Kupferstrasse
The Kupferstrasse was an important pilgrimage and trade route in north-south direction in Germany until the 18th century .
The copper route began in Jutland , then led via Magdeburg , Erfurt , Coburg and Nuremberg to Rome . Nuremberg merchants brought their goods on this street to Erfurt, one of the most important trading cities in the heart of Germany at the time. Many pilgrims also went along it to the Holy City .
However, when Leipzig flourished in the 13th century , other routes such as the one via Coburg-Neustadt-Sonneberg were used, so that it slowly lost its importance.
With the lively copper trade that began in the 14th century, however, the trade route once again gained great importance. Merchants from Nuremberg and Frankfurt had their raw copper transported to Bamberg from Eisleben and Mansfeld via Erfurt, Arnstadt , Ilmenau , Frauenwald or Gräfinau , Heubach , Eisfeld , Lange Berge , Oberlauter and Coburg . It was forwarded to Nuremberg by land , but to Frankfurt am Main it was transferred to barges because of the cheaper freight . In the copper hammers and coppersmiths , the copper was processed into all kinds of devices such as kettles, jugs, bowls, plates, jugs and others
At the end of the 15th century, Nuremberg merchants came up with the idea of smelting the raw copper there where the abundant wood and charcoal could be bought cheaply, namely in the Thuringian Forest . That is why they built smelting works in several places along the Kupferstrasse in Thuringia in order to extract copper cheaply.
The importance of the Kupferstrasse only declined during the 18th century.
literature
- Bernd Bahn: The Kupferstrasse. Geographical-prehistoric investigation of its course in Thuringia (= contributions to old ways research . Volume 2 ). Beier & Beran, Langenweißbach 2016, ISBN 978-3-95741-047-4 ( (content and foreword) [PDF; accessed on October 19, 2016]).
Web links
- The Kupferstrasse
- The Kupferstraße (section) in the northern Weimarer Land (Altkreis Apolda), in www.via-regia.org