Roman settlement Tegelberg

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View of the Tegelberg. In the middle of the picture you can see the aisle of the cable car in the mountain forest, at the foot of which the settlement was located.
The Lech-Füssen area in Roman times.
Section through an ideal reconstruction of the thermal bath

The Roman settlement Tegelberg is an ancient settlement on the Tegelberg from the 2nd century AD , not far from Neuschwanstein Castle near Schwangau in the Ostallgäu district , Bavaria . As the most important ancient legacy, extensive remains of the former painting of the bath were recovered. The valuable frescos in the frigidarium (Kaltbad) have been restored and have been an attraction in the Munich State Archaeological Collection ever since .

location

The Roman settlement on the Tegelberg, also interpreted in many publications as a particularly extensive villa rustica (Roman manor), lay in the area of ​​today's Tegelbergbahn at the foot of the northeastern direction, initially gently, then increasingly steeply rising, 1164 meter high Hornburg , which leads to the Ammergau Alps heard. The 1881 meter high Tegelberg lies to the southeast. Hornburg and Tegelberg are divided by the Rautbach , which flows south of the ancient settlement into the Lußbach , which is initially oriented to the north . In ancient times, this fed the Bannwaldsee . The Forggensee, which is also supplied with Lußbacher water today via the Mühlberger Ach, is a product of modern times and was dammed up as a reservoir from 1952. The largely unexplored Roman settlement of Foetes ( Füssen ) was located in the southwest of the Tegelberg . On the castle hill there, which is now occupied by the Gothic High Castle , a fort was built in late antiquity for a vexillation of the Legio III Italica , which secured the Via Claudia Augusta from Verona to Augsburg at this important point . The Roman houses on the Tegelberg were built on numerous terraces and podiums of the gently sloping Hornburg slope.

The Füssen region was rural populated in ancient times. In today's Forggensee there was a Roman burnt offering place at its northern end, and some Roman manors are known in the area. For example, on the former route from Brunnen to Forggen , which also disappeared in the floods of the lake, such a system was flushed out in 1974 with cremation graves near the shore. It was suspected that a solid road embankment, which is still clearly recognizable, could be a forgotten Roman road that perhaps established a connection from the Roman settlement on Tegelberg to Via Claudia Augusta and its trading station at Osterreinen . A large number of slag finds in the greater Füssen area suggest that ore mining was of greater importance in Roman times. The people were apparently primarily attracted by the ore on the Tegelberg, as the chosen area has no other residential advantages. The climatic conditions are problematic , as the head excavator and former state curator Günther Krahe emphasized from 1966 . Especially in winter, the sun only illuminates the area for a few hours in the afternoon.

Research history

Hans Popp first became aware of the remains of Roman buildings in 1934 through the construction of a water pipe for the community of Schwangau. In the corridor Im Winkel , between the Pöllat torrent and the Rautbach flowing into it, he was able to pick Roman bricks from the excavation. In the following year, 1935, Popp had search cuts created, where he came across ancient foundations. His investigations showed foundations or at least brick rubble in 15 different places. A building floor plan, which he called Object 2 (farm building; today: House 1), has been completely excavated. Wolfgang Czysz , Krahe's successor as head of the Swabian archaeological branch, confirmed Popp's investigations that there are other ancient buildings in the area around the Tegelbergbahn.

On June 21, 1966, when the Tegelbergbahn valley station was being built, an excavator stumbled across remains of ancient walls and painted fragments of plaster. The Schwangau home nurse Hermann Pfeiffer had the report forwarded to Krahe, who, with the help of the authorities, obtained a construction freeze. Under the supervision of the Augsburg branch for prehistory and early history of the State Monuments Office, House 2 (residential building ) was uncovered during the subsequent rescue excavation in 1966 and House 3 ( thermal baths ) from 1967 to 1968 . Since House 2 was sacrificed for the construction of the Tegelbergbahn, the exceptionally good condition of the findings could be documented for the public, at least on the bathing building.

In the course of the construction of a summer toboggan run, archaeologists visited the area again in 1996 and in 1998 were able to secure house 1, the commercial building already examined by Popp with its inner courtyard and three kilns . In 1996, the municipality of Schwangau decided to cover the bathing complex, which was exposed to environmental influences, with a shelter. Access is free.

Krahe could well imagine that the three remains of a building that had been excavated so far could have belonged to a villa rustica run by wealthy owners, but in his opinion the other known sites pointed to a much more extensive built-up area than similar manors had.

Findings

The floor plans of House 2 and 3 with Günther Krahe's interpretation of the rooms. In a recent publication, Wolfgang Czysz suggested a different use of space in the bathroom.
Detail of the well-preserved hot water tub in the bathroom, as it was in 2015

The around the middle of the second century. Constructed building n. Chr on Tegelberg are still in the ancient part of a dialed Mure with rubble rubble was covered and clay, which at least reconstructed in sections on full at the bath house for a very good state of preservation Frescoes. Wall paintings, including a pheasant, could also be recovered in full freshness from an almost square house (House 2) located a little west of the small thermal baths, which was partially heated. However, this house was finally destroyed by the construction of the cable car valley station. Research disagrees on the interpretation of the entire building stock; In addition to a settlement, a particularly extensive Villa Rustica was suspected, which could have taken care of ore mining . In the 3rd century, the area was either abandoned in the course of the partial destruction caused by the debris flow or was only lost in one of the Germanic attacks that took place at the end of this century . Ore mining took place on the Tegelberg until the Middle Ages.

Residential building (house 2)

House 2, around 15 × 15 meters in size, discovered during the construction of the cable car in June 1966 and then excavated under the direction of the Augsburg State Office for Monument Preservation, has been interpreted as a residential building. The building was enclosed on three sides, in the east, north and, for the most part, in the west by an approximately 2.5 meter wide walkway, which obviously has to be addressed as a portico . Entrances to this passage were on the southeast corner and particularly prominent in the middle of the northern front. Near the south-west corner of the house, the portico opens into a hypocausted room built over the right angle of the south-west corner. This was followed by the approximately 2 × 2.5 meter large praefurnium and a 2 × 4 meter non-heatable room with an entrance from the eastern portico. The largest room in the house, which can also be heated, was around 4 × 8.5 meters and its long side followed the inner wall of the western walk-around area. To the east of this room there were two unheatable rooms of almost the same size, both of which had access from the portico. The large number of preserved remains of wall paintings from this house has its origin in the ancient covering of the area by mudslides. Some parts of the high-quality restored frescoes are exhibited in the Archaeological State Collection in Munich. House 3, the bathroom, is almost in the same line, only slightly off axis, around 20 meters to the east.

Bath building (house 3)

From 1967 to 68 a bathhouse was uncovered on Tegelberg that does not belong to the series type. The bathing facilities are compact, housed in a building measuring around 12.4 × 13.8 meters without an apse, which is roughly north-south and thus corresponds to the ancient rules. The facility was entered from the north. The entrance portico measuring around 12.5 × 2 meters was located there. To the west of this room, an almost square distributor corridor, which also served as an apodyterion (dressing and undressing area), could be entered from the north . The robbery of Ganymede was found there as a ceiling painting . To the west of the distributor, behind a parapet wall, was the frigidarium, accessible via two steps, only 0.90 meters deep and 2.3 × 2.75 meters large . This could be completely reconstructed with its frescoes in the Archaeological State Collection in Munich. It is therefore known that it had a barrel vault and a small arched window to the west, from which one could see the Füssener Schlossberg. Plastered edges and broken glass panes document the equipment of the frigidarium and the caldarium (warm bath) with arched windows, while the tepidarium (leaf bath ) had rectangular glass windows.

In the east was the largest room, also an almost square caldarium , and in the south was the rectangular tepidarium . The sudatorium (sweat bath), which was equipped with a semicircular apse that protruded from the south rear wall of the building, was connected to the east. A hot water bathtub with boiler followed further east, followed by the praefurnium , the boiler room. This was smashed by a boulder found there, among other things. Since the building was destroyed by the mudslide in ancient times, most of the valuable metal objects such as pipes and water boilers were removed. Some surviving lead drainage pipes, which drained water from the outer wall plastered with red paint, were removed by archaeologists after the excavation to protect them from theft. Only in the caldarium was a well-hidden, 0.90-meter-long pipe left in 1968, which drained surface water until the shelter was built in 1996. Research assumes that the thermal baths were built in the 2nd half of the 2nd century AD. The reason for the assumption was the discovery of a coin from the reign of Emperor Antoninus Pius (138–161 AD).

  • Findings in the bathroom

  • Northern access area with a hypocausted room to the east

  • The praefurnium behind the hot water tub, status 2015

  • View through the southwest room to the hot water tub, status 2015

  • Apse on the south wall of the south-western room, state 2015

  • South wall of the southwest room with partially preserved wall cladding, as it was in 2015

Preservation in situ and partial reconstruction as anastilosis

After the excavations were completed, the building was restored with subsidies from public funds and made accessible to visitors in the area of ​​today's cable car parking lot. The preservation of the archaeological monument is ensured by the sponsorship of the municipality of Schwangau. The partially preserved hypocaust heating in the apodyterium and the bathtub standing on stable hypocaust pillars with their tubules still preserved on the narrow sides had to be protected under tarpaulin due to their good state of preservation during the excavation, as special conservation measures were necessary here. Like most of the structure, they should remain in situ (on-site) accessible to the public. In the past, one of the major difficulties in terms of preservation technology was that the findings, some of which were very susceptible to weathering, could not be covered with a protective structure from the start. Doubters refused this measure, which was the only saving measure for the originality of the building. The reason given was that the cable car gondolas floated directly over the pool. In particular, the TÜV issued massively restrictive requirements. At his behest, for example, the columned entrance area had to be filled in again. As a result, the severe weather conditions on the Tegelberg repeatedly led to a more or less severe loss of substance in the winter months, despite intensive treatment with Duracon and the covering of building remains. As a result, screed and plastered parts constantly freeze and flake off during autumn and winter. The pillar bricks also suffered severe damage as a result of the conditions. In order to ensure the preservation of the valuable findings, some of them were replaced with newly made replacement pieces. It was not until 1996 that the questioners succeeded in preventing the endangered building remains from being finally destroyed. For safety reasons, the Portikus remains filled in.

The local community administration successfully called for donations for the conservation of the remains of the frescoes recovered by excavation technicians and volunteers. The collected lumps of plaster from these wall paintings were transported to Munich in over 700 fruit boxes. During the several years of restoration, it was found that the bathroom had been painted twice, as evidenced by pimple marks in the older plaster. The last layer of plaster visible today is as thin as an eggshell. A medium-dark shade of blue is dominant, the building structure and the partitioning of the walls are mainly emphasized by broad red lines. The areas divided in this way are decorated with geometric patterns, plants, animals, gods and bath attendants. In the form of a partial reconstruction, the frescoes, which are uniquely well-preserved for the Bavarian region, have since been an important part of the Roman department in the State Archaeological Collection as Anastilosis . In addition to the frescoes, the scientists also removed the remaining visible drainage pipes made of lead. This measure did not focus on the preservation problem of masonry exposed defenselessly to the weather, but rather on knowing that historical buildings are particularly at risk of theft and vandalism. During the decades in which the Tegelberger Bad was at the mercy of the forces of nature, however, the last remaining lead drainpipe, which was hidden for visitors, drained surface water from the thermal bath. The only modern disruption that had to be dismantled during the conservation and partial reconstruction concerned the concrete abutment of the material ropeway, which was built before the construction of the current line.

Farm building (house 1)

House 1, a farm building, was identified as a kiln.

As early as 1935, Hans Popp excavated House 1 as the first stone building on Tegelberg. However, it was not until 1998 that the newly exposed foundations of this agricultural complex were preserved. In cooperation with Tegelberg GmbH, the operator of the summer toboggan run planned precisely at this point, the originally planned course of the route could be rescheduled in order to ensure the preservation of the structure. Nevertheless, the farm building is now a bit lost and wedged unhappily, in the middle of the downhill and finish lane of this toboggan run. The entire uncovered complex comprised a rectangular one-room house (VII), the front wall of which abutted a rectangular, walled and open inner courtyard. Next to the house there was a large, barn-like entrance in the middle of the broad side of the courtyard wall, the threshold stone of which had been preserved. The driveway was big enough to bring a car into the structure. In the courtyard were designed on its rear wall in the left (IV) and right corner (I) as well as in the middle (III) each have a kiln , probably installed for the drying of flax. The flooring of the yard consisted of gravel . The height of the combustion chamber at the bottom of the kiln could still be verified.

  • Findings of the kiln

  • View from the south over the farm building, as it was in 2015

  • Original swell stone at the south-western entrance to the kiln, condition 2015

  • View of the northern Darraum, partially damaged by vandalism, as it was in 2015

  • The middle room, state 2015

  • The badly damaged eastern Darraum, condition 2015

Monument protection

The ancient buildings and other structures mentioned here are protected as registered ground monuments in the sense of the Bavarian Monument Protection Act (BayDSchG). Investigations and targeted collection of finds are subject to authorization, accidental finds must be reported to the monument authorities.

literature

  • Wolfgang Czysz : Conservation and presentation of Roman villa buildings at the valley station of the Tegelbergbahn in Schwangau (Bavaria) . In: Gerhard Weber (Hrsg.): Archeology and Marketing. Old and new ways in the presentation of archaeological sites. New media. Contributions to the 3rd Cambodunum Symposium on October 9 and 10, 1998 , Verlag für Heimatpflege, ISBN 3-88019-029-1 , Kempten, 2001, pp. 37-44.
  • Wolfgang Czysz u. a .: Römerbad and toboggan run. Roman buildings at the foot of the Tegelberg near Schwangau (Ostallgäu district, Swabia). The Archaeological Year in Bavaria 1999. S. 59ff.
  • Wolfgang Czysz, Lothar Bakker: The Romans in Bavaria . Theiß, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3806210586 , p. 514.
  • Joachim von Elbe : The Romans in Germany . Travel u. Verkehrsverlag 1977, p. 255.
  • Günther Krahe : The Roman settlement on Tegelberg . In: Wilhelm Liebhart: Schwangau. Village of the royal castles . Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1996, ISBN 3799534350 , pp. 73-90.
  • Günther Krahe: The restoration of the Roman villa at Holheim im Ries and the Roman bathing building near Schwangau im Allgäu . In: Preserved History? Ancient buildings and their preservation . Theiss, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-8062-0450-0 , p. 164 ff.
  • Günther Krahe, Gisela Zahlhaas: Roman wall paintings in Schwangau, district Ostallgäu (=  material booklets on Bavarian prehistory , series A 43), find inventories and excavation findings. Laßleben, Kallmünz 1984, ISBN 3-7847-5043-5 .
  • Günther Krahe, Gisela Zahlhaas : The Roman bath in Schwangau . Laßleben, Kallmünz 1981.
  • Günther Krahe: A Roman settlement on the edge of the Alps near Schwangau. New excavations in Bavaria. In: Problems of the Time. Journal of Science and Culture . Munich 1970, pp. 23-27.
  • Hans Popp: Roman settlement remains in Schwangau. Find and excavation report . In: Yearbook Alt-Füssen . Volume 12, 1936/37, pp. 1-7.
  • Walter Sölter (Ed.): The Roman Germania from the air . 2nd edition, Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1983, ISBN 3-7857-0298-1 , p. 34 ff.

Web links

Commons : Römersiedlung Tegelberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Werner Zanier (Ed.): The late Latène and Roman times fire victims place in Forggensee . Beck, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-406-10752-4 .
  2. ↑ Roland Gschlößl: In the melting pot of religions - exchange of gods among Celts, Romans and Teutons . Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 2006, ISBN 3805336551 , p. 137.
  3. ^ Villa rustica and grave finds northeast of Brunnen in Forggensee, Schwangau . In: Journal of the Historisches Verein Schwaben . Volume 70, Kommissions-Verlag Bücher Seitz, Augsburg 1976, p. 51.
  4. ^ Günther Krahe: The Roman settlement on the Tegelberg . In: Wilhelm Liebhart : Schwangau. Village of the royal castles . Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1996, ISBN 3-7995-3435-0 , pp. 73-90; here: p. 37.
  5. ↑ Günther Krahe: The restoration of the Roman villa at Holheim im Ries and the Roman bathing building near Schwangau im Allgäu . In: Preserved History? Ancient buildings and their preservation . Theiss, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-8062-0450-0 , p. 165.
  6. ^ Günther Krahe: The Roman settlement on the Tegelberg . In: Wilhelm Liebhart : Schwangau. Village of the royal castles . Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1996, ISBN 3-7995-3435-0 , pp. 73-90; here: p. 75.
  7. ↑ a b Wolfgang Czysz : Conservation and presentation of Roman villa buildings at the valley station of the Tegelbergbahn in Schwangau (Bavaria) . In: Gerhard Weber (Hrsg.): Archeology and Marketing. Old and new ways in the presentation of archaeological sites. New media. Contributions to the 3rd Cambodunum Symposium October 9 and 10, 1998 , Verlag für Heimatpflege, ISBN 3-88019-029-1 , Kempten, 2001, pp. 37–44; here: p. 42.
  8. ↑ a b c d Günther Krahe: The Roman settlement on Tegelberg . In: Wilhelm Liebhart : Schwangau. Village of the royal castles . Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1996, ISBN 3-7995-3435-0 , pp. 73-90; here: p. 76.
  9. ^ Günther Krahe in: Walter Sölter (Ed.): The Roman Germania from the air . 2nd Edition. Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1983, ISBN 3-7857-0298-1 , p. 34.
  10. ↑ Messages from the Friends of Bavarian Pre- and Early History . No. 1, January 1976.
  11. ^ A b Wolfgang Czysz, Lothar Bakker: The Romans in Bavaria . Theiss, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3806210586 . P. 514.
  12. ^ Fasti archaeologici . Associazione Internazionale di Archeologia Classica , Sansoni Editore, Florence 1984. p. 1048.
  13. ^ A b Günther Krahe: The restoration of the Roman villa of Holheim im Ries and the Roman bathing building near Schwangau in Allgäu . In: Preserved History? Ancient buildings and their preservation . Theiss, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-8062-0450-0 , pp. 164-170, here p. 167.
  14. ↑ Günther Krahe: The restoration of the Roman villa at Holheim im Ries and the Roman bathing building near Schwangau im Allgäu . In: Preserved History? Ancient buildings and their preservation . Theiss, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-8062-0450-0 , pp. 164-170, here pp. 167-170.
  15. ↑ Wolfgang Czysz : Conservation and presentation of Roman villa buildings at the valley station of the Tegelbergbahn in Schwangau (Bavaria) . In: Gerhard Weber (Hrsg.): Archeology and Marketing. Old and new ways in the presentation of archaeological sites. New media. Contributions to the 3rd Cambodunum Symposium October 9 and 10, 1998 , Verlag für Heimatpflege, ISBN 3-88019-029-1 , Kempten, 2001, pp. 37–44; here: p. 43.

Coordinates: 47 ° 34 ′ 6.6 "  N , 10 ° 45 ′ 23.4"  E