sanctuary with a small chapel. Its altar bears the name of the bridge's builder, Valerius Paternus. There is evidence of a quay wall on the bank downstream of the bridge, which indicates a port. At the southern bridgehead there was a beneficiary station , which the Legio VIII Augusta had set up to protect the bridge after the garrison withdrew from the Heidelberg fort around 150.
The altar of the Neptune sanctuary was found in the Neckar in 1876. A year later, the wooden pillar foundations that protruded from the river at low tide were examined for the first time. The northern abutment of the bridge was cut in 1894. In the course of the lowering of the river bed in 1972, a total of 43 oak piles were recovered from the pillar foundations.
religion
Numerous consecrations and religious monuments from Roman times have been found in Heidelberg, which prove that in addition to Roman gods such as Jupiter , Minerva , Neptune , Fortuna , Hercules or Vulcanus , oriental deities such as Mithras and the Celtic-Germanic gods Cimbrianus and Visucius were worshiped. Several giant columns of Jupiter found in Heidelberg are evidence of the mixture of the Roman religion with local beliefs . These representations of Jupiter riding down a giant on a column were typical of the northwestern provinces. They mostly belonged to smaller sanctuaries in which other deities were worshiped in addition to Jupiter.
On the summit of the Heiligenberg there was a cult area with several temples and a giant column of Jupiter. One of the cult buildings was excavated in 1983 under the ruins of the medieval Michael's monastery. As the votive offerings discovered during the excavations show, the god Mercury was worshiped in this building. Its equation with Cimbrianus or Visucius (so-called Interpretatio Romana ) could indicate a connection with an older Celtic sanctuary in the same place. The Michael's monastery is also in a certain continuity with the Roman temple, since the Archangel Michael , like Mercury, is considered a companion of the dead into the afterlife.
From the 2nd century on, various oriental mystery cults , especially Mithraism, spread in Heidelberg, especially among merchants and soldiers . There were two larger Mithras sanctuaries ( Mithraea ) in Heidelberg . In Mithraeum I, discovered in 1838 at Neuenheimer Landstrasse 80, several relief images were found, which depict various central motifs of Mithraic iconography. Pictured are Mithras killing a mythical bull ( tauroctony ), Mithras with the sun god Sol and a riding Mithras.
Cult of the dead
The Romans always buried their dead outside the settlements. Therefore, the cemeteries were also in Heidelberg along the arterial roads in the west of Neuenheim and in the south of Bergheim. With over 1,400 graves, the Neuenheimer burial ground, which stretched for 450 meters on both sides of the road to Lopodunum, is one of the largest in Roman Germany. The cemetery is extremely well preserved because its area was used for agriculture for a long time and remained untouched under the protective humus layer. When the University of Heidelberg built a new campus in Neuenheimer Feld in the 1950s and 60s , the burial ground was archaeologically developed through systematic area excavations. The grave finds date from the period between the late 1st century and the turn of the 3rd century. Why the cemetery was abandoned half a century earlier than the vicus is unclear. Cremation burials were prevalent in Heidelberg, as in most provinces of the Empire, but came from the end of the second century, as again the custom of many parts of the Roman Empire inhumation more on. Depending on the financial circumstances of the deceased, the graves were marked with simple wooden plaques or representative grave structures made of stone. A particularly monumental example is an approximately 25 meter high, richly decorated pillar grave from around 200, which was discovered in Rohrbach in 1896 . It was located at a highly visible point on the Roman highway south of Heidelberg and belonged to the cemetery of a nearby villa rustica .
Research history
Philipp Melanchthon was one of the first scholars to study the Roman history of Heidelberg . In 1508, the philologist and reformer tried to decipher the Roman inscriptions that were embedded in the walls of the monasteries on the Heiligenberg. The historian Marquard Freher reported in his work Origines Palatinae in 1613 about finds from Roman times. In 1838 the mithraeum of Neuenheim was discovered. The philologist Friedrich Creuzer , who was working at the University of Heidelberg at the time, published a treatise on the find. Systematic archaeological investigations were carried out in Heidelberg from the middle of the 19th century under the direction of Karl Pfaff and were continued by Ernst Wahle after the First World War . In order to exhibit the finds unearthed in Heidelberg, the city of Heidelberg bought the Palais Morass , which in 1908 housed the Palatinate Museum . After the Second World War, Berndmark Heukemes devoted himself to researching the Roman city of Heidelberg and was able to document the ancient remains before they were destroyed by the building boom of the 1950s and 60s.
In contrast to Mainz or Trier ( Augusta Treverorum ), there are practically no remains of ancient Heidelberg to be seen in today's city. Most of the individual finds from the excavations are exhibited in the Kurpfälzisches Museum in Heidelberg and in the Baden State Museum in Karlsruhe .
See also
literature
- Tilmann Bechert : The early days up to the Carolingians . In: Elmar Mittler (Ed.): Heidelberg. History and shape . Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 1996. pp. 20-37. ISBN 3-921524-46-6 .
- Francisca Feraudi-Gruénais, Renate Ludwig: The Heidelberg Roman stones. Sculptures, architectural parts and inscriptions in the Kurpfälzisches Museum Heidelberg. Universitätsverlag Winter, Heidelberg 2017, ISBN 978-3-8253-6693-3 .
- Renate Ludwig: On the way from Lopodunum to Heidelberg. In: Vera Rupp , Heide Birley (Hrsg.): Country life in Roman Germany. Theiss, Stuttgart 2012, ISBN 978-3-8062-2573-0 , pp. 71-74.
- Renate Ludwig: Celts, castles and electors. Archeology on the Lower Neckar . Catalog for the exhibition “Archeology in Heidelberg”. Ed .: Kurpfälzisches Museum der Stadt Heidelberg. Stuttgart: Theiss, 1997. ISBN 3-8062-1241-4 .
- Renate Ludwig, Petra Mayer-Reppert, Einhart Kemmet: Escaping the iconoclasm. The newly discovered Jupiter giant column from Heidelberg. In: Denkmalpflege in Baden-Württemberg , 39th year 2010, issue 2, pp. 87–91 ( PDF ).
- Imperium Romanum - Rome's provinces on the Neckar, Rhine and Danube. Accompanying volume for the exhibition of the state of Baden-Württemberg in the art building in Stuttgart October 1, 2005 to January 8, 2006. Ed. Archäologisches Landesmuseum Baden-Württemberg. Stuttgart: Theiss, 2005. ISBN 3-8062-1945-1 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Tilmann Bechert: The early days up to the Carolingians , in: Elmar Mittler (Hrsg.): Heidelberg. History and Shape , Heidelberg 1996, p. 31.
- ↑ Bechert 1996, p. 28.
- ^ Renate Ludwig: Kelten, Kastelle, Kurfürsten , Stuttgart 1997, p. 37.
- ↑ Ludwig 1997, p. 44 ff.
- ↑ Ludwig 1997, p. 104 ff.
- ↑ CIL 13, 09111 .
- ^ Hans Ulrich Nuber : State crisis in the 3rd century. The task of the areas on the right bank of the Rhine , in: Imperium Romanum - Rome's provinces on Neckar, Rhine and Danube , Stuttgart 2005, here p. 442.
- ↑ Ludwig 1997, p. 49.
- ↑ Ludwig 1997, p. 108.
- ↑ Bechert 1996, p. 31.
- ↑ Bechert 1996, p. 32 f.
- ↑ Ludwig 1997, p. 46.
- ↑ Ludwig 1997, p. 45.
- ↑ Ludwig 1997, p. 47 ff.
- ^ Klaus Kortüm : Cities and small-town settlements. Civil structures in the hinterland of the Limes , in: Imperium Romanum - Rome's provinces on the Neckar, Rhine and Danube , Stuttgart 2005, here p. 154.
- ↑ Ludwig 1997, p. 61 f.
- ↑ Meinrad N. Filgis: Water and wastewater. Infrastructure for soldiers and citizens , in: Imperium Romanum - Rome's provinces on the Neckar, Rhine and Danube , Stuttgart 2005, here p. 193.
- ↑ Ludwig 1997, p. 74 ff.
- ↑ Ludwig 1997, p. 62.
- ↑ Ludwig 1997, p. 44.
- ↑ Bechert 1996, p. 32.
- ↑ Ludwig 1997, p. 67.
- ↑ CIL 13.06403 ; Helmut Castritius , Manfred Clauss , Leo Hefner: The Roman stone inscriptions of the Odenwald (RSO). Contributions to the investigation of the Odenwald 2, Breuberg-Neustadt 1977, pp. 237-308. No. 152.
- ↑ Ludwig 1997, p. 65 ff.
- ↑ Bechert 1996, p. 35.
- ↑ Ludwig 1997, p. 132 ff.
- ↑ Andreas Hensen, Renate Ludwig: Journey into the hereafter. Honoring the dead and burial in the southwest , in: Imperium Romanum - Roms Provinzen an Neckar, Rhein und Donau , Stuttgart 2005, here p. 376 ff.
- ↑ Ludwig 1997, pp. 93-98.
- ↑ Ludwig 1997, p. 12 f.
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