Isteiner Klotz
The Isteiner Klotz is a striking mountain ridge in the Lörrach district in southwest Germany. The Isteiner Klotz is a promontory between the villages of Istein and Kleinkems, which rises about 150 meters above the Rhine meadows.
At the western end near Istein , the ridge forms a steep cliff. The Vitus Chapel , which was built around 1100, is located in a rock niche . On the block are the ruins of Istein Castle and an approximately three-kilometer circular hiking trail.
geology
The Isteiner Klotz is an area of around 170 square kilometers with Jura deposits that is wedged between the Rhine Graben and the southern Black Forest . The Isteiner Klotz originally blocked the Rhine from heading north, so that it first flowed over the Rhone Valley into the Mediterranean .
The Isteiner Klotz in the southern Rhine Valley is a so-called rift clod made of rocks from the Upper Jurassic period on the eastern shoulder of the Upper Rhine Rift . The oldest (lowest) rocks represent sub-Oxford clay marl-marl alternation, the so-called Pholadomyen marl (after the mussel Pholadomya exaltata ), which correspond to the appearance of rocks (Argilles à Chailles) of the Swiss and north-east French Upper Jurassic. The layers and horizons of lime lumps are characteristic of the Pholadomyen marl. Rocks bearing reef corals follow. Clayey coral marls are followed by the approximately 40-meter-thick coral limestone, which shows a transition from large coral reef limestone to scattered smaller reef bodies. The Upper Jurassic strata of the Isteiner Klotz is completed by dense micritic limestone ( brachiopod limestone or splinter limestone ). The upper limit of the rock sequence of the Isteiner Klotz is inconsistent and is defined by the use of banked, micritic to oncoid facies types without coral guidance. The hanging end boundary is designed as a clear discontinuity area in some areas.
Stratigraphy: Finds of Cardioceras cordatum in the lowest, tuberous Pholadomyen marls place these rocks in the upper lower oxfordium. The exact orthostratigraphic classification of the hanging coral limestone is difficult due to the almost complete lack of suitable index fossils. Mainly because of their position above the Pholadomyen marls and isolated finds of Perisphincten, they are placed in the lower to upper middle oxfordium. For the micritic sections directly above the coral limestone, an Upper Oxfordian age may already be conceivable. In terms of stratigraphy and facies sequence, the rocks are similar to the lower to middle Oxfordian rocks of the neighboring Swiss and French Upper Jurassic. Similar rocks can also be found 20 kilometers south in the area of the blue chain of the northern Swiss Jura.
archeology
After the first discoveries in the 1930s / 40s, archaeological excavations were carried out on the Isteiner Klotz, in the district of Kleinkems, from 1951 to 1953 and 1956 under the direction of Elisabeth Schmid , which provided the first evidence of mining in the Neolithic period there, on German soil . which had served the extraction of flint . Further excavations by the University of Basel took place in 2003 and 2004, after which flint quarrying took place here mainly around 4200-4100 BC. Instead of.
Protected areas
The Isteiner Klotz has been a popular practice area for biologists at the Universities of Basel , Strasbourg and Freiburg since the 19th century due to its rich flora .
railroad
During the construction of the Rhine Valley Railway in 1846, the planning engineers also had to tackle the Isteiner Klotz, opting for a completely flat and curvy variant with a radius of 400 meters. The railway line that still exists today is therefore a real obstacle to traffic, whereby the maximum speed on the approximately 15 km long section may be 75 km / h. Failure to observe this speed limit led to the serious railway accident in Rheinweiler on July 21, 1971 , in which 25 people were killed near Rheinweiler . On April 1, 2004, another railway accident occurred near the Isteiner Klotzes. A vineyard tractor fell on the tracks and collided with an ICE traveling in the direction of Basel .
The small mountain range was bypassed in the Katzenberg tunnel , which handles long-distance traffic and - especially at night - most of the freight traffic. Commissioning took place with the timetable change in December 2012.
Fortress construction
The Isteiner Klotz was repeatedly provided with castles and fortifications because of its exposed location opposite the French border . The facilities built between 1902 and 1907 as part of the Upper Rhine fortifications had to be razed in 1921 due to the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles .
The reaffirmation of the Isteiner pad as part of the Western Wall by the Nazi authorities began in 1936. By the end of World War II were gradually 113 military bunker built around Istein around. With their wall and ceiling thicknesses of up to 3.5 meters, they were considered to be the most heavily fortified structures in the entire Westwall on the Upper Rhine . The main systems were underground in the rock. The individual fighting stalls in the rock were connected to one another by a system of cavities , stairs and elevators over two kilometers long . A 105 ton armored dome was built on the surface of the Isteiner Klotz for artillery observation. A staircase nearly 56 meters high led into the dome. The entrances to the comparatively short railway tunnels of the Rheintalbahn were provided with chambers filled with explosives so that they could be blown up if necessary.
After the end of the war, the fortifications were largely razed . The German armed forces used the stable, newly built tunnel systems in the hinterland of the block two kilometers away as storage space until the end of 2005. From 2006 the existing medical depot of the Bundeswehr was shut down and the above-ground administrative buildings continued to be used by the Federal Police .
See also
literature
- Regional Council Freiburg (Ed.): The nature reserves in the Freiburg administrative region . Thorbecke, Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-7995-5177-9
- Piero Carlucci, Frank Siegmund: The 2004 excavations on the early Neolithic mining in Kleinkems, Gde. Efringen-Kirchen, district of Lörrach . In: Archaeological excavations in Baden-Württemberg 2004 (Stuttgart 2005), pp. 34–35. - PDF of the article
- Felix Engel, Frank Siegmund: New excavations at the Neolithic Silex mining in Kleinkems, Gde. Efringen-Kirchen, Kreis Lörrach . In: Archaeological excavations in Baden-Württemberg 2003 (Stuttgart 2004), pp. 28–30. - PDF of the article
- Felix Engel, Frank Siegmund: Radiocarbon dating of the Neolithic flint mine at Kleinkems (near Efringen-Kirchen, District Lörrach, Baden-Württemberg, Germany) . In: Antiquity 306, Dec. 2005, project gallery . - Article on the Antiquity website
- Fröhle-Kühn: The fortifications of the Istein block 1900–1948 , (Fröhle-Kühn) Verlagsgesellschaft, Herbolzheim 1996.
- Fröhle-Kühn: The fortification of the Isteiner Klotzen 1933–1945 , Fröhle-Kühn Verlagsgesellschaft, Istein 2008.
- R. Laternser: Upper Jurassic coral reefs of north-east France (Lorraine) and south-west Germany . Electronic university publications from the University of Stuttgart. - Full text of the dissertation
- Gitta Reinhardt-Fehrenbach: Imperial Fortress - West Wall (Part 4) - Cold War. The main medical depot in the Isteiner Klotz (district of Lörrach). In: Denkmalpflege in Baden-Württemberg , 40th year 2011, issue 4, pp. 235–238; denkmalpflege-bw.de (PDF)
- Elisabeth Schmid: The Neolithic mining on Silex near Kleinkems , Baden-Württemberg. In: Gerd Weisgerber (Ed.): 5000 years of flint mining . 3. Edition. Bochum 1999, pp. 141-165.
- Frank Siegmund, Felix Engel: Stone Age in the Kleinkems quarry . In: Contact (Holcim AG) , December 2003.
- Otto Wittmann , Hermann Schäfer: The Isteiner Klotz . Publisher Rombach Freiburg 1966.
- Fritz Schülin, Hermann Schäfer, Pius Schwanz: Istein and the Isteiner Klotz . 3. Edition. 1994
Web links
- Profile of the nature reserve in the LUBW's list of protected areas
- Environment theme park
Individual evidence
- ↑ Felix Engel, Frank Siegmund, New excavations on the Neolithic Silex mining in Kleinkems, Gde. Efringen-Kirchen, Kreis Lörrach . In: Archaeological excavations in Baden-Württemberg 2003 (Stuttgart 2004), pp. 28–30
- ↑ Piero Carlucci, Frank Siegmund, The 2004 excavations on the early Neolithic mining in Kleinkems, Gde. Efringen-Kirchen, Kreis Lörrach . In: Archaeological excavations in Baden-Württemberg 2004 (Stuttgart 2005), pp. 34–35.
- ↑ antiquity.ac.uk
- ↑ Spiegel-Online: Second ICE involved in an accident with a tractor
Coordinates: 47 ° 39 ′ 47 " N , 7 ° 31 ′ 51" E