Rottal (Bavaria)

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The Rott near Oberdietfurt

The Rottal is a region in Lower Bavaria that is shaped by the Rott River . Administratively, it is distributed across the districts of Mühldorf , Rottal-Inn and Passau . Adjacent regions are the Innviertel in Upper Austria in the east, the Vilstal in the north and the Lower Inn Valley in the south.

landscape

Valleys and hills

The valley on both sides of the Rott, the Rottal, is the heart of the Lower Bavarian hill country, which roughly corresponds to today's Rottal-Inn district. In terms of geological history, the Rottal comes from the Middle Ages , the geological structure of the soils is almost exclusively based on Tertiary deposits , which is why it is also referred to as the Tertiary hill country . This can be seen in the diversity of the soil: fine clays, silty to coarse sands, small gravel to gravel alternate in a narrow space, they indicate the different deposit conditions within the former molasse basin . The Rott valley, which is two kilometers wide on average, is buried in the Lower Bavarian landscape between the Isar and Inn . The area is divided into many hills and ridges by numerous tributaries and streams. Elongated mountain ranges alternate with gently sloping groups of hills, gentle hollow valleys with steeply cut creek notches. Typical of the varied landscape is the different land use with meadows on the valley floor of the rivers, with fields on the slopes and with forest on the heights and on the steep slopes. The highest peaks of the mountain ranges are on average 500 meters above sea level.

River and streams

The Rott has its origin near Wurmsham , near Neuhaus it flows into the Inn. The river is not long: only a hundred kilometers. Real ships never run on the Rott, the river is not deep enough in many places. The water meanders through the land in innumerable windings, its banks bordered by alders and other bushes. The valley used to be damp and swampy and it was repeatedly hit by floods. In the 20th century, reservoirs were built and further regulations were carried out; this largely averted the danger of flooding . The valley landscape of the Rott and the side streams is still characterized by numerous mills and sawmills. The abundance of wood in the region, along with arable farming and cattle breeding, was once an essential basis for the reputation of the Rottal as a typical Bavarian agricultural landscape.

Forest forms

The forests between the Isar and Inn still cover a fifth of the area, largely they are limited to the ridges and hilltops. Larger contiguous forest areas are found mainly on the nutrient-poor soils of the quartz gravel layers. Beech , oak and hornbeam used to grow here naturally . It was not until the 17th century, with the emergence of economic thinking in forestry, that the spruce became the main tree of the peasant forest ; and yet you can find typical middle forests , forests in which there is still a lot of hardwood, birch , maple , bird cherry on the edges of the forest , other wild trees and above all oaks , especially in small-scale rural forest holdings. These partially healthy mixed forests can be traced back to the owners' needs for their own construction and timber, and above all for firewood .

ecology

Even if some farmers took part in the triumphant advance of the maize plant in the Rottal and exposed some areas to increased soil erosion due to incorrectly understood maize cultivation - the Rott and its valley, including numerous tributaries, exist in large parts as a reasonably intact natural landscape. Animals that are not or only rarely seen in planned river valleys of larger bodies of water such as the Danube, the Inn or the Isar, are a matter of course in the Rottal. Meadow-breeding bird species such as the lapwing , the common snipe and the curlew , which is threatened with extinction, can be seen rearing their young. In the Rott valley areas, the district works together with the water management authority to recultivate areas; Pools were created and the white stork, which used to be at home in the Rottal, was reintroduced. Herons, hawks, buzzards and falcons meet in the meadows and forests on both sides of the river landscape; And to the chagrin of many forest owners, the region between the Isar and Inn, the Rottal-Inn district, is the district with the most game in the Federal Republic of Germany.

Agriculture

Agricultural structure

Vierseithof: fields, meadows, fruit and vegetable gardens, fallow land

The district between the Isar, Rott and Inn is still largely rural: more than two thirds of the area is cultivated by the farmers, 65 percent of which is arable land and 35 percent of the arable land consists of grassland . There is no area and no district in the Federal Republic of Germany with so many well-functioning individual farmsteads, industry has never emerged on a large scale in the Rottal and the mixed rural-artisanal structure has an astonishing stability in the Rottal.

The farm structure in the Rottal is more informative than the land use: since 1974 the number of farms in the Rottal has decreased by almost 35 percent. The bottom line is that the restructuring process is much slower than in the rest of Lower Bavaria or even all of Bavaria. Since 1974, the number of farms in Bavaria as a whole has decreased by around 50 percent. This different pace of development may well have something to do with the fact that in the Rottal-Inn district there are a particularly large number of small farms and have survived until now. After all, almost 40 percent of the farmers in the Rottal run a farm under 10 hectares.

Farmhouses

Living part of a four-sided courtyard

The rural structure of the Rottal is characterized externally by the typical house landscape; Certain house shapes determine the many individual farmsteads, initially the four-sided courtyard , but also the four- sided courtyard and the multi- storey house , which can be found mainly in the Eggenfelden area. Due to the abundance of wood in earlier times, the typical Rottaler homestead was largely made of wood, i.e. in log construction, until the 19th century. The typical shape of a rural farm is the Rottaler Vierseithof , in which the Rottaler farmhouse with log construction is sometimes still located today . A real four-sided courtyard cannot be replaced by a single-ridge courtyard like the one in the Bavarian Oberland. For the Rottaler farmer, the distance from the house to the stables and the barns, as shown in the Einfirsthof, would have been too far. And the Einfirsthof would have been too small to accommodate the cattle, the fodder and the crops of a Rottaler four-sided farm.

In Massinger Farm Museum a few typical examples of regional Hoftypen are shown. If you look at the courtyards in Massing , it becomes clear why a large, real farm could usually afford so many buildings that it became a four-sided courtyard. It resembles an externally secured castle. Nobody can enter the courtyard unnoticed. There is usually a small exit to the outside, to the oven, to the woodshed and, not so rarely, to the apiary, but this door is usually locked. Whoever wants to enter the courtyard has to go through the large courtyard gate or through the smaller door right next to it. Such four-sided courtyards are typical of the hill country of the Rottal, but in the vast majority there were also other, mostly simpler courtyard forms in the past, the two-sided courtyard and the three-sided courtyard and, as a specialty south of the former district town of Eggenfelden, the so-called Stockhaus. See also the list of architectural monuments in parish churches with their districts and the four-sided courtyards and Rottal farmhouses listed there.

Horse breeding

Horse breeding has been typical of the landscape between Rott and Inn for ages. The Rottaler horse is a strong warmblood horse that was the predominantly bred breed until the middle of the twentieth century. Purebred Rottaler have become rare, their preservation is promoted. The oldest trotting track in Bavaria is located in Pfarrkirchen. It was opened on September 22, 1895. The traditional trotting races took place there at Pentecost.

traffic

railroad

The Passau – Neumarkt – Sankt Veit (also known as the Rottalbahn) line, which was opened in 1888, is a single-track, non-electrified branch line. With a length of 97 km, it is the longest branch line in Bavaria. Railway lines lead from Neumarkt to Mühldorf am Inn and Landshut. Passenger traffic in this network is operated by the Südostbayernbahn . Trains run every hour between Passau via Neumarkt to Mühldorf.

The Simbach – Pocking railway line, opened in 1914 , has not been used since the 1970s, was shut down in 2003 and partially converted into a cycle path.

Road link

The Rottal is connected to Munich and Passau by the B 388 . The district town of Pfarrkirchen is 50 km from Passau and 125 km from Munich.

Long-distance cycle path

The 113 km long Rottal cycle path is part of the Bavarian network for cyclists . It branches off from the Vilstal cycle path in Velden and follows the Rott from the source to the mouth.

Cities, markets and communities

The largest towns in the Rottal are Eggenfelden , Pfarrkirchen and Pocking . The health resorts Bad Birnbach , Bad Füssing and Bad Griesbach , which are known for their thermal water and form the Rottaler spa triangle, are also located here . In the Rottal region there are many individual farms and hamlets, so that after the municipal reform of the 1970s, the communities include many small districts.

Personalities

Attractions

literature

  • Renate Just: Crooked tours 3. Lower Bavaria, Bohemian Forest and Danube . Kunstmann Verlag 2007, ISBN 978-3888974342
  • Rudolf Vierlinger: Along the Rott . Verlag Rudolf Vierlinger, Simbach am Inn, 1983, ISBN 3-921707-18-8
  • Carlo Schellemann: Rottaler Bilderbuch , Rottaler Buchverlag, Hebertsfelden 1992, 106 pages, with an essay on landscape painting by Gabriele Sprigath, ISBN 3-929452-00-6