Thurndorf (Kirchenthumbach)

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Thurndorf is a village in the Upper Palatinate district of Neustadt an der Waldnaab and belongs to the Kirchenthumbach market .

Thurndorf, aerial photo (2016)

location

Thurndorf is at the foot of the Kütschenrainberg , which is 647  m above sea level. NHN is next to the Ossinger the highest point of the Franconian Jura . Thurndorf is about a kilometer away from the border between Upper Palatinate and Upper Franconia. The next largest city to the west is Pegnitz . To the east, the next larger settlement is the Kirchenthumbach market.

history

Thurndorf emerged from the Slavic village Wünschendorf (today a desert between Thurndorf and Sassenreuth ). The Sulzbacher built to protect the border between Franconia and Bavaria in their advance through the area, a tower-like castle at the highest point of Thurndorf, where the new part of the Thurn Dorfer cemetery is located. Soon afterwards, some farmers from the former wish village moved to the safer castle and were safe there in the event of invasions by strangers, who were mostly out for robbery. Since this settlement had a tower-like castle fortification, the residents called it "the village around the tower", ie "tower village", from which Thurndorf later emerged.

The two settlements of Wünschendorf and Thurndorf are important evidence of the pre-settlement by Slavs in the whole region and in the Upper Palatinate and the development of the Franks over a thousand years ago.

Because of the lack of space at the old Thurndorf cemetery, the parish council saw it as its duty to expand the cemetery. When an agricultural property next to the old cemetery was demolished in 1998, the remains of Thurndorf Castle came to light. The stump of the tower with its three meter thick walls made of limestone blocks was still preserved for more than one storey. On the farm it was used as a barn or stable. However, the historical remains were removed with heavy equipment. When a newspaper article called the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation on the scene, it was already too late; the Romanesque tower stump was almost irretrievably destroyed down to ground level. Excavations by the archaeologist Mathias Hensch brought sensational settlement history results and it was decided to also take a closer look at the western part. The Thurndorf parish council at that time, however, had the soil removed with excavators and a soil replacement carried out in the western castle area, thus destroying this soil monument of the regional settlement history.

The name of the predecessor settlement Wünschendorf or Windischendorf is derived from the Wends or Winden - a name for a Slavic tribe that has been preserved in place names such as Windischeschenbach or Windischenlaibach. After the farms were further decimated by the Hussite incursions around 1430, only one remained, which was used as a sheep farm. At that time the place was only called Windischenhof. This courtyard was also finally destroyed in the Thirty Years' War. In 1655 the government sold the now electoral Schafhof Wünschhof with 90 daily work fields and 40 daily work meadows for 200 guilders to several Thurndorf citizens who smashed the farm. The fields were moved to Thurndorf, the buildings left to decay, and the village of Wünschendorf disappeared. Today only a Wünschendorfer Weg or a Wünschgass remind of the old village.

State today

Thurndorf observation tower

Thurndorf is a small village that has two restaurants and a bakery. It has about one hundred houses in which 451 people live (as of September 20, 2007). In the north there is an evacuation called Bau. There is a radio tower in the north-west of Thurndorf. On the Kalvarienberg ( 642  m ) northeast of the village there has been an approximately 25 m high steel observation tower since 2015 .

Since Pentecost Sunday 2006, Thurndorf has been part of the pastoral care area Parish Association Auerbach.

Theophilus bell

The Theophilus Bell is one of the oldest bells in Germany. It was cast in bronze by Wolfger (inscription: "Wolfgerus me fecit") in the second quarter of the 12th century. As if by a miracle, she survived the two world wars. In 1917 and 1940 it was removed together with the other bells and given to the army administration to be melted down, but this did not happen. Two bells of the same type and master are in Theißen (Saxony) and in Aschara (Thuringia), both bear the same inscription and thus emerged from the same foundry workshop.

The Theophilus bell with a diameter of 30 cm and a height of 43 cm is a valuable work in terms of culture and craftsmanship. Its name does not come from a saint, but rather from the fact that it is one of the few Romanesque bells in Germany that was cast in the way that Theophilus wrote in the Schedula diversarum artium lib. II. Cap. LXXXIV is specified. Theophilus was an art-savvy Benedictine monk who described in detail how the bells were made in the first half of the 12th century. How the bell came to Thurndorf is unknown.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Map services of the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation ( information )
  2. ↑ www.thurndorf.com
  3. ↑ Further view from the new Thurndorfer Tower in the Nordbayerischer Kurier on May 21, 2015, accessed on February 21, 2019

literature

  • Stefan Benz, Thurndorf. The rise and fall of a central place in the northern Upper Palatinate. Journal for Bavarian State History 65/3, 2002, 883–910
  • J. Köstler: Thurndorfer Chronik . 1915
  • StaA Amberg
  • Local newspaper Der Neue Tag , Fürk
  • Hans Drescher: Bells and bell castings in the 11th and 12th centuries In: Die Welt der Salier , Sigmaringen 1992, 405–409
  • Mathias Hensch : Art. So-called Theophilus bell In: The Salier. Power in Change , catalog volume, Speyer 2011, 303

Web links

Commons : Thurndorf  - Collection of Images

Coordinates: 49 ° 46 '  N , 11 ° 40'  E