Salvatorberg
The Salvator mountain is 229 meters high, the middle one of the three "local mountains" of Aachen . The highest of these witness mountains is the Lousberg , the lowest the Wingertsberg . The Salvatorberg got its name after the Salvator Chapel built on it in the 9th century and the "Salvator Monastery" of the same name, also founded there later, both of which were consecrated to Jesus Christ in his capacity as Salvator Mundi (Latin: healer, savior of the world ).
geology
From a geological point of view, the Salvatorberg is one of the southernmost foothills of the Aachen - Limburg chalk board . As part of the Upper Cretaceous - transgression were deposited initially clayey and sandy, later predominantly calcareous sediments in the region around Aachen. The morphological elevation of the Lousberg-Salvatorberg-Wingertsberg-Scholle is related to tectonic movements that led to the formation of the Lower Rhine Bay .
At the base of the Salvatorberg, dark gray to black, predominantly clayey to sandy sediments of the so-called Hergenrath strata, which formed in a swampy river delta , were deposited . In the Hergenrath layers, concretions made of marcasite as well as occasionally silicified wood and charcoal are embedded in places . In the further course of the Upper Cretaceous the area was gradually flooded by the sea and deposited 30–50 m thick quartz sands of the Aachen Formation, which were mined in small sand pits, especially on the eastern lower slope, in the area of Krefelder Strasse. On topographic maps of the 19th century, several sand pits are recorded at different times, which were then backfilled when the Krefelder Straße was built. The horseshoe-shaped layout of Kardinalstrasse, for example, follows the course of a former sand pit boundary.
Originally, even younger Upper Cretaceous sediments were deposited on the Salvatorberg, but these have been eroded over time .
Design and use
Although the geological components of the Salvatorberg are very similar to those of the Lousberg, its surface is also covered with fertile soil, which forms the basis for productive pastures, gardens and vegetable fields. Nevertheless, when the monastery was first used, the mountain, with its still rather barren elevation, received the reputation of having a cold, damp and drafty climate and it became known that the nuns resident there often complained of lung and bronchial diseases.
As early as the Middle Ages around 840, Ludwig the Pious had a cemetery chapel built on the Salvatorberg plateau, which in 870 under his son Ludwig the Germans was officially designated as the Salvator Chapel as part of the first necessary new building. Around the year 997 a monastery building was built next to this chapel for a newly founded Benedictine community . The Cistercian nuns resided there from 1197 to around 1220 before they took over the imperial abbey of Burtscheid . After that, the monastery building stood mostly empty for almost 700 years and was only rebuilt and used again from 1949 to 2012 by the Order of the Oblates of the Immaculate Virgin Mary . The current owner of the monastery building and the Salvatorkirche, which has been renewed several times and is now a listed building , is now the city of Aachen, which has signed a usage contract with the Aachen Christian Social Welfare Service.
For a long period of time, the Salvatorberg with its church facilities served as a place of pilgrimage , which meant that the access roads from the city were expanded accordingly and also led to the construction of the Aachener Neutor in 1175 . From the end of the 17th century, seven simple prayer stations and wooden crosses were set up on the way to the Salvatorkirche from private funds, but these fell into disrepair over the next few decades. In 1886 they were renewed at the expense of the "Association for the Interior of the Salvatorkirche", this time made of stone and made in Wilhelm Pohl's workshop .
At the end of the 19th century, plans by the Aachen gardening director Heinrich Grube (1840–1907) were implemented to add the areas of the Salvatorberg with extensive trees to the Lousberg park in a south-easterly direction, so that a network of green spaces with that of Maximilian Friedrich from 1807 Weyhe city fortifications (northern parts of the avenue ring) that were over-planned in terms of gardening and with the today's Stadtgarten Aachen , designed by Peter Joseph Lenné in 1852 . Grube had been a city gardener in Aachen from 1882, previously in the service of the imperial court in Mexico from 1864 to 1866 and garden director at the court of the Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen from 1867 to 1879 .
literature
- Christian Quix : The Royal Chapel and the former. noble nunnery on the Salvators-Berge, along with notes about the former vineyards near the city of Aachen . Urlichs, Aachen 1829 ( MDZ Munich [accessed on August 9, 2015]).
- Carl Rhoen : The St. Salvatorkapelle near Aachen , in: Zeitschrift des Aachener Geschichtsverein (ZAachenerGV) No. 6, 1884, pp. 65–80
- Gabrielle M. Knoll: DuMont art travel guide Aachen and the border triangle . DuMont, Cologne 1993, ISBN 3-7701-1829-4 , pp. 209 f.
- Dorothee Hugot: Lousberg and Salvatorberg - Aachen , Emhart, Aachen 2003
Web links
- Entry on the former women's monastery Sankt Salvator in the database " KuLaDig " of the Rhineland Regional Association
Individual evidence
- ^ Roland Walter: Aachen and the northern area . In: Geological Guide Collection Volume 101 . Gebr. Borntraeger, ISBN 978-3-443-15087-7 .
- ^ Franz-Severin Gäßler: Heinrich Grube - the creator of the Sigmaringer Prinzengarten. A biographical note. In: Hohenzollerische Heimat, 57th year 2007, pp. 6-10.
Coordinates: 50 ° 47 ' N , 6 ° 5' E