Wasungen

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coat of arms Germany map
Coat of arms of the city of Wasungen
Wasungen
Map of Germany, location of the city Wasungen highlighted

Coordinates: 50 ° 40 ′  N , 10 ° 22 ′  E

Basic data
State : Thuringia
County : Schmalkalden-Meiningen
Management Community : Wasungen-Amt Sand
Height : 270 m above sea level NHN
Area : 89.09 km 2
Residents: 5498 (Dec. 31, 2019)
Population density : 62 inhabitants per km 2
Postal code : 98634
Area code : 036941
License plate : SM, MGN
Community key : 16 0 66 086

City administration address :
Markt 9 - 11
98634 Wasungen
Website : www.wasungen.de
Mayor : Thomas Kästner (independent)
Location of the city of Wasungen in the district of Schmalkalden-Meiningen
Belrieth Birx Breitungen Brotterode-Trusetal Christes Dillstädt Einhausen (Thüringen) Ellingshausen Erbenhausen Fambach Floh-Seligenthal Frankenheim/Rhön Friedelshausen Grabfeld Kaltennordheim Kaltennordheim Kühndorf Leutersdorf Mehmels Meiningen Meiningen Neubrunn Oberhof Obermaßfeld-Grimmenthal Oberweid Rhönblick Rippershausen Ritschenhausen Rohr Rosa Roßdorf (Thüringen) Schmalkalden Schwallungen Schwarza Steinbach-Hallenberg Sülzfeld Untermaßfeld Utendorf Vachdorf Wasungen Wasungen Zella-Mehlis Thüringenmap
About this picture

Wasungen is a town in the Thuringian district of Schmalkalden-Meiningen in Germany . It is the seat of the administrative community Wasungen-Amt Sand , to which three other municipalities belong.

geography

The city is located in the southwest of Thuringia, eleven kilometers (as the crow flies) north of Meiningen between the Thuringian Forest and the Rhön in the central Werra Valley .

City structure

The following districts belong to the city of Wasungen:

history

Downtown Wasungen (1991)
City Church of St. Trinity from 1584
Pfaffenburg from 1387

Wasungen was next Schwallungen and Schmalkalden in a deed of noble Kunihilt to the monastery of Fulda 874 as Vuasunga first mentioned in documents. The name of the place is derived from the Old High German word "Wasen" = moist lawn. The name of the agricultural settlement to the left of the Werra, first mentioned in 874 and later abandoned, was transferred to the market settlement built in the 12th century on the other side of the valley at the foot of the Schlossberg, the development of which was supported by the lords of Wasungen , who were seated at the castle .

The noble and very rich Siegfried von Wasungen (older generation) was only mentioned shortly after his death in 1157 and the castle in 1190. The younger Wasung family was related to the Counts of Henneberg . The lords of Wasungen, named from 1228 to 1265, were ministerials of the Counts of Henneberg, they cannot be assigned to exactly one family. But Friedrich, mentioned in 1265, clearly belongs to the Wasung family. He was Ministerialer to Count von Henneberg. In 1274 Wasungen then belonged to the Henneberg-Schleusingen count line. The central court was raised to a free imperial district court in 1307. Graf Berthold VII. Von Henneberg-Schleusingen procured in 1308, the already 1301 "oppidum" place called the Schweinfurt city charter .

In 1299 a Wilhelmite monastery was founded in Wasungen , which soon became a considerable property and later came into conflict with the interests of the bourgeoisie. It existed in the county of Henneberg until the Reformation was introduced in 1525 .

The castle Wasungen was the seat of the Office Wasungen . It was later pledged several times. In the Peasants' War in 1525, it was unlike many other castles of the area not destroyed. From 1526 the buildings were redesigned into a domain and occupied by a tenant. Today the castle grounds are used as a hotel restaurant and an excursion restaurant.

After the Hennebergs died out, Wasungen came under the joint administration of the Ernestine and Albertine Wettins in 1583 . With the real division of the county in 1660 Wasungen came to Saxe-Gotha and 1680 to Saxe-Meiningen .

Wasungen was persecuted by witches from 1597 to 1668 . 22 women were involved in witch trials , seven were burned, one died under torture and one in dungeon. The first victims were Margaretha Zöllner and her daughter.

Wasungen has been a commercial town with an emphasis on metal professions since the 16th century. Wasung gunmakers achieved top performances worldwide. In 1659 Wasungen became the starting point and regional center of tobacco cultivation , processing and trade (flourishing until the 19th century). In 1708 the geographer Johann Gottfried Gregorii alias Melissantes praised the excellent tobacco from Wasungen.

In the years 1747 and 1748 the city was occupied by Gotha troops during the Wasung war . The “war” between the two Ernestine duchies of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg and Saxe-Meiningen went down in history as one of the most remarkable excesses of German small states in the 18th century .

During the National Socialist era , at least ten residents were victims of forced sterilization . During the Second World War , 130 prisoners of war , military internees and women and men from the countries occupied by Germany had to do forced labor in Wasungen . 295 people died in the local prisoner-of-war hospital . A memorial stone erected on the Hungerberg in 1948 commemorates the Soviet victims of the camp . An obelisk and another memorial stone are in the cemetery.

On July 1, 1950, the previously independent municipality of Bonndorf was incorporated. On January 1, 2019, the municipalities of Hümpfershausen , Metzels , Oepfershausen , Unterkatz and Wahns were incorporated into the city of Wasungen as part of the regional reform in Thuringia . Before that, they had been united in the administrative community Wasungen-Amt Sand since 1995 . The town of Wasungen and the districts still belong to this.

Population development

Development of the population:

  • 1833: 6666
  • 1994: 4026
  • 1995: 4018
  • 1996: 3989
  • 1997: 3977
  • 1998: 3959
  • 1999: 3941
  • 2000: 3918
  • 2001: 3852
  • 2002: 3824
  • 2003: 3802
  • 2004: 3764
  • 2005: 3736
  • 2006: 3730
  • 2007: 3696
  • 2008: 3628
  • 2009: 3577
  • 2010: 3542
  • 2011: 3511
  • 2012: 3467
  • 2013: 3448
  • 2014: 3387
  • 2015: 3384
  • 2016: 3382
  • 2017: 3306
  • 2018: 3254
Data source: from 1994 Thuringian State Office for Statistics - values ​​from December 31st

religion

39% of the residents are Protestant, 2% Catholic (as of 2011).

politics

Local elections 2019
Turnout: 58.2%
 %
40
30th
20th
10
0
26.3%
14.2%
5.8%
8.1%
13.7%
31.9%
other

City council

The local elections on May 26, 2019 with a turnout of 58.2% led to the following distribution of the 26 seats in the city council:

Party / list Share of votes Seats
CDU 26.3% 7th
The left 5.8% 1
SPD 8.1% 2
Free voters 14.2% 4th
AfD 13.4% 4th
other 31.9% 8th

mayor

Wasungen-Rathaus.jpg
Town hall (built 1532–1534)
Wasungen town hall backside.jpg
Back of the Wasunger town hall

The full-time mayor is Thomas Kästner.

coat of arms

Blazon : “In blue a silver castle with an open gate and two cripple towers; between them a golden shield, in it a black hen on a mountain of three. "

partnership

Culture and sights

Buildings

As a symbol of the city which is considered ruined castle Maienluft , which now houses a restaurant and their keep a view of the Werra and the nearby front rhön offers. Remains of the walls and the chapel of the castle are still preserved.

The small old town is characterized by a large number of half-timbered buildings. Around the market square are grouped half-timbered houses from the 16th to 20th centuries as well as the town hall built from 1532 to 1534 , a three-storey half-timbered building with an asymmetrical bay window, as well as the late-Gothic town church of St. Trinity , which was built in 1584 , the Judenturm and the Pfaffenburg from the Year 1387.

Around 1299 a Wilhelmitenkloster was built on the left bank of the Werra, which was destroyed in the Peasants' War in 1525.

Wasung Carnival

Carnival center "Narrenburg"

Wasungen is best known for the Wasung Carnival. This is mentioned for the first time in a city bill from 1524. Thus Wasungen looks back on one of the oldest traditions nationwide.

The great historical parade with around 2000 participants and around 100 creative moving pictures takes place every year under a different dialect motto - traditionally on the Saturday before Rose Monday. “Woesinge ahoy!” Is the carnival battle cry of the Wasungers. The Wasunger parade is led by the "Prince Carnival" and his foolish entourage. In the GDR, the place was called the city ​​of the People's Carnival . Wasungen has been able to maintain this tradition of the "People's Carnival" to this day.

The legendary “Wasunger pranks” (so-called “Woesinger”) put the Wasungers in a row with the shield citizens , although the Wasunger pranks differ significantly in their typical style with all similarities.

Wasungen women's pen

Wasungen women's pen

Since Bernhard Marschalk von Ostheim had no children from his marriage to Christine Brigitte von Buchenau in 1559 , he decided to transfer his legacy to numerous foundations, including a. for the poor, parishes, schools, family members and unserved nobles. The Walldorf Hospital or the alms legate there should be emphasized. In 1596 he had the inherited Marschalkschen Adelshof in Wasungen, until then a defensive and residential tower with a bower and garden on the city wall, rebuilt as a representative half-timbered building in the Renaissance style. Equipped with a foundation capital of 8,000 guilders, the foundation was initially supposed to house and support four single and needy daughters of noble families. In 1601 Anna Maria Trott moved in as the first canoness. The Wasunger Damenstift was probably the earliest permanent establishment of a free-world Protestant women's foundation in Germany, which did not emerge from a former medieval monastery or monastery during the Reformation. After long-lasting supply problems for the abbey inmates, a noticeable improvement was not made until various private and sovereign donations from the 18th century, namely by the Duchess Louise Eleonore von Sachsen-Meiningen on the occasion of the anniversary of the Reformation in 1817. From then on, the abbey was named Herzoglich- Saxon Louisen-, Baron Marschalk'sches Damenstift Wasungen . At the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, the Wasunger Konvent consisted of 13 regular, private and expectant positions for noble, but also for bourgeois canons. Only five of them lived in an apartment in the monastery house. The remaining conventual women only received a preamble and were allowed to wear the monastery order. Since no further donations were made after the turn of the century and a contemporary adjustment of the prebends to the changed general currency and price conditions could not be guaranteed, the various positions were gradually no longer filled. The monastery dissolved with the death of the last resident and provost Emilie Karoline Ida von Stein in 1931. Today the former monastery house houses the Wasung city museum and archive, the tourist information and the Thuringian Carnival Museum.

Economy and Infrastructure

traffic

Wasungen is on the Werra Railway , which connects Eisenach with Eisfeld and Sonneberg . The Süd-Thüringen-Bahn operates the route every hour.

The federal road 19 runs right through the village . This affects the historic houses on the main street. In the regional planning procedure, a tunnel variant was specified as a bypass. The Wasungen bypass on the B19 is in the Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan 2035 in the "Urgent need with planning rights" category.

Established businesses

At the end of the town on the B 19 in the direction of Meiningen, a small industrial and commercial area was created after the fall of the Wall. However, the two most important companies in the city are located on Aluminumstraße at the exit towards Fulda , PREFA Aluminumprodukte GmbH and TUBEX Wasungen GmbH (TUBEX Group) with 180 employees. Both companies belong to the CAG Holding, which has its headquarters in Austria. They go back to the former VEB Metallwerk Wasungen from GDR times, which belonged to the VEB Kosmetik-Kombinat Berlin and at that time covered almost the entire demand for aluminum tubes.

Public safety and fire protection

In Wasunger Town Hall is the seat of an area of contact officials of the Thuringian police , which the police station Schmalkalden-Meiningen reports directly.

Fire protection in Wasungen and its districts of Hümpfershausen , Metzels , Oepfershausen , Unterkatz and Wahns is ensured by the Wasungen volunteer fire department . The Wasungen fire brigade and the weirs in the individual districts work closely together. The Wache Wasungen is also a fire brigade with supra-local tasks in the Schmalkalden-Meiningen district , which is available with technology and resources in the district's hazard prevention concept.

Personalities

Honorary citizen

sons and daughters of the town

Other personalities

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Population of the municipalities from the Thuringian State Office for Statistics  ( help on this ).
  2. Description of the small medieval town of Wasungen ( Memento from February 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive ).
  3. Thomas Bienert: Medieval castles in Thuringia. 430 castles, castle ruins and fortifications. Wartberg Verlag, Gudensberg-Gleichen 2000, ISBN 3-86134-631-1 , pp. 275-277.
  4. Kai Lehmann : Innocent. Witch hunt south of the Thuringian Forest. Over 500 researched cases from the 16th and 17th centuries. Wehry-Verlag, Untermaßfeld 2012, ISBN 978-3-9813902-8-5 , p. 427 f .; Kai Lehmann: Exhibition "Luther and the Witches". Wasungen area, Library Museum Schloss Wilhelmsburg Schmalkalden, 2012; Ronald Füssel: The persecution of witches in the Thuringian area (= publications of the working group for historical witchcraft and crime research in Northern Germany. Vol. 2). DOBU-Verlag, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-934632-03-3 , pp. 240 ff. And 247, (also: Marburg, Universität, Dissertation, 2000).
  5. Wasungen in Rhon lexicon .
  6. Thuringian Association of the Persecuted of the Nazi Regime - Association of Antifascists and Study Group of German Resistance 1933–1945 (Ed.): Local history guide to sites of resistance and persecution 1933–1945. Volume 8: Thuringia. VAS - Verlag für Akademische Schriften, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-88864-343-0 , p. 263.
  7. census database
  8. Thuringian State Office for Statistics: Municipal council election 2019 - final result Wasungen .
  9. ACE steering wheel. Issue 9, 2010, ISSN  0943-3945 , p. 38.

Web links

Commons : Wasungen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikivoyage: Wasungen  - travel guide