Leuscheider country

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The area around the church village Leuscheid and the mountain ridge Leuscheid is called Leuscheider Land by the residents of the surrounding hamlets and farms .

The Leuscheid ridge

Leuscheid is the name of a 300 to 350 meter high mountain ridge in the low mountain range of the Bergisches Land nature park in the south of North Rhine-Westphalia , which is located on the southern (left) side of the middle Sieg and its highest elevation is 388 m above sea level. N. is. The old name "Livenskeit" (Leutescheide) could indicate that a tribal and people border used to run along this ridge. Today the Irserbach, whichruns on the western side of the ridge, forms the border between the federal states of Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia, and this is where the language border between Moselle-Franconian and Ripuarian dialect runs.

Opposite the Leuscheid is the Nutscheid and Waldbröl on the northern (right) side of the Sieg. From the flanks of the two mountain ridges, the numerous watercourses in strongly winding river loops with circulating mountains and cross bars have washed out hose valleys and floodplains. There are old beech stands in the wooded northern part of the Leuscheid. The original mixed forests of oak, hornbeam, birch and pine trees on the other, non-agricultural areas have been displaced in the last hundred years by spruce conservation. The flat, clay-covered mountain slopes in the northern part of the ridge, called Hahn, and the terraces on the flanks, are called Bitze ​​when they are used for agriculture and were formerly used as arable land. Today these areas are only used temporarily as dries or permanently as grass and pastureland. The rocky hilltops and slopes, which were not suitable for arable farming, used to be predominantly covered with mixed forest in which the natural oak stands predominated. When the oak shoots reached a trunk diameter of ten to fifteen centimeters after twenty to twenty-five years, the bark was peeled off from them in spring. Dried on the spot, it was tied in large bundles and sold as tan to the tanneries . The buckthorn poles were also felled in the forest at the beginning of May. The bark was tapped off with a mallet and the tan was dried at home. The bundles were bought up by the powder mills , several of which were located on the brooks in the wider area, and processed into black powder there .

The church village of Leuscheid

The place Leuscheid was first mentioned in a document from 1131. The Leuscheid Church, built from yellow sandstone on the northern foothills of the Leuscheid ridge, belonged to the Cassius monastery in Bonn and, as a fortified church, offered the residents of the neighboring settlements protection from the frequent border disputes over this border area between Märkisches Land and Westerwald . The bailiwick of Leuscheid passed from the property of the Cassius Stift in Bonn to the Counts of Sayn , who had to cede their property to the Duke of Jülich in 1477 after long border disputes . In 1607 Leuscheid fell to the Duke of Berg . Although the residents of the Leuscheider parish had already joined Protestantism in 1565 , Leuscheid was occupied by the Swedish troops in 1632/1633 and 1645–1648 . The Swedes made the church their horse stable. The few Catholics had built a chapel for themselves in 1717 and have had a parish church again since 1971. In the wars after the French Revolution , the Leuscheider Land was occupied several times by French troops. After 1806 it belonged to the canton Eitorf as Mairie Leuscheid. After the Wars of Liberation, the Leuscheider Land was merged with Herchen to form the municipality of Herchen in 1810 . When the municipalities of Herchen, Dattenfeld and Rosbach were amalgamated in 1969 when the state of North Rhine-Westphalia was reorganized , they gave themselves the name Großgemeinde Windeck (after the former bailiwick of Windeck), and so the Leuscheider Land is now part of the "Windecker Ländchen".

The Leuscheider Land

The residents of the hamlets and farmsteads around the church village Leuscheid, to which the "Höffe": (as the Leuscheider call the localities) (alphabetically): Alsen, Ehrenhausen (until 1969 Ehrentalsmühle and Dahlhausen), Himmeroth, Irsen, Kocherscheid, Kuchhausen, Leidhecke , Locksiefen, Ohmbach, Röhrigshof, Saal, Sangerhof, Schabernack, Werfen and Werfermühle, feel as "Löschender" (Leuscheider) and the whole area is also called "Leuscheider Land".

Mining and industrialization

There are copper and iron ore veins in the flat mountains between the Westerwald and Bergisches Land. The extensive forests that existed at that time provided the charcoal for their smelting . In the early Middle Ages, the denser settlement of the previously largely deserted low mountain range gave rise to settlements on the flat, clay-covered slopes of the Leuscheider ridge, where small streams and rivulets sprang up. Here, at the beginning of “Soaps”, you were somewhat protected from the rough winds and you could easily dig a well for the water supply for people and cattle. But only a few areas in the mountainous landscape could be used as arable land, and so mining remained the most important source of income for the Leuscheider. Agriculture was only used by the "cow farmers", who could not afford oxen or horses as harnessed animals, as a sideline to supply rye and potatoes, as well as feed for their cattle. Like the first houses in the church village of Leuscheid at the source of the Leuscheider Bach, many other “courtyards” were built in such small valleys. But ore mining was not very productive (the “Silberkuhle” mine near Schabernack was abandoned at the time) and the forests were cleared in the middle of the 19th century. Because of the inadequate employment and nutritional situation, many Leuscheider left their homeland, the young men to the Ruhr area and the women to work as maids in the area around Solingen . Many emigrated to North America and Brazil at that time too.

Mining would have come to a complete standstill if the Cöln-Mindener Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft had not run its railway line from Cologne in the Siegtal up to Wissen and a year later to Siegen. It was now possible to transport coal from the Ruhr area and ore mining in Siegerland experienced a new boom. Many men hiked daily from Leuscheid to the ironworks in Hamm an der Sieg and in Wissen or continued to work underground in the Eichelhard, Hohen Grete and other mining sites that could be reached on foot (there weren't any bicycles yet.) . On the railway line, in Eitorf , Hennef , Siegburg and Wissen, there were industrial companies that gave work to the numerous children of the Leuscheid smallholders, and in Leuscheid itself a dairy opened for several decades in 1934. This development continued after the Second World War . Smallholder agriculture has almost come to a standstill and there is hardly any arable farming. The few remaining farmers have switched to livestock farming.

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  1. ↑ German Legal Dictionary, Heidelberg University ( Memento of the original dated February 16, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.uniheidelberg.de