Oberwald (Grebenhain)

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Oberwald
Municipality Grebenhain
Coordinates: 50 ° 29 ′ 6 ″  N , 9 ° 18 ′ 40 ″  E
Height : 482 m above sea level NN
Postal code : 36355
Area code : 06644

As Oberwald one is settlement with an industrial area in the district of the district Grebenhain in the same community Grebenhain in Hesse called. The settlement emerged from an air force barracks that existed between 1936 and 1945 . The Oberwald industrial area emerged from the ammunition factory with bunker systems.

geography

The Oberwald settlement or industrial area that emerged after the Second World War is located around one kilometer west of the Grebenhain district, in the area of ​​which it is located. Above to the west are the 733 m high Herchenhainer Höhe and the 729 m high Grebenhainer Berg , below is the settlement area of ​​the Ahlmühle . The name of the settlement refers to the Oberwald , the closed forest area of ​​the Vogelsberg , in the southeastern edge of which it is located.

Close to the settlement lies the headwaters of the Schwarza , which flows as Waaggraben through Grebenhain and then runs via Vaitshain , Nösberts-Weidmoos , Steinfurt to the confluence with the Lüder between Blankenau and Zahmen .

history

The area of ​​Oberwald was already settled in medieval times. A document from 1399 mentions the enfeoffment of Johann von Rodenstein and Lißberg by Landgrave Hermann II of Hesse with the village of Schershagin (Schershain). In the Salbuch of the Hessian office of Nidda from 1556 ten Schershainer goods belonging to Lispergk are mentioned, but the place itself was already a desert at this time . Fields and meadows were cultivated by farmers from Grebenhain and Bermuthshain, who were probably descendants of the former residents of Schershain. The field names Auf dem Schershain , Im Distelrod , Auf den Höferchen , Dorfwiesen , Im Mühlgefäll , Hinter dem Schershain and Im Tottenloch still refer to the former village . Finds also indicate that the pottery trade was practiced in Schershain .

Until the end of the 19th century, the Ahlmühlen remained the only settlement areas in the area of ​​today's Oberwald settlement. Originally there were up to five overshot powered watermills : the upper Ahlmühle , the middle Ahlmühle , the lower Ahlmühle , the Schäfermühle and the Katzenmühle . The last two mills mentioned were destroyed by fires in 1930 and 1937 and not rebuilt. The Ahlmühlen were separated from the village of Grebenhain by an artificially dammed fish pond , first mentioned in 1429 as see zu Grebenhayn . The pond, which was controversial between Hesse and the Riedeseln until 1569 , was drained in 1789 and the area was then used for agriculture.

In 1893 a hunting lodge was built on the edge of the Oberwald above the Ahlmühlen. In 1904 the retired Frankfurt police chief Wilhelm Freiherr von Müffling called Weiss bought the hunting lodge along with several pieces of land in order to build a retirement home there, the so-called forest villa . Around the same time, the branch line between Grebenhain and Gedern (→ Vogelsbergbahn ), which opened on April 1, 1906, was built. The Oberwald stop was set up around 700 m west of the forest villa and was primarily used as a timber loading station.

The actual history of today's Oberwald settlement began in 1936 during the National Socialist era with the decision of the Reich Aviation Ministry to build an ammunition plant ( Muna ) between Grebenhain and Hartmannshain . The official name of the secret military facility was Hartmannshain Air Ammunition Plant , after the Hartmannshain community located 2 km to the west .

→ Main article: Hartmannshain air ammunition plant

Former building of the munitions plant

At the end of March 1945 the Muna bunkers and the ammunition stored in them were blown up by the retreating German Wehrmacht , which contaminated an area of ​​450 hectares with ammunition and parts of ammunition. In 1991, the systematic demunition of the site began, which was completed in autumn 2013.

The Muna buildings that have been preserved were initially used from 1946 by Sudeten German expellees from Gablonz and Karlsbad for the production of glassware (→ Gablonzer Industry ). Further industrial settlements followed, partly funded by the newly founded state of Hesse and the district of Lauterbach . The company owners and a large part of the employees came either from the eastern German territories until 1945 or from the Soviet occupation zone . Some of them lived in the houses in the former residential and administrative area of ​​the ammunition plant. Under the place name Oberwald , which has been valid since 1945 , the former Muna became a typical displaced population .

Earlier also using Muna halls was established in 1957, a summer camp of the West Berlin borough Reinickendorf , that after the reunification of Germany for leisure and accommodation establishment "on the shear Hain" was converted.

Another testimony to the Cold War in the Oberwald district is the NATO supply depot, the Forward Storage Site Grebenhain . It was built between 1978 and 1982 on the site of the former Muna and consisted of several storage halls, a helipad , a tank farm with six large fuel tanks and a total of 27 underground bunkers for storing conventional ammunition. Due to the change in the global political situation, the colloquially so-called NATO camp was cleared again by the American army in 1990 and 1991. It has been owned by the municipality of Grebenhain since 2000, which mainly rents out the buildings as storage space for local companies and private individuals.

Today the Oberwald settlement has a total of around 200 to 300 inhabitants, although an exact number cannot be given because Oberwald is not statistically recorded as a separate district, but always together with Grebenhain.

Economy and Infrastructure

Today, Oberwald is, on the one hand, a quiet residential area in the core village of Grebenhain, and, on the other hand, it is the oldest and most important industrial area in the municipality. At some distance from the former Munasiedlung, a weekend area was already designated in the early 1960s , which has now developed into a general residential area. A further residential area was developed and developed from 1972 below the Munasiedlung in the area of ​​the Ahlmühlen.

The former residential and administrative buildings of the Muna, which have been preserved as an ensemble to this day, became the property of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949 and some of them were initially used as a rest home for federal officials. In 1972 the Kurhotel Oberwald was built in their neighborhood , the building of which was transferred to the Oberwaldklinik the following year . Today it belongs to the Helios Kliniken Group as a specialist clinic for angiopathy and rectal diseases .

The industrial operations in the Oberwald district were always some distance from the residential areas, due to the safety distance between the residential and administrative buildings and the ammunition workhouses, which was prescribed at the time of the ammunition plant. Until the 1960s, was out Spremberg in the Lower Lausitz native cloth factory Carl Müller the most important local companies. In 1966 the packaging company Gustav Stabernack GmbH (since 1998 STI Group ) acquired the building. Within the STI group of companies, STI Grebenhain Display + Verpackung GmbH manufactures displays at the Grebenhain-Oberwald location.

Both the Oberwaldklinik and the STI display plant are the most important employers in the large community of Grebenhain today, each with around 140 and 330 employees.

traffic

Despite its quiet location, Oberwald has a direct connection to the federal highway 275 . The company Stabernack used until 1989 nor a siding , which at the bus stop Oberwald from Oberwald railway branched off and 1997 along with the rest of the railway line to Lauterbach (Hess) was dismantled.

literature

  • Berthold Pletsch: The influence of the state road and the Vogelsbergbahn on the structural development of the village Grebenhain in the 19th and early 20th centuries . Lauterbach 1992.
  • Carsten Eigner: "Muna in the forest, we'll find you soon!" The air ammunition plant Hartmannshain (Muna) near Grebenhain in Vogelsberg from 1936 to 1945 and the Muna site from 1946 to today . Ed .: Förderverein MUNA-Museum Grebenhain e. V. Grebenhain 2018, ISBN 978-3-00-059616-2 .

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