Devil's Stone (Hahnbach)

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The Teufelsstein on the Kreuzberg

The Teufelsstein (also: Teufelstein) is a Kallmünzer in the area of ​​the municipality Hahnbach in the district of Amberg-Sulzbach in Bavaria. According to tradition, the Devil's Stone was a pagan sacrificial site. It is also addressed as such in the relevant literature, but no proof of this has yet been provided.

location

The Teufelsstein is located in the northern municipality of the market town of Hahnbach, right on the border with the municipality of the city of Vilseck, approx. 1 km northwest of the district of Mülles and approx. 350 m northeast of the summit of the Kreuzberg .

description

The table-like boulder is inclined to the west and has a length of 4 m and a width of 3 m and an average height of 1 m. On its upper side there are two amorphous, pan-like depressions of different sizes, which were created by corrosion in connection with small frost blasting. The V-shaped channel leading from the southern depression to the edge of the boulder, through which the troughs are drained, seems to have been reworked by human hands.

Excavations in August 2006 showed that the rock was about half a meter deep in the ground and had a flat bottom. Its volume is thus around 12 cubic meters.

Emergence

The Teufelsstein is a relic rock from the former chalk cover. The sandy chalk sediments were in places bound pebbly. This resulted in very hard quartz sandstones , which withstood weathering much better than the surrounding and underlying rocks. After all, they were preserved as individual blocks on much older rocks (here Dogger). Many Kallmünzer blocks were still relocated in the Quaternary by solifluction .

Until 25 years ago there were still numerous Kallmünzer blocks on the Kreuzberg. In the meantime, however, the smaller specimens in particular have been brought to the gardens in the area.

The Teufelsstein lies on a continuous limonite sandstone bench. It is a solid, iron-sheathed rock seam of reddish color. The package of fine-grained Great Dane sands (iron sandstone of the Brown Jura ), which is about 60 m thick on the Kreuzberg, runs through several such seams.

legend

A hiking legend explains the origin of the Teufelsstein. Franz X. von Schönwerth tells the legend as follows:

“The devil had grown tired on a Walburgis night on the way to the Blocksberg ; so he sat down to rest on the flat roof of the church tower at VILSECK, which was just below him. From this the old rotten tower collapsed, and the Vilseckers had to build a new one, but they made it all the more pointed because the first one was blunt so that the devil could not rest on it again. So the Vilsecker Thurm became the most pointed in the whole of OBERPFALZ. That annoyed the devil, of course; he took a piece of rock on his head and carried it towards Vilseck to smash the building. It was in the Vilseck forest where he saw an old woman, a shoemaker and at the same time Vilseckerbötin, on the way to HAMBACH. He asked them how far he still had to Vilseck, he had to throw in the tower there.

Then the old woman opened her Zegerer full of old shoes that were strewn together and replied: "So far that I have already closed all these shoes; I have just come from there." "I can't carry the stone that far any more," cried the devil in anger and threw the piece of rock down with such force that the splinters, weighting a hundred, are still scattered in the forest today. But the main stone, as big as a farmhouse, fell on a hill in the middle of the forest; it still shows the traces of the wearer, the brats and the head, the latter as big as a large water sheep. It is the devil stone. All around the ground sounds hollow; hence the legend that a place perished here.

In memory of an old woman cheating the devil, a wooden cross was erected on the hill, from which it bears the name Kreuzberg. Now there is a little church there. "

Geotope status

The Teufelsstein has been designated as a protected geotope by the Bavarian State Office for the Environment . There it is run under the name Teufelsstein am Kreuzberg NW von Mülles and the number 371R044.

See also the list of geotopes in the Amberg-Sulzbach district .

literature

  • Mathias Conrad: The Devil's Stone on the Kreuzberg . In: THE EISENGAU . tape 30 , 2007, p. 16-25 .
  • Franz X. von Schönwerth : Customs and legends from the Upper Palatinate, Vol. I, II and III, complete edition . Ed .: Kulturkreis Pressath und Umgebung eV Verlag der Buchhandlung Eckhard Bodner, Pressath / Opf. 2010, ISBN 3-937117-80-6 , pp. 292 .

Web links

Commons : Teufelsstein  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Mathias Conrad: The Devil's Stone on the Kreuzberg . In: THE EISENGAU . tape 30 , 2007, p. 16 .
  2. ^ A b c d e Mathias Conrad: The devil stone on the Kreuzberg . In: THE EISENGAU . tape 30 , 2007, p. 17 .
  3. ^ Mathias Conrad: The Devil's Stone on the Kreuzberg . In: THE EISENGAU . tape 30 , 2007, p. 24 .
  4. ↑ a b Teufelsstein am Kreuzberg NW of Mülles. (PDF) Geotope number: 371R044. In: Geotope Register Bavaria. Bavarian State Office for the Environment , May 21, 2015, accessed on January 4, 2016 .
  5. ^ Franz X. von Schönwerth : Customs and Legends from the Upper Palatinate, Vols. I, II and III, complete edition . Ed .: Kulturkreis Pressath und Umgebung eV Verlag der Buchhandlung Eckhard Bodner, Pressath / Opf. 2010, ISBN 3-937117-80-6 , pp. 292 .

Coordinates: 49 ° 34 ′ 28.9 ″  N , 11 ° 48 ′ 2.2 ″  E