Small Thuringian Forest

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The small Thuringian Forest is the mountain and hill country that extends in the area southwest of Suhl and northwest of Schleusingen and extends to a line in the Schmeheim - Bischofrod - Gethles - Rappelsdorf area .

The designation "Small Thuringian Forest" was originally introduced by geologists for a (small) area of ​​the area in question, which geologically resembles the actual Thuringian Forest. Over the years, however, the term Little Thuringian Forest has changed or expanded in the self-image of the residents and also in other ways in public perception, so that today it is a geographical name for the mountain and hill country in the triangle Suhl - Schmeheim / Dillstädt - Schleusingen has become.

From a geological point of view, the Small Thuringian Forest is only a two-kilometer-wide strip of core rock of the Thuringian Forest , which emerges from the Triassic deposits in the southwestern foreland of the mountains . In the northwest of the Hildburghausen district , this area extends northwest of Schleusingen , starting at Rappelsdorf , via Gethles , Ahlstädt , Bischofrod , Keulrod , Eichenberg to north of the Sandberg near Grub .

Geological structure

The Small Thuringian Forest is in the geological sense the little brother of the large Thuringian Forest Mountains , which stretches in the same direction from southeast to northwest north of it and is formed from the Thuringian Forest and the Thuringian Slate Mountains . It is composed of the same rocks as these two mountains. In the Paleozoic emerged, there are granites to hornfels converted slate , porphyry , sediments of the Rotliegendes and Zechstein . Thus it is also part of the former Variscan Mountains, which are considered to be the predecessor of the Central European Central Uplands.

When the Thuringian Horstgebirge was raised during the Cretaceous and Tertiary Periods due to enormous tectonic processes , this also happened with the basement clod of the Little Thuringian Forest. The edge faults, which run in the Hercynian direction, were not only created along the large mountain floe, but also in the foreland. However, these are much smaller in the Small Thuringian Forest and have a much lower jump height.

The Small Thuringian Forest is located in the middle of the South Thuringian-Franconian Triassic Foreland and is surrounded by its wooded red sandstone heights that tower above it. It is located northwest of Schleusingen and extends in the Hercynian direction over a length of approx. 11 km and a varying width of 1 to 2 km at an average height of 460 m. In the south it is bounded by the Wiedersbacher fault. With the exception of the edge fault west of Gethles to Bischofrod, the Small Thuringian Forest is enclosed on all sides by Zechstein . Its northernmost limit is marked by the Sandberg near Grub, as remains of Zechstein can still be seen there. The basement comes to the surface along the edge fault between Gethles and Bischofrod.

The southern Thuringian-Franconian Triassic Foreland is divided into red sandstone , shell limestone and keuper , which in their sequence determine the landscape. The Marisfelder Graben is another special feature, almost in the extension of the Small Thuringian Forest . This is a geological fault zone in which the mountain floe has sunk, so that Keuper comes to lie at the level of the shell limestone. It extends to the Dolmar northwest of Kühndorf , whose basaltic lava rose in the crevices of the fault zone. These fault zones, the Small Thuringian Forest and the Marisfelder Graben, interrupt the Triassic landscape. To the north they form the border to the red sandstone mountains and to the south to the heights of shell limestone.

Sources of income in agriculture and mining

The nature of the soil in this area allows for profitable cultivation. The settlements of the Small Thuringian Forest, Rappelsdorf, Gethles, Ahlstädt, Bischofrod, Keulrod and Eichenberg were shaped in the past by agriculture. Around this, the soil is still used for agriculture today.

Fluorspar , barite and brown iron stone , which had risen in hot solutions at the edge of the Little Thuringian Forest during the mountain formation, repeatedly led to mining attempts from the 17th to the 20th century, the yield of which, however, was not worthwhile in the long term and which often failed due to the difficult groundwater conditions. The focus was on the eastern slope of the Steinberg near Ahlstädt, the Ahlstädter Grund , the Kuhberg near Gethles and between Bischofrod and Eichenberg. In the Ahlstädter Grund you can still find two tunnel mouth holes today.

Recent geological explorations (1956 to 1959) have shown that large amounts of heavy spar can be extracted in good quality. But this has not happened to this day.

Origin of the name and its use

In the literature, the term “strange little Thuringian forest” is also used . The reason for this is to be found in the fact that in the middle of a red sandstone block, rock material from the Paleozoic Era came to the surface. The Thuringian geologist Heim was the first to describe this rock complex as a model of the Thuringian Forest. From its designation, Emmrich and Pröscholdt introduced the name into literature, from where it then took on a certain life of its own and broke away from its original context (see below). However, the name must not be understood in a geographical sense, as the Little Thuringian Forest does not appear through special terrain forms. The term is not used on topographic maps.

According to the Thuringian State Administration Office in Weimar, there is no legally protected protected landscape area of ​​the Small Thuringian Forest , even if some publications repeatedly refer to such a protected area . This was applied for in the early 1990s, but it was never established. However, this obviously did not mean the small rock complex described above, but the wooded ridges of the Buntsandstein rising to the north and north-west of it with Donnersberg , Schleusinger Berg , Schneeberg , Kesselberg , Galgenberg , Eichenberg (here the mountain), Ehrenberg etc. In various Hiking maps these mountain ranges are even referred to as the Little Thuringian Forest . If the hiker follows these maps and, for example, climbs the Schneeberg starting from Bischofrod or Eichenberg, then, having arrived there, he has long since left his goal of the Small Thuringian Forest behind.

proof

  1. ↑ Early relics in and around the Little Thuringian Forest. Retrieved October 31, 2018 .
  2. ^ Long railway in the Little Thuringian Wals. Retrieved October 31, 2018 .
  3. ^ Website Schmeheim: Schmeheim belongs to the Little Thuringian Forest. October 31, 2018, accessed October 31, 2018 .
  4. ^ Marisfeld in the area of ​​the "Small Thuringian Forest". In: Website Verwaltungsgemeinschaft Feldstein. Retrieved October 31, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Erhard Köhler: Rural life in southern Thuringia. Retrieved October 31, 2018 .
  6. ↑ Wichtshausen. Retrieved October 31, 2018 .
  7. ↑ Lange-Bahn-Lauf. Retrieved October 31, 2018 .
  8. ↑ Martin Meschede: Germany in the Permian and Mesozoic Era . In: Geology of Germany . Springer, Berlin and Heidelberg 24 March 2015, pp. 103–159.
  9. ↑ Maximilian Tornow: The geology of the small Thuringian forest . What a shame, 1907.