Schönberg (Sankt Vith)

Schönberg has been part of the Sankt Vith community in East Belgium since 1977 , it belongs to the German-speaking community and has 740 inhabitants (as of December 31, 2015). The village is located about 10 kilometers east of St. Vith in a hilly landscape with meadows and forests between 420 and 520  m OP in the valley of the Our . The Schoenberg spelling, which can also be found in several German map series, dates from the time before the German-speaking community was established.

history

The rule of Schönberg was a foundation of the prince abbey of Prüm , fortified by a castle, which was destroyed in 1689 by the troops of Louis XIV . The place belonged from 1374 until the invasion of the French revolutionary armies in 1794 to the Electorate of Trier and was the seat of the Electorate of Trier office Schönberg , to which the courts (administrative units) Amelscheid, Auw and Manderfeld belonged.

With the establishment of the Saar Department in the French Republic in 1798, it became the capital of a canton in the Prüm arrondissement. Through the Congress of Vienna in 1815 the Kingdom of Prussia , administrative district Aachen , district St. Vith , from 1821 district Malmedy came into being .

After the First World War , Schönberg and the rest of the Eupen and Malmedy districts were assigned to the Kingdom of Belgium by the Treaty of Versailles in 1920 . During the Second World War it was temporarily annexed again by the German Reich ; During the Battle of the Bulge in 1944/45 almost all houses in the village were destroyed. The Germans began the Battle of the Bulge on December 16, 1944; they succeeded in a surprise attack. In the early morning of December 16, German artillery began bombarding the area around Schönberg. On the morning of December 17th, the Wehrmacht was already in Schönberg and had control of the bridge that leads to St. Vith. They managed to advance as far as Bastogne; they besieged this from December 20th to 27th, 1944. From then on the Allied troops came back on the offensive.

Web links

• Schönberg Website of Schönberg

Individual evidence

1. ↑ residents of the community of ST. VITH per location. (PDF) (No longer available online.) City of St. Vith, December 31, 2015, archived from the original on February 12, 2016 ; accessed on February 12, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ^ JH Kaltenbach: The administrative district of Aachen: A guide for teachers, travelers and others. Friends of Homeland Studies , 1850, 456
3. ↑ Remembrance of the “invisible” soldiers of the Ardennes Offensive, especially of eleven Afro-Americans who were murdered by four SS soldiers ( Memento of the original from February 23, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 

Coordinates: 50 ° 17 '  N , 6 ° 16'  E