Live long
Langeleben is a historical place at 260 m above sea level. NHN in the northern part of the Elm ridge in Lower Saxony and today belongs to the city of Königslutter am Elm .
description
At Langeleben, three streets cross the Elm. There used to be a medieval moated castle , a hunting lodge and a hamlet of the same name, Langeleben Castle . The once most important settlement on the wooded Elm with an average of 80 inhabitants is now an approximately 50 hectare forest clearing on which the former forester's house, home facilities and a cemetery for burials under trees exist.
The former castle is still there as a ruin, while the former settlement and the former hunting lodge of the dukes of the Principality of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel from the 18th century no longer exist. Although the Schierpkebach rises in the spring house belonging to the garden of the hunting lodge , the drinking water tank in Langeleben draws its water from Lelm and supplies Langeleben and Tetzelstein .
history
middle Ages
The place Langeleben was first mentioned in 1160 as Langelage , which was a forester's farm. The ending -la (g) h indicates the location in a forest. A castle located there was mentioned in 1258. Langeleghe as a settlement (villa) was first attested as 1328, which around 1400 even had a pastor. The ending -leben is formed analogously to the neighboring places like Sambleben and Ampleben . Langeleben was the largest settlement on the Elm, which was due to the good water supply from the source of the Schierpkebach. During the 13th to 15th centuries, documents mention a knight family from Langeleben. The Brunswick dukes, as feudal lords, also gave the castle to the Counts of Asseburg at this time .
Rebuilding
In 1555 Heinrich von Asseburg ceded the castle and the Langeleben settlement to Heinrich von Veltheim on Destedt . At the time, the living space was in serious disrepair. It is reported that the castle was "roofless and subjectless" and the surrounding barns and cattle houses had "fallen down". The new owner rebuilt the castle and the farm buildings. In 1609 the complex was restored, which now had more economic than military importance. The new buildings (barns, bakery and brewery , gate house , summer house) stood north of the castle in a square courtyard. In 1605 there was already an impressive herd of 14 horses, 54 cattle, 83 pigs and around 200 sheep. Several ponds were used for fish farming. In 1575 the residents around the settlement had 14 hooves of 30 acres of arable land each on the Elm, which is now covered with forest.
Destruction and hunting lodge
In the Thirty Years War in 1626 the castle and settlement were destroyed by fire in connection with the siege of Wolfenbüttel . In 1661 the Brunswick Duke Anton Ulrich took over the ruins of Langeleben. He considered the place to be an ancient ducal property and wanted to take it for himself so that another landlord could not disturb him while hunting in the Elm. Only remains of the wall and a cattle shed were left. The Duke did not use the area, but had trees planted on it. After his death, his son, Hereditary Prince August Wilhelm , inherited Langeleben. As a passionate hunter, he had a hunting and pleasure palace built here from 1689 .
The construction is attributed to Hermann Korb . This was a two-story half-timbered building with a protruding central building. The building had a floor space of 38 × 18 m. Further buildings were built around the castle, including a dairy (1699), a barn (1700), a cavalier's house (1702) and a forge (1707). In 1731 a 75 × 40 m pleasure garden was laid out behind the castle . The spring of the Schierpkebach, which rises next to the castle, was framed in 1705 with a spring house made of Elm limestone . A stud that owned up to 140 horses was of great importance . The Feldmark von Langeleben was initially surrounded by a fence and from 1731 with a six-kilometer hedge.
Ducal castle life
In the 18th century, the dukes of Brunswick spent not only a few days hunting, but weeks and months on a long life. Due to the close ties between the Brunswick and Prussian rulers, the Prussian kings Friedrich Wilhelm I and Friedrich the Great were also guests. The ducal court at Langeleben, who was always present, was quite small for the time and only comprised around 15 people. The castle served as the starting point for large, stately hunts in the Elm.
Another decay
In the middle of the 18th century, it began to decline again. The stud was relocated to Braunschweig in 1754 and forest worker families were accommodated in the empty horse stables. In 1799 the castle was the home of the forester and later an oilcloth factory. In 1830 the neglected castle and some outbuildings were sold to a brick manufacturer for around 3,000 thalers , who demolished the buildings. In 1846 the forest administration began to reforest the former arable land of the settlement. The number of residents in the remaining houses was around 115 at that time.
20th century
The municipality of Langeleben was dissolved on April 1, 1936, because it was no longer viable and the remaining residents of a remaining forest restaurant and the children's home belonged to Lelm (today Königslutter am Elm ), three kilometers further east . In that year the last forest workers' houses were demolished and their residents had already been relocated to Königslutter in 1935.
Elm-Autostraße was built from 1935 to 1937; Langeleben thus also has a direct road connection to Schöningen. Previously there were direct road connections only to Königslutter, Lelm and Tetzelstein.
A tragic incident occurred in the last days of the Second World War . One day before the occupation by the Allies, American low- flying aircraft attacked Langeleben on April 11, 1945 . They destroyed the building of a forest restaurant and killed 53 people in the attack, which lasted only a few minutes. These included 35 children between the ages of four and six and two helpers from the children's convalescent home. The children had been evacuated from the large orphanage in Braunschweig in order to protect them from bomb attacks in the Elm.
The civilians in Langeleben got caught in the military fighting in the Elm between advancing American units and withdrawing Wehrmacht units. The day before, the Braunschweig police force had gone to the Elm. It was also attacked by bombers and artillery fire.
The civilian victims of April 11th were buried in Langeleben. In 1953 a memorial was established there.
Castle ruins
Remains of the medieval moated castle , which was destroyed in 1626 , still exist in the form of the gable end of a 12 m high building made of 1.5 m thick masonry. The shrinkage of the building mass is related to the construction of the nearby hunting lodge from 1689. 700 Fuder (equivalent to about 600 cubic meters) stones were removed from the castle ruins . Around 1600, a church is said to have been set up in the stone building, the ruins of which are still there today. Two bells are said to have hung in the tower. Today, the entire complex of the former castle can still be clearly recognized through the preserved moat with pond and outer wall. The settlement that belonged to it at that time can no longer be located.
Home furnishings
In 1926, the Helmstedt district in Langeleben built a children's rest home for children and young people from the Helmstedt district in need of relaxation. From 1938 the building was called Dietrich-Klagges -Heim. After the Second World War it was temporarily typhoid station and then TBC -Home before 1949 resumed operation as Kindererholungsheim. The building has been used as a private retirement home since the 1980s.
On July 1, 1951, the Falkenheim for youth recreation was opened in Langeleben ; construction began as early as 1948 on the foundations of the forestry that was destroyed by the air raid in April 1945. The Falkenheim was later considerably expanded, including the neighboring country school home of the Uelzen Middle School. For economic reasons, the home closed around 2011, after which the guest house “La Libero” was located in the building until 2012, and in the meantime also the “Waldhaus Langeleben”.
In 1959, to the west of the Falkenheim, the rural school home of the Uelzen Middle School was built, and the building was taken over by the Falkenheim around the 1970s.
British wiretapping system
After the Second World War, the British occupying forces soon set up a radio monitoring station in Langeleben . The initially mobile facility was built in 1951 as a camp for nine soldiers from the "101st Wireless Troop". From up here, the radio traffic could be intercepted by military units of the Warsaw Pact , which were already a few kilometers further east in what was then the GDR . In particular, the radio reconnaissance was aimed at the large-scale military training area in the Colbitz-Letzlinger Heide , where the Soviet Army was exercising. From this area the British feared a surprise attack from a maneuver. In 1955 the British radio unit received wooden barracks, and permanent barracks were built around 1963. The military facility was officially named "Anderson Barracks" after a commander of the British Army of the Rhine . The following British radio units were stationed in the military facility, to which members of the "Intelligence Corps" were permanently assigned:
| year | unit |
|---|---|
| 1951-1959 | 101st Wireless Troop |
| 1959 | Renaming of the “101st Wireless Troop” to “13. Signals Regiment " |
| 1959-1967 | 13th Signals Regiment |
| 1967-1977 | 225th Signal Squadron |
| 1977-1992 | 14th Signal Regiment EW (English Electronic Warfare, German Electronic Warfare ) |
The turning point in 1989 and the imminent reunification of Germany made the facility superfluous. It closed at the end of November 1992 and then fell victim to vandalism . After demolition work in 2008, there are no more buildings to be found on the site. Only the concrete floor slabs and the access roads made of concrete composite paving are reminiscent of the former listening post. The site is no longer surrounded by a fence, it is freely accessible and nature is reclaiming the former military area.
On June 13, 2009, a memorial stone was ceremoniously inaugurated near the former British military facility. The stone was made by the English stonemason Paul Ellis. He was also involved in stone carving at Lincoln Cathedral and is the son of a British radio operator who was stationed in Langeleben. The memorial stone was financed by the "Langeleben Reunion Association", an association founded in 1992 for former soldiers of the Royal Signals and Intelligence Corps who were stationed here.
Friedwald burial place
Since 2005 the forest surrounding Langeleben has been used as a cemetery for burials. The ashes are given to the roots of a marked tree that has been previously determined with a forester. The tree acts as a grave and memorial. The resting place is protected for 99 years. The care of the grave is left to nature.
More Elm castles
On the wooded ridge of the Elm, other medieval castle locations have been identified in various places :
- The Reitling fortifications as prehistoric ring walls in the Reitlingstal . As a plateau inside the "Krimmelburg" there is a medieval castle site
- The Elmsburg was from the 11th century a medieval castle surrounded by a prehistoric ring wall . Their remains are in the Schöninger Forest at about 270 m above the town of Twieflingen .
- Warburg Castle was a high-medieval hilltop castle of a noble family on the eastern slope of the Elm. According to tradition, it was stormed and violently destroyed in 1200, which is confirmed by archaeological research in the 1960s.
- Moated castle of the Teutonic Order on the Great Pond in Reitlingstal, later Vorwerk , no remains, today pasture and farm.
literature
- Heinrich Medefind: 800 years of long life in the 2013 district book of the Helmstedt district, Helmstedt, 2012
- Nature adventure trail "Elfenpfad Langeleben" . Open-air and adventure museum Ostfalen (FEMO) , ISBN 3-933380-10-3 , Königslutter 2002
- Jörg Günsch: Death came from the air - tragic end of the war in Langeleben in the end of the war in the Helmstedt district - April 1945 , Helmstedt 2012, pp. 34–59
- Hans-Adolf Schultz : Burgen und Schlösser des Braunschweiger Land , Braunschweig 1980, Burg und Schloß Langeleben , pp. 57–61.
- Reinhard Bein: Narrative time. Reports and postcards from the city and country of Braunschweig 1933–1945 , Braunschweig 1993, p. 93: Pictures from the Dietrich-Klagges-Heim in Langeleben
Web links
- Entry by Sandy Bieler on Langeleben in the scientific database " EBIDAT " of the European Castle Institute
- Aerial photo of Langeleben still with a military installation
- Long life description with photos
- Elfenpfad at femo-online as of November 20, 2014
- History and photos of the British listening post Langeleben at geschichtsspuren.de (formerly lostplaces.de)
- The Langeleben Reunion Branch Royal Signals Association (English, comrade side of the stationed soldiers of the British listening post)
- Reconstruction drawing of Wolfgang Braun's hunting lodge
- Creation of the Falkenheim
Individual evidence
- ↑ Police in the rearview mirror. The history of the Braunschweig Police Department, Volker Dowidat, Braunschweig, 2003
- ^ Photo of Paul Ellis with the finished stone
- ↑ Prince Charles and Paul Ellis ( Memento from September 29, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Details on planning and execution as well as on the stone mason
Coordinates: 52 ° 12 ′ 32 ″ N , 10 ° 48 ′ 50 ″ E