Totenmarter near Weißenbrunn
The Totenmarter bei Weißenbrunn is a turned wood marter in the unincorporated area Winkelhaid in the central Franconian district of Nürnberger Land in Bavaria . It is also known locally as the Rest of the Dead .
location
The wooden column is located about 800 meters south of Weißenbrunn near the municipality border between Leinburg and the municipality-free area Winkelhaid. It stands there on a forest road in the woods. The forest road is part of the Eppeleinsweg hiking trail ( 
). The administration of the Bavarian State Forests put up an information board on site in 2017.
description
The column is made of oak wood, painted brownish-red, about 2.5 meters high and measures 25 cm in diameter. The trunk is rotated and in the upper part there are the engravings Alpha and Omega , as well as the dates 1837 and 1994. It is very similar to the nearby Rote Marter near Winkelhaid . Since it is on the municipal boundary, the original use was possibly as a forest border column. In order to determine the condition of the devastated forests, forest management was carried out in the Nuremberg Reichswald in 1840/41 . In this context, forest district boundary stones (district boundary columns) were also created . The foresters used it to mark every single tree to prevent wood theft. The year 1994 comes from a later restoration .
regional customs
The location on the municipal boundary has brought about a peculiar custom of torture. Corpses from Weißenbrunn used to be taken to the Altdorf cemetery. The coffin was placed on a cart and under the coffin were thick bundles of straw, the so-called dead straw . On the way back from the cemetery, the driver was no longer allowed to look around and had to drive very quickly so that all the straw would be lost due to the jolting. If that didn't work, he had to stop at the wooden pillar and lay the bundles of straw on the side facing away from Weißenbrunn. If the carter were to bring the straw back into the community, according to legend, someone would die in the same year. If the straw got under the cattle, epidemics would break out. The custom of this banishment from the dead says that when the dead return, they can only get as far as the parish boundary as long as they see their own death straw. The custom of the dead straw was still in use in the Altdorf and Hersbruck area well into the 20th century.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Monuments in the Nuremberg Reichswald ( Bavarian State Forests ), accessed on June 2, 2018, from baysf.de
- ^ Wittmann, Leonhard - Flurdenkmale des Stadt- und Landkreis Nürnberg , in: Das Steinkreuz , 19th year 1963
- ↑ Hiking in the Nürnberger Land . Albert Geng, Pfeiffer Verlag, 2009, ISBN 3-927412-24-4
Web links
Coordinates: 49 ° 25 '22.73 " N , 11 ° 21' 8.53" E