Menhir (Monsheim)

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Monsheim palace courtyard, menhir

The menhir is a menhir in Monsheim in the Alzey-Worms district in Rhineland-Palatinate . The corridor named after him is the eponymous site of the menhir culture .

Location and description

The menhir originally stood 50 m east of the road leading from Monsheim to Niederflörsheim . There it served as a boundary stone in the Middle Ages and modern times . In the 15th century it marked the border between the Electoral Palatinate and the County of Leiningen , and later the border between Monsheim, Niederflörsheim and Kriegsheim . In 1865 an excavation was made near the stone. A burial ground was discovered that contained Frankish , Roman , Early Bronze Age and Neolithic graves. The latter included graves of the Rössen culture and a group that was still unknown at the time, which was named Hinkelstein culture after the field name . However, there is no direct connection between the menhir culture and the menhirs, which are often referred to as menhirs. After the excavation, the stone was moved. Today it stands in the courtyard of the Monsheimer Schloss , walled into the border of a dung chew.

The menhir is made of limestone and has a heavily weathered, furrowed and holey surface. It has a height of 200 cm, a width of 170 cm and a depth of 80 cm. The stone is pyramidal in shape and its upper part is slightly indented. This gives it a slightly anthropomorphic look from a certain angle .

literature

  • Gerhard Bosinski : The long stone near Einselthum (Palatinate). A menhir of the Rössen culture? In: Germania. Volume 39, 1961, pp. 179-180.
  • Georg Durst: The monoliths of the province of Rheinhessen. In: Mainz magazine. Volume 33, 1928, pp. 15-16.
  • Otto Gödel: Menhirs, witnesses of cult, border and legal customs in the Palatinate, Rheinhessen and the Saar area. Speyer 1987, pp. 118ff.
  • Otto Gödel: Menhirs - a scientific and folkloric contribution to our stone monuments. In: Communications of the Historical Association of the Palatinate. Volume 96, 1998, p. 29.
  • Johannes Groht : Menhirs in Germany. State Office for Monument Preservation and Archeology Saxony-Anhalt, Halle (Saale) 2013, ISBN 978-3-943904-18-5 , pp. 286, 338.
  • Horst Kirchner: The menhirs in Central Europe and the menhir thought. Academy of Sciences and Literature, Treatises of the Humanities and Social Sciences Class, Born 1955, No. 9, Wiesbaden 1955, p. 159.
  • Friedrich Kofler: The menhirs and long stones in the Grand Duchy of Hesse. In: Correspondence sheet of the general association of German history and antiquity associations. Volume 36, 1888, p. 127.
  • Detert Zylmann: The riddle of the menhirs. Probst, Mainz-Kostheim 2003, ISBN 978-3936326079 , p. 103.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Johannes Groht: Menhirs in Germany. P. 338.

Coordinates: 49 ° 38 ′ 10.5 ″  N , 8 ° 12 ′ 10.1 ″  E