Kaiserstraße (Bohemia-Upper Lusatia)

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The former Bohemian-Upper Lusatian Kaiserstraße was a trade route and ran from Prague to Bautzen .

Designations, location and course

In the older literature and on old maps of Upper Lusatia , the name "Kaiserstraße" or "Coronation and Homage Street" appears occasionally, pointing to an old and important street that once crossed the Upper Lusatian highlands . This historic country road "describes the route to be taken from Bohemia via Budissin (Bautzen) to Hoyerswerda and Cottbus and from there to Frankfurt an der Oder or Berlin in such a straight direction that any other route that you want to take from Rumburg to Cottbus, Another tour would take in itself ”The old section of the Bohemian-Upper Lusatian Kaiserstraße between Georgswalde and the district of the city of Neusalza-Spremberg , Neuspremberg, was still referred to as the“ thieves path ”in the first third of the 20th century. This part is identical to today's country and hiking trail, from the "Haine" near Ebersbach near the state border with the Czech Republic via the Friedersdorf district of Neufriedersdorf past the former "Froschmühle" and the excursion restaurant "Fichtelschänke" to the former Duroplast plant, today plastic concept GmbH, in the district of Neuspremberg .

The macabre name of this route probably goes back to the social conditions in the middle of the 19th century, when the domestic textile production was subject to strong economic fluctuations, so that the weaving misery found its way into the mountain villages of Upper Lusatia, as in Silesia , and smuggling along the Bohemian one Border blossomed. From Neuspremberg the so-called Kaiserstraße continued in the former “Viehweg” below the “ Hutzelberg ” (346 m) into the village of Spremberg, went between the old school of the village, near the Spremberg village church , and the Kretscham as a ford through the Spree and ran further along the right bank of the Spree, which was then rich in winds, and moved on to the Spremberger "Heidelberg" in the direction of Neuoppach . Today's long “Talstraße” in Neusalza-Spremberg should therefore be regarded as the successor to a section of the historic “Kaiserstraße”. Through the village of Oppach , it crossed the lowest point of around 390 m on the ridge between Pickaer Berg and Bieleboh (499 m) near Oberoppach and Wurbis to Weigsdorf-Köblitz and Halbendorf . It then ran through the villages of Suppo , Eulowitz , Großpostwitz and Hainitz , further below the Drohmberg (432 m) near Rascha , before finally reaching Bautzen via Ebendörfel and Oberkaina .

In any case, the part of today's trunk road B 96 Neusalza-Spremberg - Oppach - Bautzen can rightly be regarded as the successor to the medieval Imperial Road that began in Prague. "The history of the ... F 96 leads back to this old land route from Bohemia to Bautzen and is at least as old as the former political affiliation of Upper Lusatia to the Kingdom of Bohemia".

Origin, purpose and history

Since the territory of Upper Lusatia, initially called “ Gau Milsca ”, later called “Budissiner Land”, belonged to the Kingdom of Bohemia from 1076 to 1253 and then again from 1319 to 1469 , the “Kaiserstraße”, which “in the terms of the time in the forest, was like that broadly cut down (was) so that a rider could ride with a cross held lance ”as a“ courier road ”and hardly functioned as a trade route. In the Middle Ages, it represented the shortest connection between the Bohemian residence of Prague and the metropolis of the Bohemian outlying region of Upper Lusatia. The royal courier service between Prague Castle and the burgrave , later governor , in Bautzen and vice versa was carried out on it by messengers on horseback . According to other reports, the splendid street name is due to the fact that the Bohemian kings, most recently the later Roman-German Emperor Charles IV (1316-1378), moved to Bautzen in 1347 to pay homage to the Lusatian estates, like the discovery of a kufic Gold coin at the laying of the foundation stone of the old Spremberg church in 1839 near the aforementioned Spreefurt (the Spree was not yet regulated at that time). The Bohemian-Upper Lusatian Kaiserstraße, whose development lies in the darkness of the Middle Ages, may well have been laid out under the rule of the Bohemian King Vratislav II (1061-1092) or his son-in-law Wiprecht von Groitzsch (around 1050-1124), who owned Upper Lusatia had received as a dowry of his wife, the king's daughter Judith, as a fief. During his colonization efforts, Wiprecht von Groitzsch, who chose Bautzen as his temporary residence in 1084, had to fend off constant attacks from the powerful Counts of Wettin . As the new Bohemian ruler of Upper Lusatia in Bautzen, he therefore needed a fast and secure connection to the Bohemian capital. Since rural land grabbing and colonization began around the same time as part of the so-called feudal German eastward expansion or colonization in the Sorbian conquered area, which was favored by Wiprecht von Groitzsch, it is very likely that the Kaiserstraße as an important north-south connection of the Bautzener Land with Bohemia was also a “settlement guideline”. Because along this course of the road, today's section of the B 96 in the Oberlausitzer Bergland, there are the places that were then created as " Waldhufendörfer " under the direction of so-called locators (settlement masters ) by clearing and which probably go back to Wiprecht von Groitzsch, but only a lot is documented appear later, e.g. B. Spremberg (1242, 1272), Friedersdorf (1272), Beiersdorf (1272), Ebersbach (1306), Oppach (1336), Taubenheim (1345). As the latest research has shown, these places, like others in the direction of Bautzen, were created long before or around 1200.

In addition, it can be concluded that the Kaiserstraße in the 13th century represented a kind of "topographical basis" for the first land survey of Upper Lusatia, which had become necessary due to unclear ownership and border relationships in connection with overlapping power in the area concerned. Therefore, in the years 1213 and 1228 to 1242, new border determinations were made in stages by royal Bohemian and episcopal Meissnian officials as land surveyors, which were confirmed in an important document, the " Upper Lusatian border document " of May 7, 1241. This finally fixed the boundaries of the neighboring Bohemian and Meißnian Burgwarde (castle districts).

In the Sorbian area subject to the Germans, the Bishop of Meissen had already been granted basic rights by King Heinrich II (973-1024) in 1007 before the aforementioned Bohemian enfeoffment of the Milzenerland in 1076 , so that differences between the vassals could not be avoided. "Through these centuries [11. up to 13th century]… the rivalry between the secular and spiritual landlords in the Gau Milsca for suzerainty in the areas they claim. The famous border document from 1241 represents a certain conclusion of these battles. “It is strange, however, that the Upper Lusatian mountain villages of Cunewalde , Beiersdorf, Spremberg and Friedersdorf in the state of Budissin, which, however, were subject to interest to the Bishop of Meissen and had their own episcopal enclave in the middle of the Bohemian Upper Lusatia not be mentioned in this border document. This circumstance can probably only be explained as "that the ownership right of the bishops was limited there by the landvogteiliche higher jurisdiction, as it is quite understandable with the location of the small property complex in the middle of a royal Burgward (Bohemia) ..." These villages were thus not considered Considered border locations. From a constitutional point of view, Kaiserstraße had therefore connected three politically different medieval territories as a kind of “transit road”.

Of military and strategic importance in the Middle Ages

Although it was hardly of any importance as a trade route at that time and hardly at all for long-distance traffic, smaller goods traffic on the Kaiserstraße between Rumburg and Bautzen and to the neighboring mountain villages, the highwaymen before and after 1400 - the time of the historical decline of knighthood - is not excluded and robber barons attracted, as documents from Bautzen, and who had established themselves in and near Spremberg. Due to its advantageous strategic location, Kaiserstraße may have been of importance as a “military road” and a supply base during the feudal conflicts over possession of Upper Lusatia in the Middle Ages and apparently also for military operations of the Hussite movement , which covered Bohemia from 1415 to 1437. In their fight against the church and the emperor, the clerical and secular feudal lords of Bohemia and Lausitz and their allied " Upper Lusatian Six-City League ", to which Bautzen , Görlitz , Zittau , Löbau , Kamenz and Lauban belonged, the Hussites advanced into Upper Lusatia from 1427. In the summer of 1429 there was a new Hussite advance from Rumburg into the Oberlausitzer Bergland and the Zittau Mountains in order to concentrate on Bautzen, Löbau and Zittau. After Georgswalde was overrun and the towns of Ebersbach and Neugersdorf were apparently destroyed, Hussite armies must then have passed through Spremberg and burned down the church, which was important at the time, as an inscription "Anno 1432" on the north wall attests. From Spremberg, the Hussites must have marched along Kaiserstraße via Oppach, whose manor was burned down, to Bautzen, which they besieged in October 1429 and February 1431 without success, but the smaller six-town Löbau had to surrender to them.

The development to the trade and customs route

In the period of the general decline of the feudal order and the developed manufacturing capitalism from the beginning of the 17th to the end of the 18th century, the role of the Kaiserstraße finally changed to a commercial street, to "Commercialstraße", according to documents of the Bautzen city council around 1800 can be found. "The significant traffic of the same through the transport of goods to Bohemia [via Bautzen], to Niederlausitz , especially to Cottbus, Frankfurt and Berlin or from Prussia to Bohemia, had already made it a customs road in earlier times ". As early as the 18th century there was a main toll collection for traffic on this road in the small town of Neusalza and a secondary toll collection in Taubenheim , which was established primarily in 1725 and 1732 "because of the Oberlausitzschen Leinwaden going from Neusalza via Wilthen to Dresden ... from the same towns in Zittau (was) ”. With the Upper Lusatian Customs in Oppach, the vital linen trade in the small town of Neusalza, which even stretched as far as England , was almost completely ruined. Due to the crossing of several old trade routes, Oppach had developed into a "center of customs revenue" in the 18th century, so that at that time it was not only the Kaiserstrasse that was littered with customs posts. These feudal-absolutist relationships were a reflection of the 18th century Germany, which was split up into more than 360 independent principalities with their own laws, coins, measures and weights.

From old customs tables it can be seen that from 1797 to 1802 a total of 14,732 wagons with goods subject to duty passed the Kaiserstraße, including 12,887 wagons loaded with grain, as the linen weaving villages of the Upper Lusatian highlands became more populated in the course of the onset of capitalist development at the beginning of the 19th century. Since the Zittau merchants had long since had an advantage over the Bautzen people, having had a profitable trade with the Bohemian crown in the "Dreiländereck" since the time of Emperor Charles IV, the Bautzen patriciate, who had fallen behind, tried to get them at the beginning of the 17th century Kaiserstraße as a long-distance trade and customs street, as can be seen from a customs mandate from October 10, 1616. It decreed that "the merchants and carters should stop on the normal and customary country roads and not look astray and that the goods, going to Görlitz and Budissin, should not be seduced on byways to other cities". Nevertheless, the prohibition was broken and other roads and paths were taken. "Because of the bad road, however, the carters left this road [the Kaiserstraße] at the expense of customs [to get to Dresden and back] and use the road via Schluckenau - Hainspach , which came from Zittau via Rumburg". The annual average of customs was z. For example, in the six years from 1817 to 1822 around 678 Reichstaler, 7 Groschen and 8 Pfennig, so that on the Kaiserstraße between Neusalza, Spremberg via the Wurbisberg near Oppach to Bautzen, around 65 Reichstaler customs duties were incurred annually, i.e. only the tenth part of all customs duties Accordingly, Waren had passed this street, which was anything but comfortable for the wagons. Official reports from the years 1817 to 1825 could not avoid describing them as “that the condition of the road 100 years ago [around 1830] was worse than that of a dirt road today. Narrow, mostly only one track wide, extended, ravines overgrown with wood, deep holes, large stones, swamp and mud made them almost unusable ”. The name “Kaiserstrasse” had long since lost its luster.

Departure into modern times

When the foundations for a unified German market were created with the establishment of the German Customs Association in May 1833, after tough battles at various levels and almost insurmountable bureaucratism of the individual authorities and even superstitious prejudices of the builders, the chaussed on June 3, 1833 at Bautzener Lauentor The old Kaiserstraße should be started as an art road , which then joined the Dresden - Stolpen - Oppach - Neusalza-Spremberg - Zittau near Oppach road, which was built from 1832 to 1836 .

When the first railway construction completed in 1846 from Dresden via Bautzen to Görlitz or the railway section of the South Lusatian Railway opened on May 1, 1875 from Ebersbach to Sohland with a station in Neusalza-Spremberg and other railway lines went into operation, the importance of the Kaiserstraße pushed back as a trade route except for local traffic. It was only with the rapid increase in motorization in the 1920s and 1930s that the new means of transport, motor vehicles, also conquered the former Kaiserstraße, which now underwent extensive road construction changes. In Neusalza-Spremberg, for example, the construction of a completely new, approximately 800 m long route north of the Spree to bypass the narrow streets of the city center was completed in 1939.

Today, the old Upper Lusatian Kaiserstraße, whose beginnings lie in the darkness of the Middle Ages and whose face has gradually changed, has become the most important road connection in the densely populated Upper Lusatian highlands. The modern successor to the historical "Böhmisch-Oberlausitzer Kaiserstraße", today's Bundesstraße 96 , begins in Zittau, crosses the four federal states of Saxony , Brandenburg , Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and ends in Saßnitz on the island of Rügen . With approx. 520 kilometers it represents the longest trunk road in Eastern Germany and at the same time represents a main traffic artery in north-south direction, which connects the Western Pomerania Baltic coast with the Upper Lusatian highlands.

literature

  • Walter Heinich: Spremberg. Attempt on a local history of the parish village Spremberg in the Saxon Upper Lusatia. Spremberg 1918, OCLC 315302110 .
  • Walter Heinich : The Kaiserstrasse. A contribution to the history of traffic in Upper Lusatia. In: Bautzener Geschichtshefte (BGH). No. VII / 2, Bautzen 1929.
  • Gunther Leupolt : The Kaiserstrasse. In: History and stories from Neusalza-Spremberg, Volume 3. Ed .: Kultur- und Heimatfreunde Neusalza-Spremberg e. V. Neusalza-Spremberg: Michael Voigt 2007, pp. 5-14
  • Alfred Meiche : The Upper Lusatian border document from 1241…. In: New Lusatian Magazine . (NLM), Volume 84, Görlitz 1908, Volume 85, Görlitz 1909.
  • Lutz Mohr: Historical outline of the city of Neusalza-Spremberg. ... manuscript (reproduce). Greifswald and Neusalza-Spremberg 1976/77, OCLC 313666296 .
  • Lutz Mohr: On the trail of a missing Oberlausitzer Landstrasse. In: Bautzen culture show. Vintage. 41, issue 1/1991.
  • Theodor Schütze (Ed.): To Bautzen and Schirgiswalde (= values ​​of the German homeland . Volume 12). 1st edition. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1967.
  • Lutz Mohr : The former "Kaiserstraße" between Prague and Bautzen - a history of more than 700 years . In: History-Fate-Shape. In search of historical traces between Oberlausitzer Bergland and Schluckenauer Zipfel. Zittau: Oberlausitzer Verlag 2019, pp. 73-78, ISBN 978-3-946795-22-3

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Walter Heinich: The Kaiserstrasse. A contribution to the history of traffic in Upper Lusatia. In: Bautzener Geschichtshefte (BGH). No. VII / 2, Bautzen 1929.
  2. ↑ To Bautzen and Schirgiswalde (= values ​​of the German homeland . Volume 12). 1st edition. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1967.
  3. ^ A b Walter Heinich: Spremberg. Attempt on a local history of the parish village Spremberg in the Saxon Upper Lusatia. Spremberg 1918.
  4. ^ A b Alfred Meiche: The Upper Lusatian border document from 1241 ... In: Neues Lausitzisches Magazin (NLM), Volume 84, Görlitz 1908, Volume 85, Görlitz 1909.