Full churches

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Full churches
Community Hüttenberg
Coordinates: 50 ° 29 ′ 31 ″  N , 8 ° 33 ′ 4 ″  E
Height : 265  (263-274)  m above sea level NHN
Area : 5.15 km²
Residents : 423  (Dec 31, 2019)
Population density : 82 inhabitants / km²
Incorporation : December 31, 1971
Incorporated into: Schwingbach
Postal code : 35625
Area code : 06447

Vollnkirchen is the smallest district of the municipality of Hüttenberg in the Lahn-Dill district in central Hesse .

Geographical location

The place is surrounded by forest in a meadow valley on the northeastern edge of the Taunus Nature Park south of Wetzlar . The Vollnkirchener Bach, also called Geschwindbach, flows through the village.

history

According to oral tradition, a farmer named Fol (l) enius settled here with his family and servants around the year 1000 and built the first houses. After the settlement had grown by more houses, the farmer also built a church and the village was named "Fol (l) eniuskirchen" after its founder. Foleniuskirchen became Follenkirchen and later Vollnkirchen. The legend about the farmer Folenius goes back to an entry in Friedrich Kilian Abicht's book "Der Kreis Wetzlar - historically, statistically, topographically". Abicht writes that Follenkirchen is mentioned in a 10th century deanery directory from Wetzlar and cites a book by FW Freiherr von Ulmenstein. However, there is no further information about the time of foundation or its founder.

The oldest known documentary mention of Vollnkirchen can be found in a document from the Seligenstatt Monastery in the Westerwald (municipality of Seck , Verbandsgemeinde Rennerod ) and dates from September 12, 1276. This mentions benefices amounting to two malters of grain, which are sent annually from Volkinkirgin to the monastery are to be delivered. When exactly the place was founded and a church was built cannot be traced. The oldest document in which the church is explicitly mentioned as a building dates from 1373 and is related to donations to the Marienstift in Wetzlar. An old baptismal font , which is now under the chestnut trees by the staircase leading to the churchyard , indicates that a church must have stood here in the 12th century. Due to the ornaments typical of the Staufer period , the time of origin of the baptismal font could be dated to the years 1170 to 1180.

Emigrants

Vollnkirchen was not spared from the great wave of emigration in the second half of the 19th century. A multitude of citizens followed the call and lure of the New World . For many, the Midwest, especially the big cities on the Great Lakes , may have become a new home. Mention should be made of the fate of Peter Ludwig, born in Vollnkirchen in 1862, who emigrated to America in 1878 at the age of 16 and had to earn his living as a wood chopper in America without any language skills, as was common at the time. Later as a supplier of cheese and dairy products, he made it to the dairy owner in Brooklyn, New York .

War and displacement

Two world wars also demanded considerable sacrifices from the Vollnkirchners and form one of the darkest chapters of our past. Many young people and family fathers had to give their lives for the emperor, empire and fatherland.

Many elderly villagers can still remember the horror of the bombing afternoon on September 22, 1944, when Allied bomber forces turned part of the village into a field of rubble. Ten barns and two apartment buildings on the east side of the main road fell victim to the attack. There are different assumptions about the reasons. Most suspect that the airmen were returning from an attack and getting rid of their bombs. Others point to the munitions factory in Oberkleen or soldiers who hid in the nearby forest. Margot Vogt, who was 11 at the time, reports “We were up in the field and saw the planes coming. First they threw a smoking mark and then we heard something like a noise ”. About ten planes flew in an east-west direction over the village and when they disappeared again the village was on fire. Phosphorus bombs had fallen on full churches . The residents, who had sought protection at the edge of the forest or in ditches while working in the fields, ran into the village and tried to save what could be saved. Hurry, the flames quickly spread from the barns, where the harvest had already been brought in, to the half-timbered houses . Everything that was important to the residents was thrown on the street in a panic to save it from the flames. “It was a big mess. Bedding was on the street and furniture too, ”remembers Margot Vogt. The cattle tied up in the stables had to be driven out and brought to safety in higher fields. The water from the extinguishing water pond was quickly used up and only the fire brigades from Wetzlar and Dutenhofen who came to help brought the fire under control. What followed was an unprecedented wave of helpfulness. Those affected received food for the animals from neighboring communities, firewood and the damage to the buildings was repaired by neighborhood help.

On May 12, 1944, a Focke-Wulf of Jagdgeschwader 1 while intercepted was shot at and crashed in a wooded area west of the village. The pilot, Sergeant Gerhard Neukötter, was killed in a parachute crash and found by villagers in a forest east of the village ("Buchwald").

In 1946, 43 displaced persons , mostly from the Sudetenland and Egerland , came to the village. This put the community to a severe test, as most of the villagers had long years of hardship behind them and not much remained to live on. Werner Röhrich, then 15 years old, remembered that his father arrived on the village square quite late when the truck with the displaced people arrived and most of the refugees had already been assigned. Only one man needed a place to stay. This man was called Grenzer and when he arrived he wore six hats one on top of the other on his head. He was taken in by the family of seven and given a small room. Later, Mr. Grenzer built a stable out of the old syringe house (it was behind the old bakery, opposite today's bus stop) in which he kept a pig and geese. When he was building later in Rechtenbach, he hiked every day with the goslings in his rucksack and the free goose to the construction site and back again in the evening. The refugees were given fields or gardens where they could grow food for themselves. To do this, they collected cows' droppings from the street as fertilizer. The traces of many refugees have been lost to this day, many have moved away from Vollnkirchen. Some of them stayed settled and made a new home here.

Administrative history

In the Westerburgischen Urbar from 1370 Vollnkirchen is counted among the places of the Hüttenberg , an independent administrative and judicial district. Vollnkirchen was enfeoffed with all high and low courts in the 15th century and thus practically left the Hüttenberg association and became a completely independent judicial district within the limits of the Hüttenberg. Lords were in Cleeberg based Lords of Schwalbach . The feudal sovereignty remained with the Hüttenberg lords and the subjects still felt that they were part of the Hüttenberg association and strictly ensured that they were held in authority, glories, privileges and freedoms and services like the Hüttenbergers.

In 1585, in the Hüttenberg partition contract, the villages of Hüttenberg were divided up between the Landgrave of Hesse and the Count of the County of Nassau-Weilburg . Vollnkirchen remained under the joint administration of Hesse and Nassau. Only after the second partition contract of 1703 came Vollnkirchen completely under Nassau administration and was assigned to the Atzbach office.

In 1815 the County of Nassau-Weilburg ceded its Hüttenberger territories to the Kingdom of Prussia in exchange agreements . In 1816, the Hüttenberg was incorporated into the newly founded Wetzlar district and with this into the Prussian Rhine Province . Within each of the Prussian rural districts, several municipalities formed a special state administrative district, the so-called " Landbürgermeisterei ", known from 1927 as the "Office". Vollnkirchen was assigned on October 19, 1816 to the royal Prussian "mayor's office in Rechtenbach" with the official seat in Volpertshausen. In 1875 the Amt Rechtenbach was combined with the Amt Niederkleen and the official seat was moved to Rechtenbach. This mayor's office belonged to 14 villages and the administration consisted of the mayor appointed by Prussia and a mayor from each village.

In 1932, Prussia reorganized its territorial structure. In doing so, the district of Wetzlar was detached from the Rhine province and incorporated into the administrative district of Wiesbaden in the province of Hessen-Nassau. The central mayor's offices were abolished, only the accounts continued to be made by the community purpose association fund, to which all the villages of the former mayor's office belonged. The registry offices also retained their central status. On April 1, 1934, each village received its own part-time mayor instead of the previous mayor.

On December 31, 1971, the communities of Vollnkirchen, Rechtenbach and Weidenhausen were merged to form the new community of Schwingbach as part of the regional reform in Hesse . This was integrated into the newly created Hüttenberg community on January 1, 1977 by virtue of state law . For Vollnkirchen, as for the other districts, a local district with a local advisory board and local councilor was formed.

The following list gives an overview of the territories in which full churches were located or the administrative units to which it was subordinate:

Population development

Vollnkirchen: Population from 1834 to 2019
year     Residents
1834
  
 231
1840
  
 257
1846
  
 255
1852
  
 235
1858
  
 221
1864
  
 255
1871
  
 239
1875
  
 237
1885
  
 210
1895
  
 214
1905
  
 218
1910
  
 236
1925
  
 249
1939
  
 250
1946
  
 332
1950
  
 308
1956
  
 281
1961
  
 294
1967
  
 321
1970
  
 306
1980
  
 ?
1990
  
 ?
2000
  
 ?
2011
  
 399
2015
  
 396
2017
  
 406
2019
  
 423
Data source: Historical municipality register for Hesse: The population of the municipalities from 1834 to 1967. Wiesbaden: Hessisches Statistisches Landesamt, 1968.
Further sources:; 2011 census

Religious affiliation

1834: 231 Protestant residents
1961: 257 Protestant (= 87.41%), 33 Catholic (= 11.22%) residents

Culture and sights

Customs and traditions

The introduction or revival and maintenance of old customs and traditions goes back to the last teacher at the old village school, Mrs. Hermine Urspruch. No bridal couple went to church without the schoolchildren throwing them a "path", i.e. H. a path made of fir branches and flowers as a symbol for the common life path. This custom of “laying the path” is still alive today in Vollnkirchen.

The nativity play , which has been performed every Christmas since then, goes back to Frau Urspruch.

On Shrovetide , the boys and girls meet and go from house to house collecting sausage, bacon and eggs. In earlier times, a nice saying was said about this: 

„Ich bin ein neugeborener König,
gebt mir nicht zu wenig,
lasst mich nicht so lange stehen,
denn ich muss noch weiter gehen“

oder:

„Ich hab gehört ihr hätt geschlacht,
und hätt so lange Wurst gemacht.
Gebt mir eine von den Langen,
die Kurzen, die last hangen“

Even today the children go collecting through the village at the children's carnival organized by the gymnastics and sports club. However, instead of eggs and bacon, sweets have increasingly emerged. Then the children bake eggs, pancakes and waffles in the sports center.

When two young people got engaged there was also the custom of “climbing”. Gerda Messerschmidt writes about this in a school essay (1955): “If two young people are fond of each other and they don't want it to come out, then the youth sprinkles them with plum stones . But it is most beautiful with slaked lime, because you can't sweep it away, and then everyone knows what it's about. When they get engaged on Saturday, it is customary for us, the youth will throw broken pieces, because broken pieces mean luck. Afterwards they are hung up in the box. Then the young people realize that they want to "increase". They carry the wagon, the machines, the plow, the tools and whatever else can be caught. They carry it all to the box. They put a straw doll on top of it. The next morning people can get their stuff back ”.

societies

Vollnkirchen has a lively club life. The clubs also contribute to social life in the village by holding festivals.

  • Tennisfreunde 1997 Vollnkirchen eV, lily of the valley festival on May 1st at the grill hut
  • Volunteer fire brigade , village festival at the community center in June
  • Turn- und Sportverein 1965 eV, tent fair on the last weekend in July
  • Förderverein Handball Vollnkirchen eV, Backhausfest between the years around the community center
  • Women's choir

Cultural monuments

Historic town center

The appearance of a street village , which is still recognizable today , was essentially created in the 18th and 19th centuries. On both sides of the main street there were large two-storey courtyards in a U or angled shape, which were closed with built-over gatehouses or with high so-called Hüttenberger courtyard gates facing the street. The residential buildings face the street in eaves or gable positions , at the back there are outbuildings, stables and barns, behind them cottage gardens and orchards .

Even if many residential buildings in the center of the village were rebuilt or rebuilt in the second half of the 20th century and the appearance changed accordingly, an almost intact barn wreath with a green belt on both sides of the village has been preserved to this day.

Nowadays only a few of the farm gates typical of the Hüttenberger Land can be found, most of them had to give way to the new buildings. As a result, numerous gate sayings that adorned the courtyard gates at that time have also been lost. 

Ich ging einmal durch ein fremdes Land
Da stand geschrieben an einer Wand
Sei getreu und bleib verschwiegen
Was nicht dein ist, das lass liegen.
(Torspruch Hausnummer 26, heute Wertshäuser Straße 5)

Der Mensch braucht ein Plätzchen und ist es noch so klein
Von dem er kann sagen: sieh hier dies ist mein
da lebt er, da liebt er, da ruht er sich aus
da ist seine Heimat, da ist er zu Haus
(Torspruch Hausnummer 19, heute Grüner Weg 3)

Das Haus ist mein und doch nicht mein
Wer nach mir kommt, wird's auch noch sein
(Torspruch Hausnummer 31, heute Kohlgasse 8)

Old village church

The old Vollnkirchen village church was torn down in the mid-1950s and replaced by a new building on the same site, which was inaugurated at Pentecost 1957. The construction of the new church was preceded by a long and bitter dispute between the then still independent community of Vollnkirchen and the monument protection authority . While the parish and church council campaigned for the demolition of the old church and the construction of a larger new church, the state curator tried to prevent the demolition until the end. He established that the church was built in the 12th century (an annex was added in 1656) and wanted to put it under a preservation order. But all the efforts of the state curator did not help, the old church came under the pick, as a report in the Wetzlarer Neue Zeitung headlined. But he could at least achieve that the most valuable parts of the old church survived the demolition unscathed in order to be able to reuse them in the new church in a preferred location. But after decades of temporary storage in a barn , most of the pieces have been lost. So today only a few parts from the old village church have been preserved: the old bell and the mechanical clockwork are still in service and the baptismal font now ekes out its existence as a flower pot. The old organ was actually reused in a preferred location in the new church.

Old village school

The old village school was in the vicinity of the church. It is not known when the first school in Vollnkirchen was built. In 1658 the Vollnkirchener planned a new school and asked the Count of Nassau-Saarbrücken for financial help, as they could not raise the money for it on their own. In 1824, the teacher at the time, Johann Schweizer, wrote to the district administrator and complained about the poor condition of the school building: the floor of the schoolroom had so many holes that children had fallen into the basement. Because the lower half of the churchyard door was also rotten, one had to be careful that the pigs didn't crawl through below and devastate the neighboring churchyard. The outward appearance of the school also left a lot to be desired in 1824, the “Speiß is loose, the compartments are dilapidated, the windows are out of their frames” so that strangers would have believed it was a dilapidated bakery . Worse than the structural defects, however, is the fact that “there are only two small school desks and many children have to write on the benches”.

In 1843 the school and the teacher's apartment were auctioned for demolition and a new schoolhouse “and stable” was built at the same location for 1427 thalers, eight silver groschen and one pfennig. Until 1965 the schoolchildren were taught in this “one-class elementary school”, after which lessons began for all village schools at the central school in Rechtenbach in order to give “the schoolchild in the country” better educational and future opportunities. In the years after 1965 the school hall on the first floor served as a gym for the newly founded gymnastics and sports club, before the building fell victim to the demolition excavator in 1970. At the former location of the school redesigned the village center with the new today is community center (2005 opened).

Jewish Cemetery

At the end of the street “Im Wiesental” there is a small, fenced property, the Jewish cemetery of Vollnkirchen. In 1595, for the first time, Jewish residents can be found in Vollnkirchen. After the Jews were expelled from the German cities in connection with the plague pogroms in the Middle Ages , they found acceptance in the rural areas of Germany in the course of the 16th century. Until the middle of the 17th century, the right to settle Jews in Vollnkirchen belonged to the Cleeberg lower noble family "von Schwalbach".

At the beginning of the 17th century there were probably a total of 35-40 Jewish people living in Vollnkirchen. Some were merchants and regularly attended the fair in Frankfurt . They had to pay the gentlemen von Schwalbach an annual so-called “protection money” for permission to live and work in Vollnkirchen. Funeral fees were due in the event of bereavement. In 1619, income from Jewish burials in Vollnkirchen is mentioned for the first time. It can be assumed that the cemetery was laid out several years earlier by the von Schwalbach family and is therefore one of the oldest Jewish country cemeteries in Hesse today.

The cemetery in Vollnkirchen was a collective cemetery, i. H. Jews from surrounding towns were also buried there. For 1619 and 1620, burials from Großen-Linden are mentioned, which at that time did not have its own Jewish cemetery. In the middle of the 17th century the trace of the Vollnkirchen Jews is lost. It is also unknown in which houses the former Jewish residents lived, as well as where they held their services and in which house there was a mikveh (a bath for ritual ablutions). The field name “Auf dem Judenmorgen” in the district of Vollnkirchen gives evidence that they also owned land .

The cemetery continued to serve as a burial place for Jews from Lützellinden, Hochelheim and Hörnsheim in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the 19th century, due to the legal equality in the Prussian state, the Jewish population in Hochelheim and Hörnsheim increased and reached its largest numerical strength around 1885 with approx. 47 people. The cemetery in Vollnkirchen was finally too small and given up in favor of a new cemetery in Hörnsheim. The last Jewish burial in Vollnkirchen was probably in 1890, that of Heimann Rosenbaum (* 1849) from Hochelheim.

Other buildings and facilities

Opposite the old village school there used to be a building in which the old village bakery, ladder house, syringe house and cattle scale were housed, which was demolished in 1951. Next to it was the old fire pond.

There used to be a swimming pool below Kohlgasse on Geschwindbach , which was built in the 1920s. The "sunbathing lawn" was previously used mainly as a washing area and bleaching of towels. In 1949 the outdoor pool was closed and filled with soil from the canal construction. The same goes for the adjoining well, which used to supply the town with water.

Construction work on the sewer system began on April 12, 1949 in Kohlgasse. A year earlier, a water pipe was laid in Vollnkirchen. The excavation was done by hand and each household had to excavate 1 m of pipeline. In 1951 the elevated water tank was built, which is fed by the Katharinenbrunnen in Wertshausen and is now used as a water extraction point for agriculture. At the southern entrance to the village ("Vorderdorf") there used to be a fire pond, which was often used for a refreshing swim. However, the water quality was not always the best, because occasionally some liquid manure from the directly adjacent manure heap in the neighboring yard ran into it.

In Vollnkirchen there used to be several restaurants , of which only the “Golden Deer” is left today. In 1949 Otto Köhler sen. On the ground floor of the house there is a dining room, which Irmgard and Otto Köhler jun. until the 1990s. In the mid-1990s, the barn was converted into today's “inn in the barn”.

The “Ulme” inn on the corner of Wertshäuser Strasse and Kohlgasse was even older and has been in operation for several generations. The last owners Anna and Ewald Scheiter had no interest in continuing the bar and closed it in 1956. The village name "Ulme" goes back to the mother of Ewald Scheiter, born in Ulm. The pub had a hall that stood in the corner between the barn and the adjacent courtyard on Kohlgasse and was demolished around 1962. In addition to fair events, the building served as a cinema and theater hall. The "Danneck" or "Tännchen" was a pub in Wertshäuser Straße 4, which was operated in the mid-1980s. In 1972, Edith and Ernst Perscheid bought the “Speiersch House” in Grüner Weg and made it habitable. There was a beer bar in the basement.

Today's townscape

The biggest changes in the old town center have taken place at the center of the village: demolition of the old village church and new church building (mid-1950s), demolition of the old village school in 1970. The village community center built on the former school premises in the mid-1960s was demolished as part of the village renewal in 2004 the same place replaced by the new community center. The inauguration took place on January 28, 2005.

New building areas were developed around the old town center: Wiesental (mid-1950s), Foleniusstraße (mid-1960s), Rädel (1980s) and Gänsweid (2014).

traffic

The public transport is done by the bus line 313 of the Rhine-Main Transport Association .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Vollnkirchen, Lahn-Dill district. Historical local dictionary for Hessen. (As of June 8, 2018). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
  2. ↑ a b Figures, data, facts. In: Internet presence. Hüttenberg community, archived from the original ; accessed on June 16, 2020 . (Data from web archive)
  3. ^ Friedrich Kilian Abicht: The district of Wetzlar-historically, statistically, topographically. Verlag Carl Wigand, Wetzlar, 1836, Volume 1, p. 40, Volume 2, p. 92f
  4. ^ FW Freiherr von Ulmenstein: History and topographical description of the imperial free imperial city of Wetzlar. Part 1, Hadamar, 1802, pp. 190 ff
  5. ↑ Wolf-Heino Struck: Sources on the history of the monasteries and monasteries in the area of ​​the middle Lahn up to the end of the Middle Ages, Volume 4, Regesten 1156-1634, Wiesbaden 1962, No. 1546, pp. 71-72.
  6. ↑ Original document: Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Wiesbaden (HHStAW) Abt. 85 Nr. U10
  7. ↑ Wolf-Heino Struck: The Marienstift zu Wetzlar in the late Middle Ages, Regesten 1351–1500, Marburg 1969, No. 257, p. 125
  8. ↑ after research by Walter Eberts, former Wetzlar townscape curator and curator for the Wetzlar district
  9. ↑ Law on the restructuring of the Dill district, the districts of Gießen and Wetzlar and the city of Gießen (GVBl. II 330–28) of May 13, 1974 . In: The Hessian Minister of the Interior (ed.): Law and Ordinance Gazette for the State of Hesse . 1974 No. 17 , p. 237 ff ., § 11 ( online at the information system of the Hessian state parliament [PDF; 1,2 MB ]).
  10. ^ Federal Statistical Office (ed.): Historical municipality directory for the Federal Republic of Germany. Name, border and key number changes in municipalities, counties and administrative districts from May 27, 1970 to December 31, 1982 . W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart / Mainz 1983, ISBN 3-17-003263-1 , p. 380-381 .
  11. ↑ Karl-Heinz Meier barley, Karl Reinhard Hinkel: Hesse. Municipalities and counties after the regional reform. A documentation . Ed .: Hessian Minister of the Interior. Bernecker, Melsungen 1977, DNB  770396321 , OCLC 180532844 , p. 298 .
  12. ↑ Local Advisory Boards. In: website. Hüttenberg community, accessed February 2019 .
  13. ^ Michael Rademacher: German administrative history from the unification of the empire in 1871 to the reunification in 1990. State of Hesse. (Online material for the dissertation, Osnabrück 2006).
  14. ^ The affiliation of the Office Hüttenberg based on maps from the Historical Atlas of Hesse : Hessen-Marburg 1567-1604 . , Hessen-Kassel and Hessen-Darmstadt 1604–1638 . and Hessen-Darmstadt 1567–1866 .
  15. ^ Grand Ducal Central Office for State Statistics (ed.): Contributions to the statistics of the Grand Duchy of Hesse . tape 13 . G. Jonghause's Hofbuchhandlung, Darmstadt 1872, DNB  013163434 , OCLC 162730471 , p. 27 ff ., § 40 point 2) ( online at google books ).
  16. ^ Friedrich K. Abicht: The district of Wetzlar: historical, statistical and topographical . Wigand, 1836, p. 99 ( online at google books ).
  17. ↑ Numbers, data, facts. In: Internet presence. Hüttenberg community, archived from the original ; accessed on June 22, 2018 . (Data from web archive)
  18. ↑ Selected data on population and households on May 9, 2011 in the Hessian municipalities and parts of the municipality. (PDF; 1 MB) In: 2011 Census . Hessian State Statistical Office;
  19. ↑ HHSTAW 166/167 No. 2220
  20. ↑ HHSTAW 423 No. 489
  21. ↑ Festschrift for the inauguration of the Schwingbach School in 1965