Klappach
Klappach (also: Clappach) was a hamlet from the 13th to the 15th century , located south of the village of Bessungen near Darmstadt in Hesse .
history
The hamlet of Klappach was first mentioned in 1275. In that year the hamlet belonged to the Counts of Katzenelnbogen , who owned the tithe and from 1289 at the latest a part of the Klappacher forest . Later the hamlet also belonged to the Lords von Ortenberg, von Gondsroth, von Ramstadt and von Frankenstein.
The place Klappach can hardly be grasped in the sources. Presumably it was not a larger village, but a hamlet consisting of a few farmsteads and no administration of its own. The hamlet was in the Klappacher Feld near Klappacher Strasse and the Marienhospital. Residents were only rarely mentioned. The place did not have its own chapel , but belonged to the parish of Bessungen.
During the 15th century, Klappach was gradually abandoned by its inhabitants. The main reasons for this are to be found in the population losses caused by the plague in the 14th and 15th centuries. As a result, there was a fall in the price of agricultural products and the abandonment of previously productive arable land . In the end there was only a single courtyard in Klappach, which was finally abandoned. The residents probably migrated to nearby places such as Bessungen and Nieder-Ramstadt .
Klappacher Strasse and the Klappach monument on Lossenweg, designed by the Beautification Association between 1863 and 1866, are a reminder of the place that used to be there. The memorial , decorated with granite blocks , bears the inscription : "In memory of the village of Clappach - donated by the Beautification Association".
The legend of the Herrgottsberg
In the old days, when only a few Bessung citizens survived years of war and plague, the clever carpenter Georg had to keep his vow to build a chapel on the heights near Klappach, if his family could survive the years of hardship. Well in spring he pulled his journeymen and the loaded ox-carts into the forest in the first light, the men diligently cut the sturdy oaks and beeches and in the evening could proudly look at an imposing skeleton of the future church.
The horror was all the greater when the next morning all the beams lay scattered on the ground - who dared to put down the house in honor of the Lord. So the men quickly put the building back up and managed to finish the roof themselves by sunset. But the next day bad people had carried wood and stones down into the valley and you had to start over. The following night the carpenter's first journeyman, Stefan, was to guard the building and, as a reward, was to marry the master's daughter. Indeed, around midnight the assistant saw a black figure who took the wood and threw it down with ease, the largest beams like the most common floorboards. Though astonished and somewhat frightened, the journeyman ventured out and asked the black man how he dared to throw the house that was destined for the master out of the place in outrage and thus prevent work. Then the black man laughed scornfully and said: Precisely because you want to build such a house, I am hindering work, if you wanted to build one for me and you give me your soul, it would be there before day breaks.
Satisfied, the journeyman went back to his master after Bessings and reported on his trade. Both of them hurried straight to the rectory and conferred with the pastor. Already at lunchtime old bells of the church unexpectedly rang and the congregation flocked in amazement and everyone asked what that meant? The pastor stepped under them and warned them to quickly prepare for a solemn procession on the Herrgottsberg. It was not long before Bessungen, the cross at the top, drew with prayer and song towards the mountain, at the top of which the chapel shone beautifully in the first gold of the morning sun. The devil was standing in the doorway and had been rubbing his hands with joy for a long time, but when he heard the sacred songs, how they came closer and closer, he felt sultry and sultry. Suddenly the cross flashed towards him, it also moved closer to his building, he saw that he had been outwitted and hurried away and the procession entered the chapel undisturbed. But he decided to take revenge and kill everyone who was in the chapel. So he tore off an enormous boulder, rose with it into the air, and threw it against the roof of the little church.
If he had succeeded in his throw, many a Bessunger would not have saved his life, but God's protection was with the worshipers, the stone ricocheted off and fell down next to the church without causing any damage. There it is still lying and as a landmark you can see the place where the evil one had taken him, his claws pressed in. The master's daughter and the journeyman were supposed to be married a week later, when the evening before the day there was three knock on the door, the groom had come out to see who was there, but did not return. The following morning, traces of fresh blood were seen in front of the chapel.
In old documents it is guaranteed that the Martinskapelle was built on the Herrgottsberg in the 15th century, but had already disappeared in 1557. The springs on the southern slope were taken and the water was directed to Bessungen., Johann Wolfgang von Goethe visited the gruesome place and wrote the field consecration song to Psyche in the grove in 1772 , which is why the devil's claw is also called the Goethe rock .
literature
- Peter Engels: 1000 years of Bessungen - a walk through its history. An exhibition by the Darmstadt City Archives on the occasion of the anniversary of the Darmstadt district of Bessungen, Prinz-Emil-Schlösschen, Darmstadt June 10 to 26, 2002. Sachs, Darmstadt 2002, pp. 40–43.
- Stadtlexikon Darmstadt , Konrad Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 2006, p. 492, ISBN 3-8062-1930-3 ( online ).
- Monument topography, Federal Republic of Germany, cultural monuments in Hesse, City of Darmstadt , 1994, p. 455, ISBN 3-528-06249-5 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Johann Wilhelm Wolf : Hessian legends . Dieterichsche Buchhandlung, Göttingen 1853, p. 6 .
- ↑ Mona Sauer: Herrgottsberg. Retrieved November 1, 2017 .
- ↑ Meike Heinigk: especially… Ludwigshöhe. Retrieved November 1, 2017 .
- ↑ Fels-Weihegesang on Project Gutenberg-DE. Retrieved November 1, 2017 .
Coordinates: 49 ° 51 ′ 7.7 ″ N , 8 ° 39 ′ 30.6 ″ E