Palatinate Forest


The Palatinate Forest, sometimes also called the Palatine Forest, is a low-mountain region in southwestern Germany, located in the Palatinate in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The forest is a designated nature park covering 1,771 km2 and its highest elevation is the Kalmit.
Together with the northern part of the adjacent Vosges Mountains in France it forms the UNESCO-designated Palatinate Forest-North Vosges Biosphere Reserve.

Geography

Topography

The Palatinate Forest, together with the Vosges south of the French border, from which it has no morphological separation, is part of a single central upland region of about 8,000 km2 in area, that runs from the Börrstadt Basin to the Burgundian Gate and which forms the western boundary of the Upper Rhine Plain. This landscape forms, in turn, the eastern part of the very extensive eastern scarplands of France, which, on German soil, take in large parts of the Palatinate and the Saarland, with older and younger strata.

Boundaries

While the boundaries of the Palatinate Forest are comparatively clearly defined to the north and east, the transition to neighbouring landscapes to the west and south is less sharp.
To the north, the Palatinate Forest is adjoined by the North Palatine Uplands, including the Donnersberg. This is where the bunter sandstone formations typical of the Palatinate Forest end, being replaced by other types of rock such as those of the Rotliegendes. This results in a clear geomorphological separation of the two landscape areas, which runs approximately along a line from Eisenberg via Göllheim and Börrstadt to Otterberg near Kaiserslautern.
The hill country between the Haardt and the Upper Rhine Plain, where Palatine wines are grown, is known as the Weinstrasse. The German Wine Route runs through this zone of hills.
The St. Ingbert-Kaiserslauten Depression runs up to the northwestern Palatinate Forest from west-southwest to east-northeast into which the Forest descends in a clear escarpment, especially into the boggy lowland of the Landstuhl Bruch west of Kaiserslautern.
To the west of the Großer Hausberg, the Westrich Plateau separates from the Palatinate Forest at the sharp southern boundary of the Landstuhler Bruch in a comparatively smooth transition. It reaches comparable heights in the transition area, but as a muschelkalk plateau it has a significantly different relief and is no longer fully forested. It not only stretches around the western edge of the Palatinate Forest, but also further south around the Vosges. From the area of Lemberg in Lorraine, it also forms the watershed between the Moselle and the Upper Rhine; the southern part of the region being drained completely via the Moder system to the Upper Rhine.
To the south, the narrow Zaberner Steige forms a border between the Palatinate Forest, which continues into France as the North Vosges and the "actual" Vosges. Geomorphologically and geologically, this dividing line is less pronounced than is the case on the right bank of the Rhine, where the Odenwald and Black Forest are clearly separated from each other by the lowland of the Kraichgau. Only the Burgundian Gate beyond the Vosges forms an orographically clear border on the left bank of the Rhine.

Structure

The Palatinate Forest can be divided into three areas.
  • The Northern Palatinate Forest, bounded by the extensive northern Palatine hill landscape and reaching southwards to a line from Kaiserslautern to Bad Duerkheim
  • The Middle Palatinate Forest from the Isenach stream and the line Kaiserslautern–Bad Dürkheim to the Queich stream and the line from Pirmasens to Landau
  • The Southern Palatinate Forest, the so-called Wasgau, from the Queich stream and the line from Pirmasens to Landau to the French borderline in the south.

    Subdivisions

The Palatinate Forest is a major natural region within the Palatine-Saarland Scarplands and runs south as far as the Col de Saverne, i.e. far into French territory, where it continues as the Vosges ridge. This often goes unrecognized as a result of the French border; hence the French southern part of the natural region is often, wrongly, counted as part of the North Vosges.
The important subdivisions of these bunter sandstone mountains were drawn up in the 1950s and 1960s in the Handbook of the Natural Region Divisions of Germany and 1:200,000 map sheets by the German Federal Institute for Regional Studies. Despite that, some deviation in the names used by the handbook has prevailed.
The most important subordinate landscapes are listed with the aid of a map; the map only showing the names of well-known landscapes and only the more significant landscape boundaries.
  • Palatinate Forest
  • * Lower Palatinate Forest
  • ** Otterberg Forest
  • **
  • ** Stumpfwald
  • ** Queitersberg ; eastern outskirts of Kaiserslautern
  • * Central Palatinate Forest
  • ** Diemerstein Forest
  • ** Leininger Sporn
  • ** High Palatinate Forest
  • ** Haardt
  • * Wasgau
  • ** Western Wasgau
  • *** Bitche Forest Lowland
  • ** Dahn-Annweiler Felsenland
  • *** Stürzelbronn-Schönau Felsenland
  • *** Dahner Felsenland
  • **** Dahner Felsenland in the narrower sense
  • **** Annweiler Felsenland
  • *** Annweiler-Albersweiler Outskirts
  • ** Eastern Wasgau
  • *** Upper Mundat Forest
  • *** Hochwald
  • *** Lembach Graben
  • ** ''Southern Wasgau''

    History

Name

The name Pfälzerwald was first used in 1843 – when the Palatinate was part of the Kingdom of Bavaria – by foresters in the centrally located municipality of Johanniskreuz, who used it to refer to the woods of the bunter sandstone region of the Palatinate. Its use was extended when, in 1902, the Palatinate Forest Club was founded, Fritz Claus, one of the pioneers of the PWV, in particular, strove to promote the name. A more precise, scientifically based definition of the Palatinate Forest as an independent natural region was introduced in 1911 by Daniel Häberle, a Palatine geographer and local historian.
Prior to 1850, there was no overall name for the Palatine's bunter sandstone mountains. Historical territorial factors, rather than geographical ones, governed perceptions at the time. By contrast, the Celts and Romans viewed the entire mountain range west of the Rhine as a single unit, making no distinction between different parts of the region that, today, is the Palatinate Forest and the Vosges. The range was named after the Celtic forest god Vosegus and is recorded in many Roman manuscripts as "silva vosegus" or "mons vosegus". It was from this linguistic root that, during the Middle Ages, the name Vosges emerged in the French-speaking area and Wasgen or Wasigenwald, later also Wasgau, in the German-speaking region.
So while the term Wasgen continued, for a long time, to refer to the entire range on the west bank of the Rhine, at the beginning of the 20th century, it gradually became restricted to the Alsatian part of the sandstone mountains, whilst the term Pfälzerwald became increasingly used to refer to the Palatine part. This led to the Palatinate Forest and Vosges being defined as separate and distinct landscapes. However, in recent decades, in the context of European integration, there has been an increasing trend to regard the entire mountain complex as a single geographical entity again. Evidence of this changed attitude can be seen, for example, in the establishment in 1998 of the first cross-border biosphere reserve, the Palatinate Forest-North Vosges Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO.

History of settlement

Traces of activity (to the 10th century)

Whilst there are traces of human activities in the more habitable regions of what is now the Palatinate, taking place since the Neolithic period, and especially in Celtic and Roman times, the mountains on the west bank of the Rhine were practically uninhabited and covered by dense, ancient forest until the end of the Migration Period.

Abbeys, colonisation and development (7th to 13th centuries)

After the Frankish conquests in the Early Middle Ages took them to the edges of today's Palatinate Forest, there was increasing population pressure in the Middle Ages, especially through the initiatives of the nobility and the church, e.g. through the establishment of monasteries such as the Cistercian abbeys of Otterberg and Eußerthal, the colonization and development of the mountains. Areas that could be used for agriculture were cleared and settled permanently. This development reached its peak in the region during the era of the Salian and Hohenstaufen emperors, with the construction of Trifels Castle and other castles in the surrounding area that, for a time, made it the centre of power of the empire.

Abandoned villages, over-exploitation and depletion (14th-18th centuries)

This development took place in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period, because disease and famine led to a significant decline in population and the total number of settlements fell sharply, as a result of wars and economic circumstances. Thus, during the colonization of the mountains, areas were often cleared that, because of the nutrient-poor sandy soils, were unsuitable for farming and had to be abandoned after a short period because of overuse and overexploitation. Also, the use of the forest to obtain firewood and timber did not follow the principles of sustainability. On the one hand, the production of straw and wood pasture damaged the soils and forests; on the other hand the manufacture of iron, glass and potash, which needed a lot of wood, led for centuries to the overuse and destruction of the forest and thus to the further impoverishment of the population. Occupations that the forest itself supported, such as lumberjacks, charcoal burners, rafters, resin burners and ash burners, supported only a meagre existence.