Trowel - devil's pulpit

	Trowel - devil's pulpit IUCN Category IV - Habitat / Species Management Area
	View from the Werraaue to the Höheberg.
location	On the right of the Werra , near Lindewerra in the Eichsfeld district .
surface	200.2 hectares
Identifier	TH 194
WDPA ID	164048
Natura 2000 ID	4625-303
Geographical location	51 ° 19 ' N , 9 ° 57' E Coordinates: 51 ° 19 '13 " N , 9 ° 57' 22" E
Sea level	from 140 m to 505 m
Setup date	1996
particularities	Special protection as a nature reserve , Natura 2000 area and part of a European bird sanctuary and a landscape conservation area .

Kelle - Teufelskanzel is the name of a nature reserve in western Eichsfeld in Thuringia. It extends on the steep western slope of the Höheberg , a ridge of the Lower Werrabergland on the state border with Hesse . With the designation as a nature reserve in 1996, the forest communities that emerged from the former management as coppice forest should be protected. They are considered to be richly structured and close to nature and an important "networking element" in the supra-regional biotope network of the " Green Belt ". The affiliation as a flora-fauna-habitat area and part of an EU bird sanctuary in the transnational network of protected areas " Natura 2000 " and as part of a landscape conservation area shows that the areas below the Teufelskanzel are particularly worthy of protection.

location

The nature reserve is located within the red sandstone area of the Höheberg, the floe of which was lifted into the Leinegraben in the transition area of the Eichenberg-Saalfeld fault zone . The highest point is an area at the Junkerkuppe at 505 m . The lowest point at 140 m is on the Werra loop near Lindewerra. The Hessian nature reserve " Harthberg " borders directly on its western side . Administratively , the protected area belongs to the districts of the communities Lindewerra and Bornhagen of the Hanstein-Rusteberg administrative community in the Thuringian district of Eichsfeld , within the Eichsfeld-Hainich-Werratal nature park .

The natural structure according to Otto Klausing assigns the area to the sub-unit "Höheberg" in the " Lower Werraland " of the " East Hessian highlands ". In the north this area merges into the sub-unit “ Neuseesen-Werleshäuser Heights ” and in the south into the sub-unit “Lindewerra-Werleshäuser Schlingen”. According to the natural spatial structure of the State Institute for Environment and Geology within Thuringia , the protected area is part of the " Werrabergland-Hörselberge " unit of the "Muschelkalk-Platten und -Bergländer" landscape.

The sanctuary

trowel

The Kelletal is one of two valleys on the steep slopes of the Werra. It borders on the smaller Lindewerratal. Both valleys have great slopes and slopes between 18 ° and 36 °. Its steep valley flanks are structured by numerous dents and furrows. Cliffs and ribs shaped by erosion appear on the upper slope edges . The Kelletal is initially a notched valley that merges into a notched valley with temporary water drainage. In the lower section, the main stream deepens to form a gorge up to eight meters deep. The difference in altitude between the highest point on the Junkerkuppe and the lowest point at the valley exit, at a distance of only 1400 meters, is around 365 meters. At the Lindewerratal it is 210 meters. The high-lying headwaters of the Kelle, where springs emerge from the flat sandstones on the steep slope, the water of which cascades down into the valley, is regarded as remarkable .

Devil's pulpit

Dry forest on red sandstone in the Teufelskanzel area.

The Teufelskanzel, located at a height of around 452 m , and the surrounding individual rocks of different sizes, form the 25 -meter-high, almost vertically sloping slope edge of the Höheberg to the Werra Valley. They consist of layers of the middle colored sandstone and red-brown to gray-brown middle sandstone .

In the regions of Eichsfeld and northern Hesse, which are rich in fairy tales and legends , old popular belief has associated the sandstone rock with the main god of Germanic mythology , Odin and his Valkyries . Later it was seen as the work of the devil: “The devil once boasted of his great powers at a witch people's meeting on the hunk. After his speech, some asked whether he could carry a boulder as large as his pulpit up to the Meißner in Hesse without resting even once. The devil said it was easy for him, grabbed the pad and set off. But the way was very exhausting and it annoyed the devil to have taken the will of the people into account. When he got near Hanstein Castle, it was so quiet and deserted that he thought, nobody will see you here, you can rest here. The silence did not last long, however, a witch came from Blocksberg on her broomstick and saw the devil lying there. Scared and angry at the same time to see himself caught in this way, he took off without bothering about the rock. ” Ludwig Bechstein retold the fairy tale of the creation of the Devil's Pulpit in his German Book of Legends, published in 1853.

The Teufelskanzel is a popular vantage point that offers a view of the horseshoe-shaped Werraschleife with the villages of Lindewerra and Oberrieden and the Hessian mountains. Theodor Storm , who was employed as a judge at the district court in Heiligenstadt in Eichsfeld , which at that time belonged to Prussia , is said to have visited the Teufelskanzel several times and was so enthusiastic about the view of the Werra valley that he was in his novella “Eine Malerarbeit”, published in 1867, raved about it: “It was not unauthorized to use this name; The rock shot vertically over a hundred fathoms, where the most laughing landscape spread out in the sunshine below. Through green meadows, past villages and forests, a shining stream flowed in many bends, the rustling of which echoed up to us in the midday silence, and over it, at the same height as us, the larks stood flapping their wings in the air and mixed their song with them Music of the waves. Anyone who was still capable of this had to be overwhelmed by lust for life and love. "

nature

Orchards at the foot of the Höheberg.

The protected area includes the deciduous forest area on the rugged steep slopes with silicate rocks and upstream gravel heaps, dry heaths as well as the orchards that extend along the western edge.

Woods

Above all, the deciduous forests, which emerged from the historical form of use as coppice, characterize the protected area. The coppice forests around Lindewerra have been used by the local stickmaker's trade since the 1830s. Some of them were also used as oak peeling forests for the extraction of Gerberlohe for leather production in the nearby Eschwege . As in the many other forests in the Werra Valley, the shoots of the oaks were cut just above the roots and debarked about every ten to twenty years. The trees sprout again and thus formed the multi-stemmed coppice. The peeled trunks could be processed into walking sticks, a branch of trade that has survived in Lindewerra to the present day. In Lindewerra, known far beyond the country's borders as the “stick-making village of Germany”, the stick-making trade developed into a flourishing trade until the 1940s, so that there was soon no family in the village that was not at least partially engaged in stick-making.

Today, bedstraw-oak-hornbeam forests mostly grow on the parts that were influenced by the former cultivation . This type of forest got its name from the characteristic tree species sessile oak , English oak and hornbeam as well as from that in the herbaceous layer occurring forest-bedstraw . Areas that were less shaped by the earlier use are occupied by the beech forest , with the common beech as the dominant tree species. It has the largest share of land in the protected area. On steep, rocky slopes with rough surface has a maple - Summer Linden -Hangschuttwald trained and into the creek valleys grows on damp ground of the grove Mieren - alder - Bachwald . Orchards stretch along the forest edges.

flora

Red foxglove in a small clearing on the Höheberg.

During the investigations in the early 1990s for the assessment of the protection worthiness of the planned nature reserve, more than two hundred plants could be detected, among them stately orchid , poison lettuce and pike-leaved cranium . From a nature conservation point of view, the occurrence of the magnificent thin fern is seen as valuable . The cushion-forming skin fern plant was already considered extinct before it was rediscovered. The strictly protected evergreen species only reproduces vegetatively in Germany and is probably a relic of earlier warm periods . In the protected area, permanent stages of gametophytes were found as green, cotton-wool-like coatings in narrow crevices of sandstone rocks.

fauna

The nature reserve is the habitat of the wildcat. Like some of the other animal species living here, it needs the structures of old forests with trees in all phases of aging and decay, which have a high proportion of standing and lying dead wood as well as cave trees . Are among the so-called value-adding species with large space requirements in the Birds Directive Annex I listed and especially vulnerable applicable types black , medium , and gray-headed woodpecker , red-breasted flycatcher , boreal owl , kingfisher , eagle owl , black stork , peregrine falcon , red-backed shrike , red kite and honey buzzard and Hobby , Woodcock and wryneck , which as migratory bird species according to Article 4 Paragraph 2 of the Bird Protection Line are also under special protection. They are birds that are viewed as threatened with extinction due to low populations, small distribution areas or their special habitat requirements.

Protected position

Nature reserve

View from Lindewerra to the “Green Belt” between the “Hardtberg” (left) and “Kelle-Teufelskanzel” (right) protected areas.

After a temporary seizure between 1990 and 1995, the area below the Teufelskanzel was declared a nature reserve by decree of April 12, 1996 by the Thuringian State Administration Office in Weimar . The protected area has a size of 200.2 hectares, has the Thuringia internal identifier 194 and the WDPA code 164048. With the designation, the deciduous forests, rocky areas and orchards with their species-rich communities should be preserved and sustainably secured.

FFH area

With the same area boundaries, the nature reserve became part of the Europe-wide Natura 2000 network of protected areas in 2008 as a flora-fauna-habitat area . Protection goals are the preservation or, if necessary, restoration of the closed deciduous forests, in particular the Hainsimsen-beech forest as well as the silicate rubble heaps, dry heaths and red sandstone rocks with occurrences of the splendid thin fern, on low-disturbance, rugged red sandstone slopes of the Werrabergland. The establishment of the objects to be protected and conservation objectives was carried out by the “Thuringian Natura 2000 Conservation Objectives Ordinance” of May 29, 2008. The FFH area “NSG Kelle - Teufelskanzel” is number 16 in Thuringia, the European area number 4625-303 and the WDPA code 555519946.

European bird sanctuary

The area around Kelle and Teufelskanzel lies entirely in the EU bird sanctuary "Werrabergland southwest of Uder". The purpose of the designation is to protect the deciduous and mixed deciduous forests, with their high proportion of old and dead wood, as a habitat for honey buzzard, gray, medium and black woodpecker as well as the protection of the fields and grassland areas that are interlocked with the forests, as a habitat for red and black woodpeckers Black kite , turtledove , red backed shrike, great gray shrike , quail and woodcock. The breeding areas of the kingfisher and eagle owl should also be preserved with little disruption through an extensively cultivated landscape. The 8,433 hectare bird sanctuary has the European area number 4626-420, the number 12 within Thuringia and the WDPA code 555537539.

Landscape protection area

The forest areas of Kelle and Teufelskanzel are located entirely in the " Obereichsfeld " landscape protection area , which was formed in 2009 from several, in some cases very small, landscape protection areas. It encompasses the mountainous landscape of the north-western edge of the Thuringian Basin , which is characterized by a small-scale alternation of forests, hedges, fields and grassland. The diversely structured cultural landscape , which has arisen through traditional forms of use, is considered to be of "special cultural and historical importance".

"Green band"

When the area was swapped as a result of the Wanfrieder Agreement in 1945, the zone border first ran along the steep slope of the Höheberg , later the inner German border . With the gradual expansion of the border installations from the 1960s onwards, a 100 to 200 m wide treeless border strip with border security systems such as the border fence, the border signal fence, between the serpentine -like patrol and an observation tower of the GDR border troops was created . From 1990 the border installations were dismantled and nature was able to recapture the mountainside without external influence, but the location of this border strip is still recognizable today due to the different vegetation. Only at the so-called Lindewerrablick (or ministerial view) was the viewing area kept free of trees.

In the biotope network Eichsfeld-Werra valley along the “Green Belt”, the protected area with the neighboring Hessian nature reserve “Harthberg” and two parts of the Thuringian FFH area “Röhrsberg-Hasenwinkel-Mühlberg” form a large core area. The major nature conservation project , which was declared a national natural monument by the decision of the Thuringian state parliament on November 9, 2018 , connects numerous rare habitats and is intended to contribute to the preservation of biological diversity in Germany.

Tourist development

The protected area can be accessed in several ways. Marked hiking trails from Lindewerra, the Rothenbach homestead near Gerbershausen and Hanstein Castle lead to the “Lindewerrablick”, “Zweiburgenblick” and “ Teufelskanzel ” viewpoints . For the ascent from Lindewerra, you can choose between short, very steep or longer, gradually rising hiking trails. The forest inn directly on the rocks of the Teufelskanzel is a popular destination.

On the ridge path of Teufelskanzel the "run on the same route stages Werra Burgen walkway " with the signposts "X5", the " Hercules path " (Signs "X7") and the "Eichsfeld trail" with a sechsspeichigem red wheel on a white background as Marker symbol.

The partially natural Werra Valley Cycle Path leads along the Werra between Wahlhausen and Lindewerra to Werleshausen , which touches the north-western border of the protected area.

literature

Holm Wenzel, Werner Westhus, Frank Fritzlar, Rainer Haupt and Walter Hiekel: The nature reserves of Thuringia . Weissdorn-Verlag, Jena 2012, ISBN 978-3-936055-66-5 .
Adalbert Schraft: GeoTours in Hessen - Geological forays through the most beautiful regions of Hessen. Volume 3 - East Hessian Buntsandstein-Bergland and Werra-Meißner-Bergland . Hessian State Office for Nature Conservation, Environment and Geology, Wiesbaden 2018, ISBN 978-3-89026-384-7 .

Web links

Commons : Kelle-Teufelskanzel nature reserve - collection of images, videos and audio files

Mountain hut & tavern Teufelskanzel.
Image of the inner German border at the Junkerkuppe near Lindewerra

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Holm Wenzel, Werner Westhus, Frank Fritzlar, Rainer Haupt and Walter Hiekel: The nature reserves of Thuringia. P. 448 f.

↑ Classification of natural areas according to Otto Klausing. In: Environmental Atlas Hessen; accessed on July 6, 2020.

↑ The natural areas of Thuringia. In: Website of the Thuringian State Institute for Environment and Geology ; accessed on July 6, 2020.

↑ From Lindewerra to the Teufelskanzel and outcrops on the Werra bank. In: Adalbert Schraft: GeoTouren in Hessen - Geological forays through the most beautiful regions of Hessen. P. 608 f.

↑ Des Teufels Kanzel from Ludwig Bechstein: Deutsches Sagenbuch , Leipzig 1853. In: SAGEN.at the German-language collection of sagas on the Internet; accessed on July 6, 2020.

^ Theodor Storm: A painter's work. In: Complete Works. Third volume. Novellas. Insel-Verlag zu Leipzig. 1919. On the website Projekt Gutenberg-DE ; accessed on July 6, 2020.

↑ Technical article forest on the management plan for the Natura 2000 areas FFH area "NSG Kelle - Teufelskanzel" and part of the EC bird sanctuary "Werrabergland southwest Uder" from July 2014. P. 15 f.

↑ Thuringian Ordinance on the "Kelle-Teufelskanzel" nature reserve of April 12, 1996. In: Thüringer Staatsanzeiger, edition: No. 17/1996 of April 29, 1996, pp. 927–929.