Heppen

Heppen Municipality Bad Sassendorf Coordinates: 51 ° 36 ′ 4 ″  N , 8 ° 8 ′ 19 ″  E
Height :	89 m
Area :	2.97 km²
Residents :	192  (2005)
Population density :	65 inhabitants / km²
Incorporation :	1st July 1969
Postal code :	59505
Area code :	02921

Heppen is part of the municipality of Bad Sassendorf in the Soest district , North Rhine-Westphalia .

General

Heppen is a spacious, agricultural village in the Soester Niederbörde . It is divided into the Unterdorf and Oberdorf. The village includes the single farms "Kummerwie" north of the upper village and "Schwanebrügge" (former distillery), located approx. 1 km west of the village center, as well as the "Stemecke" (today the Quellenhof Clinic) 1 km south. The inhabitants of Heppens are known as Hepper .

location

The place is 4 kilometers northeast of the district town of Soest and only 1.5 kilometers northwest of the center of the municipality of Bad Sassendorf . Heppen is crossed in the north by the developed 746 highway , which leads from Weslarn to Soest and is called Weslarner Weg here. In addition, the L 688, which has also been expanded, crosses the town in a west-east direction. The Schledde flows to the west of the village . Your side stream Supbieke flows completely into the Hepper area.

Surname

Whether Heppen is already mentioned as Heppiun in the Corveyer traditions around 850 is controversial, but it can be justified etymologically . The name is apparently old and, according to the more recent interpretation, means cheap, happy (cf. English : "happy"), so probably a good settlement point.

history

The oldest finds indicate a settlement already during antiquity . During excavations in the 1920s and 50s, the remains of a settlement from the Roman Empire were found. At that time the Martians probably lived here . At the beginning of the 8th century, the Saxon Westphalia advanced into the region from the Lippe . Heppen has been one of the most important places in the Niederbörde and the place of jurisdiction since the Middle Ages. The Free County of Heppen comprised the entire northeastern part of the Soest Börde including the much larger village of Weslarn .

In 1369, the coadjutor and administrator of the Cologne archbishopric , Kuno von Falkenstein , as sovereign of the Duchy of Westphalia , pledged the free county to the Free Hanseatic City of Soest. The jurisdiction was initially retained in the form of vemes courts . During the Soest feud from 1444 to 1449, Heppen stood loyally at Soest's side as one of the main towns in the Niederbörde. As a result, troops from the Electorate of Cologne burned down the village several times. As a result of the feud, Heppen and the entire Soest Börde fell to the Grafschaft Mark . Soest and the Börde had a number of special rights in the Brandenburg principality. Although Heppen initially remained the place of jurisdiction, the jurisdiction was now completely with the Magistrate of Soest. In terms of the church, Heppen was placed under the Soest Hohnekirche .

As in almost all villages on the Börde, the Reformation quickly gained a foothold in Heppen. However, the story is sketchy here, as some of the old church records were destroyed during the Thirty Years War. In 1548 the St. Matthias chapel in Heppen was demolished. There are various rumors about this. It seems most credible that the Lutheran gentlemen of the Hohnekirche in Soest in Heppen feared pagan or “unbiblical” worship and let the “hoard of sins”, i.e. the chapel, be razed. Subsequently, Heppen lost its importance for the Niederbörde. In the 17th century it was the scene of several smaller battles during the Thirty Years War and was not spared from the plague. In 1666 it came into the Brandenburg sphere of influence with the county of Mark and was assigned to the Borgeln-Schwefe office.

After 1815 the municipality of Heppen belonged to the Prussian old district of Soest . With the community reform on July 1, 1969, Heppen became a part of the large community of Bad Sassendorf .

The cultural space

Heppen is a classic, scattered clustered village with open spaces near the courtyard.

The Heppen district has a soil quality number of 72 and is therefore an ideal location for agriculture . Even today the village is predominantly agricultural. In the upper and lower villages there are almost exclusively agricultural farms, there are only a few pure residential buildings.

However, the nature of agriculture has changed significantly. The sugar beets that were typical for the Börde 30 years ago have completely disappeared with the closure of the Soest sugar factory, and cattle and pig breeding has largely given way to horses over the past two decades. The number of farms has not decreased since 1990, but has fallen sharply in previous years (from 17 farms in 1960 to 10 farms in 1988). As a result, the number of the resident population has almost halved, although there has been an opposite trend for a few years. This has primarily to do with the fact that previously protected areas as spring catchment areas for brine were advertised as building land and Heppen is experiencing a small building boom.

Heppen benefits from its location in the immediate vicinity of the bathing metropolis Bad Sassendorf. This resulted in several riding stables and the Quellenhof health clinic in the Stemecke district . The expansion of the network of hiking trails has also contributed to the tourist upgrade.

Resident population

• 1939-240
• 1946-255
• 1961-230
• 1970-230
• 1981 - 150
• 1986-134
• 1999 - 168
• 2005 - 192

nature

The Schledde, the main body of water that grazes the town, is not in a near-natural state due to the straightening of the Hepper area carried out in the 1970s and did not have good water values ​​due to over-fertilization. In the meantime, the stream is largely allowed to run free again, so that it begins to meander again .

The village open spaces still consist of meadows and pastures as well as smaller wooded areas. There are now more orchards again, with apple and pear trees making up the majority. Otherwise deciduous trees, v. a. Oaks, beeches, linden, poplars, chestnuts and plane trees, the village image. The small village cemetery, a little south of the lower village, has a clearly visible population of linden trees.

There are also several ponds and ponds in the center of the village, which are also typical of the formerly swampy landscape of the Niederbörde.

politics

Mayor is Wilhelm Niggeschulze (CDU).

Sons and daughters of Heppen

• Karl Blume (1888–1975), politician (CDU), mayor of Heppen
• Wilhelm Niggeschulze, politician (CDU) mayor of Heppen

Web links

• Heppen on the website of the Bad Sassendorf community
• Heppen (private website)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See, taking into account the positions of Schütte and Förstemann: Michael Flöer, Claudia Maria Korsmeier: The place names of the district of Soest (=  Westphalian Place Name Book (WOB), Volume 1). Publishing house for regional history, Bielefeld 2009, ISBN 978-3-89534-791-7 , pp. 220-221 ( digitized version ).
2. ^ Michael Flöer, Claudia Maria Korsmeier: The place names of the Soest district (=  Westphalian Place Name Book (WOB), Volume 1). Publishing house for regional history, Bielefeld 2009, ISBN 978-3-89534-791-7 , pp. 221–222 ( digitized version ).
3. ↑ Martin Bünermann: The communities of the first reorganization program in North Rhine-Westphalia . Deutscher Gemeindeverlag, Cologne 1970, p. 92 .
4. ↑ Mayor. Bad Sassendorf municipality , accessed on May 2, 2014 .