Holzheim (Haunetal)

Holzheim community Haunetal Coordinates: 50 ° 46 ′ 56 ″ N , 9 ° 40 ′ 16 ″ E
Height :	319 (315-335) m
Residents :	257
Incorporation :	August 1, 1972
Postal code :	36166
Area code :	06673

Holzheim is a part of the market town of Haunetal in the Hersfeld-Rotenburg district in East Hesse .

Geographical location

Holzheim is located in the Vorderrhön or the Haune plateaus on the old high road between Hersfeld and Fulda and on the Barberbach, a tributary of the Haune . State road 3431 runs through the village .

Neighboring towns are Hilperhausen in the north, Kruspis in the south and Neukirchen in the southeast.

history

The small village was first mentioned in a document in 1402, but is probably considerably older. As early as the middle of the 12th century there was a small castle, probably built by local nobility, with a stone tower block , which already had a wooden predecessor, and there was probably a settlement in its vicinity.

The Ebenezer Chapel in Holzheim

In 1419 a Landgrave Hessian bailiff was recorded in Holzheim, who had to keep two guards, a porter and five defensive servants and received 8 malter grain, 4 loads of beer, 4 cows and 4 sides of bacon in addition to the official inclines. In 1428 Ludwig (Lutz) von Hattenbach was appointed landgrave bailiff in Holzheim. And in 1435 Landgrave Ludwig I pledged the castle (probably the castle) Holzheim to the brothers Hermann and Heinrich Gerwig, who had lent him 500 guilders, with the exception of the part that Ludwig von Hattenbach had in it.

Even in the 15th century was one of Wenigentaft expatriate scion of the Lords of Romrod , vassals of the Abbey of Fulda and the pin Hersfeld , from the Hessian Landgrave in 1440 as a new bailiff with the castle and a Hofsitz and 1458 with the total feudal fief of the local . Two landgrave documents dated December 30, 1491 prove the renewed enfeoffment of the brothers Asmus and Kaspar von Romrod with the castle (which again probably meant the castle) and its accessories as well as with the bower there as a man fief ; The castle and bower should remain the open house of the landgrave, with gatekeepers, porters and guards in this case being fed by the landgrave. Until 1686 the Lords of Romrod owned most of the village. Your coat of arms can still be seen today at the current entrance to the residential tower. After the last Romroder zu Holzheim, Melchior Christian, died in 1661 without direct descendants, his cousins and heirs, the brothers Lukas Wilhelm, Wolf Adam and Johann Heinrich von Romrod, sold their goods, interest and rights in and outside of office in 1686 Landeck , and with it their remnants in Holzheim, to Landgrave Karl von Hessen-Kassel .

During the time of the short-lived Napoleonic Kingdom of Westphalia , 1807-1813, Holzheim was the capital of the canton of Holzheim and the seat of the justice of the peace . From 1813 the place was Hessian again. With the annexation of the Electorate of Hesse by Prussia in 1866 , Holzheim also became Prussian. It has been Hessian again since 1945.

With the territorial reform in Hesse , the place lost its independence and on August 1, 1972, by state law, it became part of the large community of Haunetal.

Culture and sights

The thick tower

The Big Tower - remainder of Holzheim Castle

In the middle of the village there is a mighty defense tower with a square floor plan and five storeys, called the thick tower . It is the rest of the medieval Holzheim Castle . The tower is now privately owned and used as a residential complex. It was built in the middle of the 12th century as a residential tower for the castle. According to a legend, a child was walled in while it was being built. The three stone heads visible on the outer wall at a height of about 12 m show a man, a woman and a child and are associated with this legend.

When extensive ground work was necessary in the vicinity of the redesign of the “thick tower” into a residential complex, this was used for archaeological investigations. In the process, wall sections from previous buildings and, previously completely unknown because there were no written references to this, the remains of a small medieval church were found. Round post holes were found in the foundation stones and the masonry of the tower; the original previous building was a wooden tower, which, like the ceramic shards that were also found, was possibly built around 650 in the Merovingian period. The stone tower, which was later built in its place, was probably built in the 10th or 11th century at the earliest, when stone tower structures of this type became common in Germany, but probably dates from the 12th century. The former church probably dates from the High Middle Ages .

The so-called castle

The former Jagdschlösschen Holzheim

With the castle, court seat and entire fiefdom of Holzheim, the Lords of Romrod also obtained the so-called bower in the village, which they expanded into a mansion , the ground floor of which forms the foundation of today's Holzheim hunting lodge . After the neighboring Hauneck Castle fell into disrepair in the middle of the 16th century, the Landgrave Hessian bailiff and mayor was transferred to Holzheim in 1560 , where he held office for the combined offices of Hauneck , Schildschlag and Johannesberg in the former Romrods' castle. From 1562 to 1818 the bailiffs or mayors are completely traceable. During the Thirty Years War , the small castle burned down to the massive ground floor, but was rebuilt. In 1686 it came into the possession of Landgrave Karl von Hessen-Kassel through purchase . His son, Landgrave Friedrich von Hessen-Kassel or his brother Wilhelm VIII , who ruled for him in Kassel , had it converted and expanded into a hunting lodge in the years 1732 to 1735 . A baroque double-winged door under a fixed skylight with C-shaped volutes , the half-timbered upper floor and a staircase with hanging staircase originate from this redesign . The former tithe barn became a horse stable, at the entrance of which Frederick's monogram from 1739 still bears witness to this conversion.

After the Prussian annexation of Kurhessen in 1866, the previous mayor, who was now the Prussian magistrate, had the windows of a room in the basement barred and converted into a prison. Shortly thereafter, however, the district court was moved to Niederaula , and the building then served as a district forester until 1963 . Today the house on a walled plot with a stepped path in Turmstrasse is privately owned. On the massive ground floor there is a half-timbered upper floor and two attic floors under the simple gable roof .

Village community center

The village community center was built in 1965 .

literature

Harald Neuber: The history of the village and official seat of Holzheim. (304 pages), Haunetal, 2002
Wolfgang Henry Sturt: The Holzheimer line of Romrod. The rise and fall of a family. In: Hessische Familienkunde, Vol. 21 (1992/93), pp. 187-206