Klever Reichswald

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Western edge of the Reichswald on the German-Dutch border south of Kranenburg

The klever reichswald is approximately 51 square kilometers (5100 ha ) surface of the largest contiguous forest area of the Lower Rhine and the largest contiguous public State Forest in North Rhine-Westphalia. It is located in the municipal areas of Goch , Kleve , Kranenburg and Bedburg-Hau in the Kleve district .

Landscape and forest

The Rupenberg (Kleve-Materborn, August 2017)
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The Reichswald is located on the Lower Rhine ridge , which was once pushed back by ice age glaciers. The elevations of this ridge clearly protrude from the flat Rhine plain. 31 of these elevations reach heights of over 50 meters. The highest is the Rupenberg at 95 meters on the eastern border of the Reichswald (Jagen 225, southwest of the parking lot on Treppkesweg), the highest of the ridge is the 106.8  m high Klever Berg , whose forest is separated from the Reichswald by residential areas.

The Reichswald is a closed mixed deciduous forest area that is predominantly dominated by its beech population. In some areas there are also mainly sessile and English oaks . Coniferous forests are also stagnating on some areas.

In the west, the Klever Reichswald merges into forest areas in the province of Gelderland in the Netherlands. These extend almost completely over the municipal areas of Gennep , Mook en Middelaar , Berg en Dal and Heumen to Nijmegen .

Protected areas

With the exception of small areas, the entire Reichswald is under landscape and nature protection. The majority is in landscape protection areas : in the LSG forest area Reichswald (approx. 3875 ha, in Kleve, Kranenburg and Goch), in the LSG Reichswald (approx. 166 ha, in Bedburg-Hau) and in the LSG Pfalzdorfer Höhenrand and Nierstal (only part of the area in the Reichswald , in Goch). The northern forest areas near the city center of Kleve can also be counted as part of the Reichswald, depending on the perspective. They are located in the LSG training area including the area west of Kleve (approx. 126 hectares) and in the LSG forest area of ​​the zoo forest (approx. 295 hectares, including the area “Kreiswald Kleve” and old parks, including Sternberg).

Smaller parts of the Reichswald are designated as a nature reserve. In the northwest area is the NSG Quellen am Stoppelberg (approx. 2.9 hectares, in Kleve) and the NSG Geldenberg (approx. 580 hectares, in Kleve, Kranenburg and Goch) in the middle of the forest . The latter is considered to be the core area of ​​the Reichswald and is also designated as FFH area DE-4202-302 Reichswald with an almost identical layout , which means that this area is part of the European Natura 2000 network of protected areas . The NSG Geldenberg is significant for nature conservation because it is the largest, largely closed, predominantly hardwood-dominated mature wood stock in the Reichswald, which is of outstanding importance in the Lower Rhine region. As endangered animal species live in the Reichswald u. a. the black woodpecker , the oriole , the honey buzzard and the stag beetle .

In the NSG Geldenberg there are also the two natural forest cells Rehso (h) l and Geldenberg (together approx. 50 ha, both in Kleve). There is no cultivation there, so that wild plants and animals can develop undisturbed.

history

A pond of the “Seven Sources” on the north-western edge of the Reichswald near Nütterden

The name Reichswald is mentioned for the first time in the middle of the 14th century, before it was called Ketil- or Ketelwald, a Celtic name that means something like large forest . The Ketelwald was a large contiguous forest area that ran from Nijmegen to Xanten and consisted primarily of beech and oak trees. It comprised the Niederwald, the northern area between Nijmegen in the north to the Meuse and the part adjoining it to the east, the Oberwald to Goch. The eastern part of the Oberwald was also called "the Kelkt". The first traces of human settlement are burial mounds from the late Bronze and early Iron Ages. Due to continued clearing and settlement, the size of the forest has continuously decreased.

The Ketilwald belonged to the state fiscal property in Roman times. At the end of the migration, Franconian settlers came who hunted in these unspoilt forests and drove pigs to be acorn-fed into the forest in autumn. In early medieval times it belonged to the kingdom of forest to royal estate of the imperial palace Nijmegen . In 980 the future emperor Otto III. born in the Reichswald.

At the end of the 12th century at the latest, parts of the forest came to the county of Kleve. With the pledge of Nijmegen in 1247, no part of the forest came to the Counts of Geldern , but they had already acquired the first forest areas as pledge under Heinrich von Geldern in 1138 . These pledges of parts of the Ketelwald by the German emperors were probably the reason that the name was later changed to Reichswald in documents. In a document in 1330, the area of ​​the forest in question is referred to as "silva imperialis", which means that it affected an area that still belonged to the German Empire as "Reichswald".

Disputes between the Counts of Geldern and Kleve over the use of the imperial forest were settled by arbitration awards by the Bishop of Utrecht in 1257 and 1266. In 1283, Count Rainald I von Geldern renounced the Geldener's claims to the part of the Reichswald that belonged to the Klever in favor of the Klever.

In 1331, Count Rainald II von Geldern bought the areas of the Reichswald that had previously been pledged to the County of Geldern (the Upper and Niederwald) as well as the missing three-quarters of the "Kelkt Forest", which had belonged to the County of Kleve up to this point.

At the end of the 13th century, the Reichswald covered large areas between Nijmegen in the north to Grafenthal in the south, bounded by Malden, Mook and Nergena in the west and by Beck, Groesbeek , Frasselt and Nütterden in the east . It included the Niederwald, the Oberwald and the Kelkt in the southeast. Hereditary "forest counts" since the 13th century were the "Lords of Groesbeck". The confirmation of this imperial fief to Johan van Groesbeek by Charles IV is documented for the last time in 1349 . From 1405, Geldrische officials are the successors of the "Groesbeeks".

In 1418, Duke Reinald von Jülich-Geldern pledged large areas of the Reichswald to the Duchy of Kleve for 16,667 "Alte Schild" . In 1429, Kleve pledged the rest of the forest and made additional payments in funds of 11,000 guilders and in 1440 with 6,000 guilders.

Towards the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1647, the Great Elector allowed the city ​​of Goch to sell 1000 acres of Reichswald to repay war debts .

In February and March 1945, the forest was the scene of the battle in the Reichswald . After the Second World War, considerable parts of the forest were cleared to make room for the villages of Reichswalde (now part of Kleve) and Nierswalde (now part of Goch), in which mainly displaced people were settled. Another clearing is called Rodenwalde (located in the area of ​​the municipality of Bedburg-Hau ), but there is no separate settlement of the same name. A small memorial on Triftstrasse between Kleve and Goch has been a reminder of this clearing for several years.

British cemetery of honor in the Reichswald in Kleve

With the British Reichswald Forest War Cemetery , the Commonwealth's largest war cemetery in Germany is located in this forest area.

literature

  • Friedrich Gorissen : Home in the Reichswald. Boss-Verlag, Kleve 1950.
  • Werner Kreuer: The Reichswald. Recreation area on the Lower Rhine. Boss-Verlag, Kleve 1985, ISBN 3-922384-15-3 .
  • Hans-Joachim Koepp: Reichswald settlement project 1950–2000. 50 years of Nierswalde, Rodenwalde and Reichswalde. Boss-Verlag, Kleve 1985, ISBN 3-89413-194-2 .

Web links

Commons : Klever Reichswald  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ City of Kleve: The Reichswald
  2. ↑ see photo of the marker with the inscription "95 m"
  3. ↑ lokalkompass .de: The crowning of the hilltops in the Reichswald is affected
  4. ↑ Topographical Information Management, Cologne District Government, Department GEObasis NRW ( Notes )
  5. ↑ Nature reserve "KLE-042 Quellen am Stoppelberg" in the specialist information system of the State Office for Nature, Environment and Consumer Protection in North Rhine-Westphalia
  6. ↑ a b nature reserve "KLE-043 Geldenberg" in the specialist information system of the State Office for Nature, Environment and Consumer Protection in North Rhine-Westphalia
  7. ↑ Natura 2000 area DE-4202-302 in the specialist information system of the State Office for Nature, Environment and Consumer Protection in North Rhine-Westphalia
  8. ↑ cf. NWZ 13: Rehso (h) l and NWZ 14: Geldenberg
  9. ^ NRZ (January 20, 2015): The only emperor from the Lower Rhine
  10. ↑ Robert Scholten; in: On the history of the city of Kleve , 1905 Cleve, p. [530] 504. Online version
  11. ↑ Robert Scholten; in: On the history of the city of Kleve , 1905 Cleve, p. [531] 505. Online version
  12. ^ Theodor Joseph Lacomblet, in: Document book for the history of the Lower Rhine or the Archbishopric of Cöln, Certificate 256 , 1853, Part 3, 1301–1400, p. [226] 206.
  13. ^ A b Bert Thissen, in: Office of the Forest Count in the Reichswald , 2001, Geldern, The Golden Age of the Duchy of Geldern, Part 2, Verlag des Historisches Verein für Geldern und Umgebung, p. 66/67.
  14. ↑ B. Huyskens, in: The birthplace of Emperor Otto III. , 1879, Annalen des Historisches Verein für den Niederrhein, Issue 33, p. [79] 73. Online version
  15. ↑ Robert Scholten; in: On the history of the city of Kleve , 1905 Cleve, p. [534/535] 508/509. Online version
  16. ↑ Robert Scholten; in: On the history of the city of Kleve , 1905 Cleve, p. [528] 502. Online version

Coordinates: 51 ° 45 '  N , 6 ° 3'  E