Heidenmauer (Pfalz)

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Pagan wall
The laid down pagan wall

The laid down pagan wall

Creation time : around 500 BC Chr.
Castle type : Hilltop castle
Conservation status: laid down
Construction: former Murus Gallicus
Place: Bad Dürkheim
Geographical location 49 ° 27 '52 "  N , 8 ° 9' 16"  E Coordinates: 49 ° 27 '52 "  N , 8 ° 9' 16"  E
Height: 300  m above sea level NHN
Heidenmauer (Rhineland-Palatinate)
Pagan wall

The heather wall in the forest area of ​​the Palatinate district town Bad Dürkheim ( Rhineland-Palatinate ) is a 2.5 km long ring wall that was built around the year 500 BC. Was built by Celts in the manner of Murus Gallicus and was laid down not long afterwards. The wood parts of the wall disappeared over time due to rotting, the stones are preserved.

The Heidenmauer is a cultural monument according to the monument protection law of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate .

geography

location

The hilltop castle is located 1 km northwest of Bad Dürkheim 170 m above the city and covers the 300  m above sea level. NHN high summit and the southeast slope of the Kästenberg . This is a southern branch of the Teufelsstein , which belongs to the Haardt , the eastern edge of the Palatinate Forest towards the Rhine plain . To the south of the facility, the Isenach river , a left tributary of the Rhine , breaks through the edge of the mountain and enters the plain.

Surroundings

To the left below the former entrance to the Heidenmauer is the former Roman quarry Kriemhildenstuhl ; On the top of the Teufelsstein, a few hundred meters away, stands the monolith of the same name , which was the subject of religious rites in the Celtic era . The ruins of two medieval complexes lie high above the south bank of the Isenach, first in the direction of flow the Hardenburg , then the Benedictine Abbey Limburg .

history

The name Heidenmauer originated from the vernacular, which often unceremoniously and flatly attributed old buildings to the " Heiden ".

The building including the settlement was built around 500 BC at the end of the Hallstatt period . Established by a Celtic ethnic group that cannot be identified. Extensive ceramic finds enable very precise dating. Almost all the vessels are handmade, but only a few pieces show traces of turning stone; this technique came only after 500 BC. In the La Tène period . Next were blow knife found of iron as well as " Napoleon hats to serve" pyramid-shaped bricks, which have been pushed into the ground with the tip downwards as a support for the milling of grain. There was also evidence of dairy farming and iron smelting .

According to the finds, the residents traded in ceramic products from northern Italy and especially Greece . When the Greeks moved their trade routes to the Iberian Peninsula and the islands of the western Mediterranean at the beginning of the La Tène period , the residents of the plant lost their suppliers. That is probably why the settlement was only inhabited by one generation, i.e. for 30 to 40 years. This can be seen in the just under 20 cm thick settlement layer above the natural soil and in the extremely rare repairs to the preserved base areas of the wall. There are no signs of fire or any other signs of war, so that everything speaks for a peaceful abandonment of the settlement. By laying down the wall, they prevented a rival tribe from being able to use the facility.

In the 4th century AD, a smaller part of the curtain wall was used by the Romans as a quarry, just like the Kriemhildenstuhl below it.

Research history

When the parts of the Electoral Palatinate on the left bank of the Rhine were added to the Kingdom of Bavaria after Napoleon's fall and the Congress of Vienna in 1816 , Bavarian surveyors became aware of the heath wall. However, the investigations were only carried out in 1874/75 by the student Christian Mehlis , who later worked in Neustadt an der Haardt as a teacher of history and ancient languages ​​at the Humanist Gymnasium , today's Kurfürst-Ruprecht-Gymnasium .

In the years 1937–39, Hans Schleif carried out excavations for the Ahnenerbe project , which is close to the SS , for the first time; these were discontinued with the beginning of the Second World War . Schleif thought of excavating a Germanic sanctuary, possibly because he misinterpreted a Roman work mark in the Kriemhildenstuhl quarry below the heathen wall as a swastika .

From 2004 to 2006, the Archaeological Monument Preservation Speyer carried out excavations as part of the Priority Program Early Celtic Princes' Seats , which is financed by the German Research Foundation. Thomas Kreckel was in charge of the excavation. The project wants the results, which in excerpts u. a. in the daily newspaper Die Rheinpfalz were published to check for connections to other Celtic relics in the vicinity. These include, above all, the remains on the 2 km southwest of the later Limburg monastery high above the south bank of the Isenach. When the excavations have been evaluated, the results should confirm that the impulse for the settlement within the heathen wall came from the Limburg plateau, which was inhabited by Celts before and until the Romans took over the land (1st century BC) .

investment

Small reconstruction of the heather wall

The ring wall of the heath wall consists of the wall-like appearing laid down wall. It encloses the remains of settlements, some of which have been exposed for centuries or which only came to light during excavations.

The wall is a total of 2.5 km long and encloses an area of ​​26 hectares. It is about 700 m from the northernmost point to the southernmost corner, and about 600 m from the westernmost to the easternmost corner. The layout has the shape of an arch with a bowstring stretched for the shot. The arch extends from west to north to east, the chord forms an almost right-angled point to the south. Where the arch and tendon meet at the lowest point of the facility (260 m) in the east, there was an approximately 7 m wide gate with an approximately 9 m long gate lane, which today still has two "lanes" separated by a row of stones. The gate was probably provided with a wooden superstructure.

The wall itself, a so-called Murus Gallicus, consisted of a wooden frame constructed from vertical posts and horizontal crossbeams and filled with rubble stones without mortar. The smooth sides of the stones formed the outer facade. The spaces in between were largely filled with sand. Since the wooden parts have disappeared apart from small remnants (which is why the technical term post slot wall is used), the height of the intact wall can only be deduced indirectly from the mass. The profile of today's stone wall tapers upwards; at the base it is 15–20 m thick, at the apex 3–4 m. Its height is between 3 and 10 m.

About 80 m south of the gate and above the Kriemhildenstuhl, the archaeologists suspect a bastion : there the stones of the wall are offset inwards, which suggests that at this point, which allows a wide view of the Rhine plain and also of the Isenach valley entrance, a wooden tower was fitted over the wall.

Before the northwestern wall sheet in the upper region (285- 300  m extending height) of the mountain top, an approximately 500 m long and 15 m wide pulls trench of the flat on the right tip out clearly the difference in level to the wall crown enlarge should. At the northernmost point of the wall, the ditch bends almost at right angles to the northeast and runs down the slope before it ends after a good 100 m. In this way, the water was drained from the ditch during heavy rain and the wall was prevented from being washed under. The vernacular had come to a different -  fabulous - interpretation: Hans von Trotha (around 1450–1503), regionally later decried as the robber baron "Hans Trapp", lord of the castle on the southern Palatinate Bertwartstein (and certainly never a visitor to the heath wall, which had fallen into ruin for 2000 years. Plant), is said to have deposited a larger supply of sausages in the trench; after this legend the popular name Wurstgraben was born .

The area enclosed by the wall has numerous small hills of various sizes. These are likely to be the remains of the residential development that has not yet been explored; only a fragment of the floor made of rammed earth has been exposed. For this reason, no conclusions can be drawn about the number of people in the settlement. However, in view of the objects found in everyday use, it can be assumed that there will be extensive settlement.

In the northern area a spring comes to the surface, the excess water of which may also flow to the northeast ditch. During the period of settlement, the complex was probably largely treeless; in the 20th century it was specifically afforested.

literature

  • Helmut Bernhard , Thomas Kreckel: Early Celts in the Bad Dürkheim area, Rhineland-Palatinate . Tübingen 2006 (digitized version, with further references).
  • James Fenimore Cooper : The Pagan Wall or the Benedictines . Novel about the destruction of Limburg. Newly translated and edited by Paul Johann Klebs. Pro Message, Ludwigshafen am Rhein 2001, ISBN 3-934845-07-X .
  • Walter Eitelmann: Knight Stones in the Palatinate Forest . 4th, revised. and substantially exp. Edition. Palatinate Forest Association , Neustadt an der Weinstrasse 1998, ISBN 3-00-003544-3 .
  • Arndt Hartung, Walter Hartung: Palatinate Burgenbrevier . Postgraduate studies. 6th, supplementary edition. Palatinate Publishing House , Ludwigshafen am Rhein 1985, ISBN 3-9801043-0-3 .
  • Thomas Kreckel: The early Celtic fortification wall "Heidenmauer" near Bad Dürkheim, Bad Dürkheim district . In: Archeology in Rhineland-Palatinate . 2004, p. 29-32 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ General Directorate for Cultural Heritage Rhineland-Palatinate (ed.): Informational directory of cultural monuments - Bad Dürkheim district. Mainz 2020, p. 9 (PDF; 5.1 MB).
  2. a b c d e f g h i Bad Dürkheim - ongoing work. In: Bad Dürkheim - Heidenmauer and Limburg with settlement area and processing of the princely graves of Bad Dürkheim ... German Research Foundation , accessed on July 24, 2011 .
  3. Susanne Schütz: Celtic Center for Trade and Crafts? In: The Rhine Palatinate . Ludwigshafen August 12, 2006, p. 01_FAMI .
  4. ^ Bad Dürkheim - Princely seats. In: Bad Dürkheim - Heidenmauer and Limburg with settlement area and processing of the princely graves of Bad Dürkheim ... German Research Foundation , accessed on July 24, 2011 .
  5. Viktor Carl: Palatinate sagas and legends . Ardwig Henning, Edenkoben 2000, ISBN 3-9804668-3-3 .