Hellweg

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The bridge over the Heubach at the "Große Teichsmühle" in Hausdülmen is part of the Sythener Hellweg

In the Middle Ages, Hellweg was the name given to a large royal or military road or an important thoroughfare for long-distance trade, which had to be kept free of vegetation over a length of about three meters. If the Hellweg is referred to in the literature without any further definition, the Westphalian Hellweg is usually meant.

Name interpretation

According to the German mythology (1835) by Jacob Grimm , the oldest evidence for the occurrence of the word comes from Old High German times: In a document from 890 it says helvius sive strata publica , ie "Hellweg or public street". In Middle High German times, the word forms helwechsel, helweg, heelendung, hilewech appear. The German dictionary of the Brothers Grimm distinguishes between two meanings in Hellweg . On the one hand, the meaning "Landstrasse, Heerweg, in Westphalia" is given and the following word origin: Originally it was the route "on which the corpses were driven" (with reference to the more detailed information in Jacob Grimm's work German Mythology ). This is also the case with Wolfgang Golther , who wrote in his handbook of Germanic mythology in the section about the goddess of the dead Hel : " Helvegr is the path to the underworld, which corresponds to the Westphalian Hellweg, Totenweg." It remains unclear why the Hellweg should have been named as the path of the dead . The Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde cautiously classifies the interpretation as "Dead Way", just like any other interpretation of the name, as a hypothesis .

The second meaning of Hellweg in Grimm's dictionary is: "a path made dependent on the side [= sloping, inclined] so that the water can run off". In this case Hellweg is a variant of Heldweg and related to the old verb hälden, helden (= ' incline to be inclined'). Grimm's dictionary refers here to Adelung , whose grammatical-critical dictionary contains very similar information to the High German dialect . The Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde doesn't even mention this name interpretation. On the other hand, it is favored by the onomastic Jürgen Udolph .

Among other things, salt was transported on the Westphalian Hellweg , which was extracted in some areas along this path. That is why the name Hellweg was occasionally interpreted as “Salzweg”, especially since numerous places where salt was extracted have been given similar names, see Hall (place name) . The Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde rejects this assumption and classifies it as a subsequent folk etymological interpretation. Jürgen Udolph also considers the interpretation as "Salzweg" to be a mistake.

Another interpretation, according to which Hellweg means something like "bright, light path", seems plausible if one imagines the course of a comparatively wide Hellweg through a forest area. It was taken up in the Middle Low German dictionary by Karl Schiller and August Lübben (1876) as well as in local literature. The real dictionary of Germanic antiquity also rejects this interpretation as inaccurate and as a folk etymology. In Old High German times, when the name Hellweg came about, hel was only used to describe acoustic impressions (cf. still sounding bright today , related to reverberation and reverberation ), but not yet optical brightness.

Well-known Hellwege

Among other things, one knows


archeology

Along the Hellweg, archeology discovers traces that point to settlements since prehistoric times, such as the archaeological sites in Duisburg and Dortmund . Duisburg was densely populated during the Merovingian and Carolingian times. The Franconian settlement period for the fifth to eighth centuries has been proven with ten large Franconian burial grounds in today's urban area on the right bank of the Rhine to the right of the Rhine. In what is now Dortmund's urban area, there was an extensive Neolithic settlement on Hellweg, which was also used as a settlement in the Bronze Age. Also worth mentioning is the Dortmund gold treasure with 444 late Roman gold coins and a Franconian burial ground from the sixth century in Dortmund-Wickede with around 90 graves. On the other hand, in the towns of Unna , Werl and Soest am Hellweg, salt production dating back to prehistoric times has been proven.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ferdinand Seibt, Ulrich Borsdorf , Heinrich Theodor Grütter (ed.): Transit Brügge – Novgorod. A road through European history. Exhibition catalog. Translated by Christian Beck. Pomp, Bottrop / Essen 1997, ISBN 3-89355-148-4 .
  2. ^ A b Jacob Grimm: German Mythology. Dieterichsche Buchhandlung, Göttingen 1835, Chapter 25 ( projekt-gutenberg.org ).
  3. ↑ a b c d e Hellweg. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde. 2nd Edition. Volume 14. de Gruyter 1999, pp. 313-315 ( scan in Google book search).
  4. ↑ Hellweg, 1.). In: Jacob Grimm , Wilhelm Grimm (Hrsg.): German dictionary . tape 10 : H, I, J - (IV, 2nd division). S. Hirzel, Leipzig 1877, Sp. 976 ( woerterbuchnetz.de ).
  5. ↑ Wolfgang Golther: Handbook of Germanic Mythology. Leipzig 1895, p. 471 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  6. ↑ Hellweg, 2.). In: Jacob Grimm , Wilhelm Grimm (Hrsg.): German dictionary . tape 10 : H, I, J - (IV, 2nd division). S. Hirzel, Leipzig 1877, Sp. 976 ( woerterbuchnetz.de ). with reference to hälden. In: Jacob Grimm , Wilhelm Grimm (Hrsg.): German dictionary . tape 10 : H, I, J - (IV, 2nd division). S. Hirzel, Leipzig 1877, Sp. 222 ( woerterbuchnetz.de ).
  7. ↑ Hêllwêg. In: Adelung: Grammatical-critical dictionary of the high German dialect. 2nd, increased and improved edition. 2nd volume. Leipzig 1793–1801, column 1102 ( woerterbuchnetz.de ).
  8. ↑ a b Jürgen Udolph : The place names Hall, Halle, Hallein, Hallstatt and the salt. Publishing house for regional history, Bielefeld 2014, ISBN 978-3-89534-866-2 .
  9. ^ Ludger Tewes : Between Osterfeld and Recklinghausen. The Vestische Hellweg. In: Vestischer Calendar. 61, vol. (1990), pp. 82-84.
  10. ↑ See Henriette Brink-Kloke, Christiane Althoff: pits, graves and vessels. Finds and findings in Dortmund-Oespel / Marten from the Neolithic and the late Bronze Age (4500-750 BC) . Dortmund 1994.
  11. ↑ Cf. Franz Berger : Der Dortmunder Goldschatz. Its creation and function . In: Heimat Dortmund 2. 1995, pp. 8-10; see. Peter Berghaus :  Dortmund. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA). 2nd Edition. Volume 6, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1986, ISBN 3-11-010468-7 , pp. 124–128 ( chargeable via GAO , De Gruyter Online).
  12. ^ Peter Berghaus :  Dortmund. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA). 2nd Edition. Volume 6, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1986, ISBN 3-11-010468-7 , pp. 124–128 ( chargeable via GAO , De Gruyter Online).

literature

Web links

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