Wanderer

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Wandersmann memorial with base and fountain trough in front
Inscription on the base - the broken bronze lion head as a gargoyle is missing
View from the Wandersmann to Wiesbaden , behind the Taunushöhe
Map from 1893 with "Gasthof" and "Monument"

Wanderer is the popular name for a 20-ton monumental obelisk of sandstone with a fountain basin near the Wiesbaden Cross at the Bundesautobahn 66 . The eleven meter high monument bears the Latin inscription:

"Friedericus Augustus Dux Nassoviae hanc viam construi iussit, MDCCCXIII"
(" Friedrich August Duke of Nassau ordered this road to be built, 1813"). The number should indicate the year of completion.

history

After the founding of the Duchy of Nassau in 1806, the government began a road construction program to better connect the various areas - two dozen formerly independent, then secularized or mediatized territories - of the newly created state with around 300,000 residents under pressure from Napoleon . The most important connection was that between the three largest cities of the Duchy of Nassau: Wiesbaden , Limburg and Höchst . This road led from Limburg an der Lahn to Wiesbaden, the largest and capital of the country with around 5000 inhabitants at that time, near the ducal residence Schloss Biebrich am Rhein , from here to Höchst am Main , and on to Frankfurt am Main .

The northern part of this new road essentially followed the existing route and ran from Limburg at the level of the Platte over the Taunushauptkamm to Wiesbaden. From here the Frankfurter Straße then led to Erbenheim in the east and from there via a newly traced route through the former Hesse-Darmstadt country until it met the old Mainstraße before Hattersheim , with which it ran to Höchst and on to Frankfurt. The apex of this shortening, not following the course of the river, new route lay on the approximately 160 meter high ridge between the Wickerbach and the Weilbach . This was the high point of the entire route between Wiesbaden and Frankfurt.

A stele was erected on this hill between 1816 and 1819 south of the Chaussee , which was supposed to remind of the road construction. The model for this monument were Roman road columns, such as those that mark the Via Trajana Nova at the port of Brindisi . The obelisk made of red sandstone for this purpose is seven and a half meters high and stands on a three-tiered square base. The fountain bowl at the foot of the monument served as a horse trough after the heavily laden wagons were pulled up the slope .

During the construction phase, a construction hut was built about half the length of the new building route near Wallau east of the bridge over the Wickerbach, in which a tavern was set up after the road was completed before 1819. The inn was named Zum Wandersmann in 1850 .

This naming of the inn had consequences. From then on, the whole street was called Wandersmannstraße , as can be seen from the street name of the section in the Erbenheim area, and the obelisk, which stood not far from the inn about half a kilometer east on the other side of the street, became a Wandersmann memorial .

In 1935 it had to give way to the construction of the Wiesbadener Kreuz , the provisional endpoint of the Reichsautobahn from Cologne to Frankfurt , which opened in 1939 . The memorial stood in the way of the southwestern part of the clover leaf and was moved further west to the north side of Frankfurter Strasse, now known as Reichsstrasse 54 . It was now only about 400 meters from the inn and stood at the foot of the hill. The junction of the motorway was also called Wandersmann . The inn itself was demolished in 1958. It stood in the way of the expansion of Frankfurter Straße, at that time the busiest street in Germany, to the Rhein-Main-Schnellweg .

In 1982 the obelisk had to move again. Since then, it has stood 60 meters from the northwestern part of the clover leaf at the end of the transition from the A 3 from Cologne to the A 66 to Wiesbaden. This was preceded by a conflict between the road construction administration and the district's lower monument protection authority. Originally, the road construction authority had planned to move it 500 meters to a parking lot. Minister Heinz-Herbert Karry (FDP), on the other hand, ordered the obelisk to be erected at its current location in the immediate vicinity of the original location, as requested by the city and district.

Since the high-speed route Cologne – Rhine / Main was put into operation in 2002, the Wandersmann area for the junction to Wiesbaden has been crossed by the Wandersmann South Tunnel and the Wandersmann North Tunnel .

Web links

Commons : Wandersmann  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Annals of the Association for Nassau antiquity and historical research: Volume 30, 1899 , p. 126.
  2. ↑ a b see map of the Duchy of Nassau: from the recordings made in 1819 ... etc., sheet 45 .
  3. ↑ Gottfried Kiesow : Learning to see cultural history , Volume 1. Monuments - Publications of the German. Monument Protection Foundation, Bonn 1997, ISBN 978-3-936942-03-3 .
  4. ↑ see map of the German Empire published by the Reichsamt für Landesaufnahme in 1893 , sheet 507 .
  5. ↑ Frankfurt - Documentation on the post-war period, with photo of the Wiesbaden Cross and the 2nd location of the obelisk ( Memento from February 14, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ Topographic map 1: 25,000, as of 1979.
  7. ^ Adolf Metzler: From the history of the village Wallau / Taunus . 1982
  8. ^ Topographic map 1: 25,000, sheet 5916.
  9. ↑ Otto Winterwerber: The obelisk "Am Wandersmann" in Hofheim-Wallau . In: Boddenkmäler im Außenbereich , 1987, ISSN  0176-7097 , pp. 71-73.

Coordinates: 50 ° 3 ′ 23 ″  N , 8 ° 23 ′ 2 ″  E