Rungholt

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Presumed coastal landscape of North Friesland or the Uthlande before the storm surge in 1362 with Rungholt and the Strand landscape
Location of the Rungholt and Niedam sites in the North Frisian Wadden Sea
View from the west, 1 km up to the south fall and north beach, in the center of the picture the remains of Rungholt

Rungholt was a settlement and a legal area ( Dingspil , from Germanic Thing and Old High German spël "Rede") in the North Frisian coastal landscape of Strand ; from the 13th century also a parish (old Frisian kerspel ). It was destroyed in the Second Marcellus Flood (Grote Mandränke) on January 16, 1362 or one of the following storm surges.

Geographical location

The two settlements , which belong together, Grote Rungholt and Lütke Rungholt , together formed the capital of an administrative district, the Edomsharde . This was one of five harden of the Beach Landscape . The Strand landscape was part of Uthlande, which was populated by Frisians (the King Frisians ) from the Viking Age . The village of Niedam , which was also sunken in the 14th century, was in the immediate vicinity of Rungholt .

After the devastating Second Marcellus Flood in 1362, some parts of the former Rungholt area were repopulated, but were lost in the storm surge of 1634 . From Alt-Nordstrand only the peninsula Nordstrand , the island Pellworm and the Hallig Nordstrandischmoor are left; the remaining areas were lost in the storm surge of 1634 and became the Wadden Sea.

Rungholt's underground consisted of a peat lens that did not withstand being flooded. The storm surge formed an existing river into a deep and large tidal creek , today's Norderhever .

The historic Rungholt

The area of ​​the island Alt-Nordstrand on a map by Johannes Blaeu , 1662. Rungholt is drawn in the water south of the island.

For a long time there was no material evidence from the time of the place before 1362 that could prove the existence of Rungholt. Contemporary reports no longer exist. Chroniclers of the 17th century such as Matthias Boetius and Anton Heimreich reported legends of a city that sank in the 14th century and reported finds in the Watt, but it was not until 1921 and 1938 that the tides in the Watt north of Südfall washed away the remains of terps and buildings and cisterns free. The finds were systematically recorded and researched and were able to confirm information on old maps. The map by Johannes Mejer from 1636, which itself is said to be based on a map from 1240, is particularly significant . Further evidence is a will from 1345 with the mention of the name Rungholt and a trade agreement with Hamburg merchants from May 1, 1361. The date is eight months before the Marcellus flood and confirms that the place still existed at the time of the flood disaster. The trade agreement and the findings of Rhenish jugs support the assumption that Rungholt was the main port of the Edom Shards .

The Rungholt researcher Andreas Busch made an estimate of the number of residents based on the number and distribution of remains of wells. This led him to a population of at least 1500 to 2000 inhabitants. That is a remarkably large number for a 14th century town in this area. Kiel, for example, had just as many inhabitants at that time, while Hamburg had around 5,000 inhabitants.

The origin of the name

The name Rungholt is probably derived from the Frisian prefix Rung- ("false", "low"; same root as the English wrong ) and the root word Holt ("wood"). This gives the meaning "Niederholz"; This derivation is supported by historical maps showing a small forest in hilly terrain near Rungholt, the "Silva Rungholtina", which is very unusual in the area.

Based on documents from the middle of the 15th century, Wolfgang Laur assumes that the Rungeholt was a forest from which stanchions were taken .

Finds in the mudflats

Finds from Rungholt

Already in the centuries before the clear identification, various observations of traces of settlement were handed down. One of the first clues is the De Cataclysmo Norstandico by Matthias Boetius († 1624), who writes of frequent finds of paths, ditches and metal cauldrons in the mudflats, but according to oral tradition he traced the town down to a storm surge in 1300. Similar descriptions come from his contemporary Peter Sax .

Around 1880 a fisherman discovered large pieces of wood in the mudflats at the point where the locks were later found; he thought it was a shipwreck, however. In addition, plow tracks were repeatedly found in old, submerged fields in the mudflats, as well as ceramics , remnants of bricks and even some swords that are in the North Frisian Museum. Nissenhaus Husum are located. In the years that followed, ocean currents carried away large amounts of silt. The remains of Rungholt came to light again, but were quickly destroyed. After all, a large number of terps, wells and even a dike foot could be mapped between 1921 and 1940, giving a good idea of ​​the size of the city.

Mapping of the terps, wells and dikes

Many of Rungholt's buildings stood on terps . These consisted of mounds of earth that were secured against wind and waves with around 20 layers of sod . Remains of 28 such terps have been clearly recognizable since the early 1920s and have been carefully mapped and partially described by Andreas Busch. The result was a map that could be compared with the traditional maps of Rungholt. This made it possible to assign the terps to individual locations: since then, the location of Lütke Rungholt, Grote Rungholt and Niedam has been known.

On and between the terps, the remains of around 100 wells were also found, which had also been built from turf. The wells usually had an inside diameter of about one meter and probably supplied two to three households each. The estimate of the population in this area is based on these finds and assumptions, which suggest the number of wells not found in the area.

One of the terps found had no remains of any well. It was located in an area in which a particularly large number of terp remnants had been discovered close together, the "eight terps area" (in which nine terps were found), northwest of the Hallig Südfall. This area has been identified as the Grote Rungholt . It had an extension of 900 meters in an east-west direction and 600 meters in a north-south direction. The southernmost of these terps (according to Busch's counting terp 1), which lies roughly in the middle of the east-west extension, is this wellless terp. Since at that time the church was the only building that did not need its own water supply, this terp is generally mistaken for the Rungholter Kirchwarft. This assumption is supported by the sighting of two elongated remains of a pit in the ground, which could have been graves. This means that even the town center is probably known.

On one of the two terps that belonged to the village of Niedam and that could be observed between 1932 and 1956, Busch discovered two parallel strips of sod in 1952, which had probably formed the walls of a building. The walls were 5.30 meters apart on the outside and 3.80 meters on the inside, the wall thickness corresponded to a sod length of 75 centimeters. If it was actually a sod house , it was more like a hut. At that time, sod was the most widely used building material in this region, as bricks were very rare due to the lack of clay and had to be transported from far away.

Remnants of a city ​​wall were not found, but the imprints of low dikes that had stood between the locks and the three places. The weight of the dikes had compressed the boggy ground, leaving a depression in the ground after the dikes were washed away. These depressions were measured, and from their width it is possible to infer the height of the dike at that time: about two meters, with some variations in the course of the dike. In some places the remains of dyke repairs could even be discovered. These were pits, created by removing sod in the former ground, and piles to secure new material at dike breaches.

The lock

The meadows and fields within the dyke had drainage ditches that led the collected water to a sluice . The remains of two wooden sluices first appeared in the mudflats around 1880, but were only recognized as structures in 1922 and researched by Andreas Busch. They were about 500 meters northwest of Lütke Rungholt . Between 1922 and 1929, Busch was able to measure the old and the younger lock and recover one of the beams. Two more lock beams were lifted in 1962.

Busch's measurements showed the size of the old lock to be around 20.50 × 3.30 meters clear width and external dimensions of the younger lock of 25.50 × 5.36 meters with a clear passage width of 4.40 meters. These locks were unusually large for the time. Both locks were made of wood. In the case of the older lock, Busch was even able to prove that it had leaked. It had been repaired with sealing material and had an extra floor; therefore the younger lock had to be built. At that time, wooden locks had a life expectancy of around 80 to 100 years. It can therefore be assumed that the younger lock was not built before 1280, the older one around 1200. That was the period when the area was first diked, which made locks necessary. Due to their shallow depth, the locks could not have had a far-reaching drainage effect.

In 1994, the dating of the locks was questioned with great press coverage after the ethnologist Hans Peter Duerr made further finds northwest of the Busch findings and described them as the true location of Rungholt. However , the age of the lock beams is confirmed by a measurement with radiocarbon dating ; Duerr's finds have since been assigned to the neighboring town of Frederingscap vel Rip , which was also submerged in the flood but was subsequently rebuilt .

Ceramics

The small finds made in the Rungholt area were mostly not mapped. The pottery comes mainly from the 13th and 14th centuries. It is noticeable that around 30% of these are imported goods. This high proportion of imported ceramics, which is not known anywhere else in Wadden Sea finds, proves the great prosperity that the high taxation of the Edom Shard in the Waldemar Earth Book suggests. Most of the imported ceramics, mostly stoneware from Rhenish pottery locations, even a Moorish jug from Spain and red earthenware from Scandinavia, were not made until the middle of the 14th century. An ocarina was last found in this area in 1943 .

reconstruction

With the help of the ceramics, the time in which Rungholt was settled can be limited to about a century and a half before the fall, which is supported by the metal finds - bronze grapes , fibulae, weapons, a small scale.

From the finds it can be reconstructed that a total of around 1000 people lived in Rungholt. Their houses stood on around 25 terps and on the two-meter high dike. Livestock farming, salt extraction from sea peat and trade formed their livelihoods. Around their settlement they grew grain, especially rye , on vaulted bakers . The under the sea lying marsh land on which they lived, they drained by the two of Andreas Busch falsely identified as locks sluices , which also mentions Peter Sax in his chronicle.

The legend about Rungholt

While the real Rungholt was a rural trading port on a well navigable river and consisted primarily of sod houses, the wealth of Rungholt after its demise was put in increasingly splendid descriptions. Fantastic ideas about the wealth and size of the city emerged. The legend, which was first handed down by Anton Heimreich in the context of the second great mandrank, the Burchardi flood of 1634, interprets the downfall of Rungholt as a divine punishment for a vicious life and disrespectful behavior towards the church. For example, during an evening drinking bout, high-spirited peasants are said to have compelled a pastor to give the sacraments to a pig that they had previously made drunk. After threats and mockery, the clergyman was able to take refuge in the church. The following night a dream warned him of the coming catastrophe. He was able to leave the island in time. Possibly this story goes back to a story by Caesarius von Heisterbach , who in his Dialogus miraculorum gives an almost identical report on how God's wrath over a desecration of the sacraments leads to a storm surge. Caesarius was referring to the First Marcellus Flood . In Flensburg , too, there is a similar legend about the castle grounds , where the Flenstoft court and later the Duburg stood.

The legends about Rungholt also include that when the weather is calm, its bells can be heard under the surface of the water and that the city emerges unscathed from the earth every seven years on St. Similar legends surround other submerged places like Vineta .

exhibition

In the North Frisian Museum. At Nissenhaus Husum , the "Rungholt myth" occupies a large part. Several topics relating to the sea are dealt with with reference to Rungholt.

reception

“In the past - Rungholt is also in this safe country. Once in King Abel's time, and even later, it stood above in the sunlight with its stately gabled houses, towers and mills. The ships of Rungholt swam on all seas and carried the treasures of all parts of the world home; when the bells rang for mass, the market and streets were filled with blonde women and girls who rushed into the church in silk robes; At the time of the equinoxes, when the men returned from their feasts, they climbed up their high dikes again for the time being, held their hands in their pockets and shouted, laughing, at the roaring sea: 'In spite of that, bare Hans!' But the red-cheeked paganism that still haunts all of us here - ... "

"Today I drove through Rungholt,
the city went under six hundred years ago ..."

  • In 1990 Mechthild Von Leusch published an interpretation of alleged "Rungholter dances", Ou Wirnith . A second part followed in 1993, Aith Ochnal .
  • In 2001 Victoria Schwartz and Rasmus Hirthe made the film Der Untergang von Rungholt . The film collage tells the story of Rungholt on the occasion of a sailing trip by three people who are looking for traces of the lost Rungholt.
  • The Hamburg composer Jakob Vinje was inspired by the saga of Anton Heimreich to write the oratorio for choir, speaker and orchestra Rungholt , which premiered in 2001. He also used texts by Detlev von Liliencron, Rainer Maria Rilke , Theodor Storm , Heinrich Heine , Theodor Fontane and Wolfgang Borchert .
  • There is a Rungholt school in Husum , two ferry boats operating in the North Frisian Wadden Sea are called Rungholt and in Kiel there is the Rungholtplatz . In Halle (Saale) there is a social institution founded in 1927 by Eduard Juhl called Haus Rungholt .
  • Juliane Werding addressed the legend of downfall in her album Ruhe vor dem Sturm , Achim Reichel set Liliencron's ballade to music for his album Regenballade . In 1989, the North Frisian group Godewind published De Glocken vun Rungholt, a Low German song about the submerged place.
  • In a historical crime series, the writer Derek Meister christened his leading actor, a plump Lübeck merchant of the Hanseatic League, Rungholt, as he is a survivor of the Groten Mandränke.
  • In 2013, the comic appeared The bell Rungholt by Levin Kurio in Horrorschocker # 34th
  • In 2014, the Danish-South Schleswig writer Dorothea Petersen processed the Rungholt material in the Danish-language historical novel Havets rytter (in German: Rider of the Sea ).
  • In 2015 the German group Santiano released a song of the same name about the submerged city of Rungholt and the topic Blanker Hans , the text of which is based on the above-mentioned ballad by Liliencrons.

literature

  • Dirk Meier, Hans Joachim Kühn, Guus J. Borger: The coastal atlas. The Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea in the past and present . Boyens (Heide) 2013 (Bes. Pp. 74–85; 118–135). ISBN 978-3804213814
  • Hans-Harro Hansen: From plow to university medal. Life and work of [Rungholt researcher] Andreas Busch (= North Frisian CVs, Vol. 9). Nordfriisk Instituut, Bredstedt 2005, ISBN 3-88007-316-3 .
  • Hans Peter Duerr : Rungholt. The search for a sunken city. Insel, Frankfurt a. M. 2005, ISBN 3-458-17274-2 .
  • Hans-Herbert Henningsen: Rungholt. The path to disaster. Volume I. The history of Rungholt's origins, its location, today's cultural traces in the Wadden Sea and the history and importance of the Hallig Südfall. I. Husum Druck- und Verlagsgesellschaft, Husum 2002, ISBN 3-88042-853-0 .
  • Hans-Herbert Henningsen: Rungholt. The path to disaster. Volume II. The rise, heyday and fall of an important medieval town in North Frisia. Volume II. Husum Druck- und Verlagsgesellschaft, Husum 2000, ISBN 3-88042-934-0 .
  • Albert Panten , Hans Jochim Kühn: Rungholt - legend and reality. In: Thomas Steensen (ed.): The great North Friesland book. Ellert & Richter, Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-89234-886-3 , pp. 152-161.
  • Jörn Hagemeister: Rungholt. Legend and reality. Lühr and Dircks, Sankt Peter-Ording 1980, ISBN 3-921416-10-8 .
  • Andreas Busch: New observations in the Rungholt-Watt in 1935. Reprint from "Die Heimat", No. 3, March 1936, Wachholtz, Neumünster.
  • Andreas Busch: Today's Hallig Südfall and the last traces of Rungholt and About Clades Rungholtina . Reprints from “Die Heimat”, Husum-Heft, July 1957, and Heft 9, 1952, u. a., Wachholtz, Neumünster.
  • Andreas Busch: Dike heightening through six centuries, Rungholt research and sea level rise. Reprint from “Die Heimat”, 70th year, issue 6, June 1963, Wachholtz, Neumünster.
  • Rudolf Muuß : Rungholt. Ruins under the Friesenhallig. Westphal, Lübeck 1927.
  • Hans Heinrich Philippsen: Rungholt the Vineta Friesland. 1922.

Reception in poetry and fiction

Magazine articles

Movies

  • Dispute over the sunken city of Rungholt. Documentation, 5 min., Production: NDR -Kulturjournal, first broadcast: November 14, 2005, table of contents ( memento of December 24, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) by NDR
  • Rungholt. The search for the sunken city. Docu-drama and documentation, 2001, script and direction: Wilfried Hauke, production: Ditho Film- & FS-Produktion
  • Terra X: Atlantis der Nordsee, ZDF Documentation 2010 by Gabriele Wengler, Sandra Papadopoulos - broadcast information , broadcast online ( YouTube )

Broadcast contributions

radio play

In 1953 the NWDR Hamburg produced a dialect radio play by Adolf Wasmus under the title Rungholt - Fateful Day of the City by the Sea . Among others, Heinz Ladiges , Hartwig Sievers , Otto Lüthje , Hans Mahler , Rudolf Beiswanger , Georg Pahl , Walter Scherau , Heidi Kabel , Hilde Sicks , Magda Bäumken , Erna Raupach-Petersen , Heini Kaufeld , Adi Lödel and Günther spoke under the direction of Günter Jansen Siegmund . The first broadcast took place on March 21, 1953. The radio play is no longer available in any ARD broadcasting company.

Web links

Wikisource: Trutz, Blanke Hans  - Sources and full texts
Commons : Rungholt  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The dating of the second Marcellus flood and the fall of Rungholt is handled differently in the chronicles of the 17th century. While the date, the day of Marcellus, is consistently passed down everywhere, the year 1300, 1354 or 1362 is given.
  2. ↑ Both documents are in the Hamburg State Archives .
  3. ^ Jörn Hagemeister: Rungholt. Legend and reality. Lühr and Dircks, Sankt Peter-Ording 1980, ISBN 3-921416-10-8 , p. 48.
  4. ↑ Wolfgang Laur: Historisches Ortsnamelexikon von Schleswig-Holstein , 2nd edition, p. 559.
  5. ↑ to Rieken: North Sea is Murder Sea . P. 187
  6. ↑ Representation of the sites according to Andreas and Bahne Busch by Dirk Meier, Hans Joachim Kühn, Guus J. Borger: The coastal atlas. The Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea in the past and present . Boyens (Heide) 2013; Pp. 119-133.
  7. ↑ Coastal Atlas . P. 129f.
  8. ↑ ZDF-Terra X - On blown tracks ( memento from December 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) from September 19, 2010
  9. ↑ Coastal Atlas , p. 130.
  10. ↑ Coastal Atlas . P. 131.
  11. ↑ Bernd Rieken : > NORDSEE IST MORDSEE <storm surges and their significance for the history of mentality of the Frisians; Nordfriisk Instituut Volume 187; Münster 2005; Pp. 199-203
  12. ↑ Mechthild Von Leusch - Ou Wirnith, Rungholter Tänze, first book. Retrieved May 29, 2019 .
  13. ↑ Mechthild Von Leusch - Aith Ochnal, Rungholter dances, second book. Retrieved May 29, 2019 .
  14. ^ Rungholt - the movie , 2001
  15. ↑ HORROR SHOCK # 34. Retrieved March 27, 2019 .
  16. ↑ Forlaget Mellemgaard: Havets rytter
  17. ↑ Rungholt - Search for the Sunken City (2001) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  18. ^ Prisma.de - Rungholt - Search for the sunken city , documentary play, Germany 2000, director: Wilfried Hauke, book: Wilfried Hauke . Retrieved June 20, 2014.
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on September 14, 2005 .