Odenwald


The Odenwald is a low mountain range in the German states of Hesse, Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg.

Location

The Odenwald is located between the Upper Rhine Plain with the Bergstraße and the Hessisches Ried to the west, the Main and the Bauland to the east, the Hanau-Seligenstadt Basin – a subbasin of the Upper Rhine Rift Valley in the Rhine-Main Lowlands – to the north and the Kraichgau to the south. The part south of the Neckar valley is sometimes called the Kleiner Odenwald.
The northern and western Odenwald belong to southern Hesse, with the south stretching into Baden. In the northeast, a small part lies in Lower Franconia in Bavaria.

Geology

The Odenwald, along with other parts of the Central German Uplands, belongs to the Variscan, which more than 300 million years ago in the Carboniferous period ran through great parts of Europe. The cause of this orogeny was the collision of Africa’s and Europe's forerunner continents.
In the Triassic, about 200 million years ago, the land sank again, forming the Germanic Basin in which the metre-thick layers of red sandstone could build up. These were later covered over with layers of muschelkalk from a broad inland sea, then followed by sediments from the Late Triassic. The South German Cuesta Land thus formed.
When the land in the Odenwald was uplifted again about 180 million years ago, more than 100 m of the sedimentary layering, in parts, was eroded away down to the bedrock, as can still be seen in the western Odenwald. The bedrock here is composed of a number of different rocks, among them gneiss, granite, diorite, gabbro in the Frankenstein pluton, and so on. In the eastern Odenwald, the red sandstone is all that is left of the sedimentary mixture. Farther east in the Bauland, the muschelkalk deposits still overlie the Early Triassic layers. Furthermore, in the south near Heidelberg, there is still Zechstein under the Early Triassic deposits.
Roughly 50 to 60 million years ago, volcanoes formed along the great geological faults. Still bearing witness to this time are the Otzberg, the Daumberg and the Katzenbuckel, all extinct volcanoes in the Odenwald. Furthermore, volcanism with acidic rocks has left a legacy of rhyolites near Dossenheim. The Otzberg cataclasite zone as a major tectonic suture separates the two main units of the crystalline basement of the Odenwald.
At roughly the same time, the Central European plate began to tear apart so that the Upper Rhine Rift developed. Even as the Upper Rhine Rift valley still sinks today by just under a millimetre each year, the Odenwald, relatively to that, was uplifted to the height it has today. Along the faults, the small rivers Gersprenz and Weschnitz have, in part, carved their courses.
The Upper Rhine Rift is part of a fracture zone reaching from the Mediterranean Sea to Norway. Right on the edge of the Odenwald, it is roughly 2 500 m deep, but has been filled in to its current height by river and sea sediment, for until about 20 million years ago, the North Sea reached far inland, across the Wetterau Depression into the Rhine Valley.

Geological maps

History

About 2500 BC, there is evidence that the Linear Pottery culture settled along the northern and southern edges of the Odenwald. About 400 BC, Celts settled throughout southern Germany. Almost all of the Odenwald was covered then with virgin forest, and the outer edges were not settled. Germanic peoples drove the Celts westwards across the Rhine to what is now France.
About AD 100, the older Odenwald line of the Neckar-Odenwald Limes was built under Roman Emperor Trajan. This stretch of the Empire's border ran from Fort Wimpfen in the Valley northwards by way of the Forts of Neckarburken, the lesser forts of Trienz and Robern near Fahrenbach, Fort Oberscheidental, Fort Schloßau, Fort Hesselbach, Fort Würzberg, Fort Eulbach, Fort Hainhaus and Fort Hesselbach to Fort Wörth on the Main. Parts of the Odenwald now lay in Roman-ruled Germania Superior.
About 159, the Limes was shifted about eastwards to the Miltenberg–Walldürn–Buchen-Osterburken line. In 260, Roman hegemony fell. The Alamanni were also thrusting into the Odenwald and settling the land between the Main and Neckar, after whom came the Franks. In the 5th century, the Franks, under Clovis I, divided the land up into districts.
In the 7th and 8th centuries came Christianization by Irish-Scottish and Anglo-Saxon monks. On the muschelkalk lands of today's Bauland, which favoured agriculture, a broad mesh of settlements arose. The parts of the Odenwald farther in from the rivers, though, with their scant New Red Sandstone soils remained uninhabited. Four Benedictine monasteries were assigned the job of opening the empty woods up by the central Frankish power, Lorsch Abbey from the west, Fulda Monastery from the east and Mosbach Monastery from the south. Amorbach Monastery had the greatest importance for ecclesiastical, cultural and economic development in the eastern Odenwald.
In the 9th century in the southeastern Odenwald near the now more thickly settled Bauland, settlements were established. The muschelkalk-new red sandstone mineral boundary was crossed.

Name

The following are some theories about the origin of the name Odenwald:
  1. Some have claimed that the toponym comes from Odins Wald. The main problem here is that the god Wodanaz was worshipped in southern Germany under the name Wotan.
  2. A further theory holds that there is a link between the name Odenwald and the Roman administrative unit Civitas Auderiensium, which among other things included the range's northern reaches and might have been named after a tribe called the Auderienses.
  3. There could be some kinship with the word öde, not in the currently understood meaning in German of desert, but rather in the meaning thinly settled.
  4. Einhard, the biographer of Charlemagne used the term Odanwald. Therefore, the renowned historian Karl Christ establishes a connection to the Old High German expression odan and presumes, that the Odenwald was a hunting ground, which the King of the Franks Dagobert I. enfeoffed in 628 the Bishopric of Worms.
  5. An eminent geographer of the 16th century, Sebastian Münster, proposed a tribal chief as the name giver. However, it is not proven whether there actually was a count or duke called Odo. Finally, Münster's researches do not lead to any result.
Linguists who research phonetic changes and the sound shifts reject theories no. 1 to 3 and prefer 4 or 5; some historians favor no. 2.

Legends and mythology

The numerous Odenwald folk legends are mostly connected with historic geographic sites They relate:
  • mysterious actions and appearances of ghosts in a castle or in a nightscape respectively in a cottage: The Höhmann near Bensheim, the White Lady of Mossau, the Schlurcher close by Erbach, the Man without head near Heppenheim, the Goast-nuns of monastery Steinbach.
  • the stories of knights and their ladies: Konrad and Ann-Els von Tannenberg, Edelmut von Ehrenberg and Minna von Horneck at the Minneburg, Georg von Frankenstein and Annemariechen, Hans von Rodenstein and Maria von Hochberg.
  • the apparitions of the devil: Teufelspfad to the Felsberg, Teufelsstein in Gorxheimertal, Opferstein on the top of the Juhöhe.
  • or the apparitions of a witch: for example in the shape of a pig in Bensheim
In some stories the local aspect firstly is connected with monsters and creatures of nature with magic potency.
Secondly the local legend is connected with the genre of the historic saga: a historic person or an original is portrayed anecdotally.
Thirdly a local tale explains an etiological or original myth. For example, there is explained:
  • why a name is given: many Wildweibchensteine in the Odenwald, Teufelsstein, Teufelspfad, Opfersteine and Hundsköpfe on top of the Juhöhe, Hölzerlips-stone, Schimmeldewoog for the village Schönmattenwag or the phrase “hinnerum wie die Fraa vun Bensem”,
  • why a natural phenomena, for example a typical landscape, was formed: the saga creates a mythic history for the places of the felsenmeer and the Hohenstein near Reichenbach or the Herrgottsfelsen near Darmstadt,
  • why a castle was built at a special place and was so named hereafter,
  • why a mysterious stone carving was inset in a castle-wall: figure of a dog at the portal of the Minneburg near Neckargerach, the Blecker at the town gate of Buchen, the Breilecker above the door of Breuberg-castle.
Beside these legends there are two famous and well-known Odenwaldsagas:
In the Nibelungenlied the dragon slayer Siegfried, on a hunting trip leading from the Burgundian city of Worms into the Odenwald, is murdered by Hagen of Tronje. Since no exact spot for this deed has been handed down, countless communities, especially in the Hessian Odenwald are squabbling over the right to call themselves “Siegfried’s Murder Site”, for example a spring near Gras-Ellenbach or Heppenheim.
The ruins of Rodenstein and Schnellerts near Fränkisch-Crumbach are the setting of an Odenwald ghost story: during the night the knight Rodenstein flies with a berserker-cornet through the air to prophesy the beginning of a war.

Topography

Mountains

Over 600 m

  • Katzenbuckel, Neckar-Odenwald-Kreis, Baden-Württemberg
  • Neunkircher Höhe, Bergstraße district, Hesse

    Over 450 m

  • Hardberg, Bergstraße district, Hesse
  • Stiefelhöhe, Hesse/Baden-Württemberg border
  • Tromm, Bergstraße district, Hesse
  • Krehberg, Bergstraße district, Hesse
  • Königstuhl, Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg
  • Krähberg, Odenwaldkreis, Hesse
  • Kinzert, Neckar-Odenwald-Kreis, Baden-Württemberg
  • Weißer Stein, Rhein-Neckar-Kreis, Baden-Württemberg
  • Hohe Warte, Rhein-Neckar-Kreis, Baden-Württemberg
  • Spessartskopf, Bergstraße district, Hesse
  • Falkenberg, Odenwaldkreis, Hesse
  • Waldskopf, Gorxheimertal-Trösel, Bergstraße district, Hesse
  • Das Buch, Bergstraße district, Hesse
  • Wagenberg, Bergstraße district, Hesse
  • Eichelberg, Rhein-Neckar-Kreis, Baden-Württemberg
  • Götzenstein, Bergstraße district, Hesse
  • Melibokus , Bergstraße district, Hesse
  • Morsberg, Odenwaldkreis, Hesse
  • Felsberg, Bergstraße district, Hesse
  • Knodener Kopf, Bergstraße district, Hesse
  • Wannenberg, Miltenberg district, Bavaria
  • Daumberg, Gorxheimertal-Trösel, Bergstraße district, Hesse