Michaelsberg (Gundelsheim)
The Michaelsberg is an elevation near Gundelsheim in the Heilbronn district in northern Baden-Württemberg . Its agriculturally used plateau is up to around 100 meters above the Neckar valley, with the historic Michael’s Chapel at its highest point . On the mountain edges down into the Neckar valley , old stone terraces built for viticulture are lined up one above the other , giving the mountain its special character. To the south-east and just beyond a bordering brook valley section is about 70 m below the chapel, Horneck Castle , behind which the first houses of the town of Gundelsheim adjoin.
geography
The 240 meter high Michaelsberg is located northwest of Gundelsheim on the right bank of the Neckar . Shortly before it enters the Odenwald, the Neckar flows around the mountain in a not quite 2 km sweeping loop to the west and around Böttingen at its western slope foot . The course of the Neckar in the area around Gundelsheim and the neighboring Haßmersheim downstream has often changed since the Ice Ages, as can be seen from the remains of old valley meanders. The city of Gundelsheim has developed in an eastern loop long abandoned by the river. The changeable course of the Neckar has shaped the slopes of the Michaelsberg to the south, north-west and west. East of the mountain, the Anbach , which flows mostly southwards, most recently between the mountain peak and Horneck Castle, is steeply dug in for half a kilometer to the southwest , which means that the contour of the mountain on the map shows something like a teardrop ; literature also compares it to a "tied up bag". Together with the Böttinger Neckarschleife, the Michaelsberg has been designated as a 176 hectare landscape protection area since 1976 . Particularly protected as a natural monument since 1986 are the hedge-lined, species-rich poor meadows on the southern edge of the plateau, in particular the one-hectare Michaelsberg steppe heather . Individual protection also exists for several dry stone walls , stone bars and hedges .
history
Groups of people from the Mesolithic - around 8,000 to 10,000 years ago - can be traced on the Michaelsberg, in the 6th millennium BC. In the 4th century BC, farmers of the band ceramic culture practiced agriculture there on the plateau and in the 4th millennium, especially the northern side of the mountain was more densely populated during the Neolithic Age. Traces of the Michelsberg culture (named after the Michaelsberg of the same name near Bruchsal) have been found from this time . In the Urnfield period as well as in the Hallstatt period , the mountain was probably predominantly settled in the west, towards Böttingen . There are only vague indications of settlement during Roman times , for example the Roman consecration stone on the south portal of St. Michael's Chapel. In post-Roman times the fertile Neckar valley at the foot of the mountain was populated very early; the towns of Böttingen and Gundelsheim (or its original settlement Gundolfesheim ), which were close to him, were already mentioned in the second half of the 8th century. The Michaelskapelle on the Michaelsberg is one of the earliest-mentioned churches in the Neckar area, their patron Michael gave the mountain his name. There is a cemetery by the chapel where the Böttingers buried their dead, as they did centuries ago.
use
The plateau of the mountain served as forest pasture for cattle, sheep and pigs from an early age, and because of the browsing, the original forest suffered and declined. The sunny slopes of Michaelsberg, especially the steep slopes to the south and west, have been used for growing wine since the Middle Ages . The more shady slopes to the north and east are predominantly forested today, but also show traces of stone terraces and, despite their less favorable location, were once vineyards. The terraces were laid out in the 11th century at the latest, when viticulture in the Neckar valley increased significantly. On the steep slope to the west, the Gewann Himmelreich , the terrace steps reach a height of up to eight meters; in the Oberamt description of 1881 it is described as the best vineyard in the Oberamt Neckarsulm . As early as the early 19th century, labor-intensive viticulture on the slopes after Haßmersheim was abandoned, i.e. on the steepest locations; other unfavorable locations were managed well into the 20th century before they were afforested or allowed to be overgrown and managed .
Next to the chapel are some agricultural properties that together make up the Michaelsberg residential area . The Greiss family of vineyards was awarded the cultural landscape prize of the Swabian Heimatbund in 2000 for the maintenance of the historic vineyards and the reconstruction of the dilapidated vineyard cottage from 1839 . The NABU local group in Bad Friedrichshall and Michael Schäfer, a farmer who lives on Michaelsberg , received the same award in 2006 for maintaining the cultural landscape on Michaelsberg.
nature
The landscape of the Michaelsberg is determined by meadows , orchards , pastures , fields , vineyards , hedges and forest groves . This diversity of cultural landscape habitats enables an incomparably greater biodiversity than the primeval beech vegetation offered.
The low rainfall and the only thin layer of soil above the shell limestone favor poor meadows with plants such as the upright trespe , the spring cinquefoil , the spring sedge , the wire-haired violet , the medicinal thyme or the small beaver mole . The thyme silk found here is exceptionally rare and is found nowhere else in the area. A large number of the otherwise rare field man's litter lives on the edges of the rough meadows.
In the hedges on the Michaelsberg grow wine rose , hazel , blackthorn , hawthorn , barberry , honeysuckle , buckthorn and spindle tree . They are cut regularly so that they are not overgrown and eventually displaced by trees growing inside them.
The groves on Michaelsberg are designed as Hudewälder , as they are grazed by cattle, which creates the characteristic feeding edge on the branches of the pedunculate oak.
The dry stone walls and stone bars of the Michaelsberg are a living space with a very special character. Their stones mostly consist of the shell limestone that is found under the ground cover , they were probably broken on site. White and spicy stonecrop , round leek , pigeon trespe and natterkopf grow here . The knotty glass herb colonizes the stone bars at the foot of the mountain, in southwest Germany it occurs almost only in the warm lower Neckar valley. The rare hair pillow moss can be found on the cemetery wall around the Michael's Chapel .
The vineyards have been the location of bulb plants since time immemorial, because they can withstand constant tillage better than other types of plants. Because the steep slopes of the vineyards only permit machining to a very limited extent, some vineyard plants that have already disappeared elsewhere have been able to survive here, including the Acker-Gelbstern and the round leek . Other rare vineyard flora include woad and rock carnation . From vielstengligem smock , Exceptional ragwort , Red Dead-nettle , Euphorbia Helioscopia , the ordinary dandelion , Persian speedwell , Kompasslattich and fine blasting -Aster exist larger stocks here.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Christoph Morrissey, Wolf-Dieter Riexinger: The Michaelsberg near Gundelsheim. Verlag Regionalkultur, Ubstadt-Weiher 2007, pp. 39–42.
- ^ The winners of the 2006 cultural landscape award on schwaebischer-heimatbund.de
literature
- Christoph Morrissey, Dieter Müller: Wall systems in the city and district of Heilbronn . Konrad Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 2006 (Atlas of archaeological terrain monuments in Baden-Württemberg. Volume 2, Prehistoric and early historical fortifications, Issue 17)
- Christoph Morrissey, Wolf-Dieter Riexinger: The Michaelsberg near Gundelsheim. Verlag Regionalkultur, Ubstadt-Weiher 2007, ISBN 978-3-89735-491-3 ( Nature Conservation Spectrum. Areas . 28)
Coordinates: 49 ° 17 ′ 34 ″ N , 9 ° 9 ′ 15 ″ E