Wetterau

The Wetterau is a landscape in Hesse in Germany. Geographically, it is counted to the Rhine -Main- lowland and forms the main unit 234

• 3.1 prehistory
• 3.2 Roman Period
• 3.3 Middle Ages
• 3.4 Modern Times
• 3.5 quote

Geography

The extent of the Wetterau was conceived much more extensive in the Middle Ages and early modern period than is the case in the present:

Middle Ages

The term weather ( g ) au recognized as a district in the Middle Ages a space that towered far above all to the east over the space so designated today. To the west of the Wettergau bordered the Niddagau, south and east of the Maingau Kinziggau. The Rheingau lay to the west.

Early Modern Times

Still in the early modern period the expansion of Wetterau was much broader than it is today. Erasmus Alberus she describes 1552 as the area between Gelnhausen and Mainz-Kastel and between casting and Blessed city, the Wetterau can so south to reach beyond the Main and west extend to the Rhine.

Today

As Wetterau is now the area north of Frankfurt am Main, east of the Taunus and southwest of the Vogelsberg. The southern boundary is the High Street in about. The main part of this landscape takes the Wetterau a county ( Friedberg ). Derive their name from the small river weather, but it is traversed by other rivers, including the Horloff, Nidda, Nidder and Usa. The name is somewhat misleading, since called the Wetterau countryside over the catchment area of the river extends weather. Rather, the landscape includes a large part of the catchment area of ​​the Nidda, in which the weather discharges at Aces home.

Geology

The Wetterau is part of a weakness zone of the earth's crust, which has sunk in the Tertiary period. It belongs to the unity of the Upper Rhine Graben, the fan-shaped splits at its northern end. In the West, this is the Mainz Basin and to the east the Hessian Depression, which also includes the Wetterau heard. The basement rocks form from the Rotliegend sediments, although not come to light and were only encountered in drilling. Since the Paleozoic sediments deposited by westerly Taunus ridge. From the Cenozoic basalt cobbles also from the eastern Vogelsberg belong. With the onset of volcanism in the Vogelsberg some basalt flows have flowed through the Wetterau. During the Quaternary period - during the last ice age - a loess soil formed by deposits of fine silty dust. His fertility has shaped the landscape the most lasting, the Wetterau is used intensively for agriculture today. Until the Second World War, isolated by mining brown coal was mined (especially in the area around Roßdorf and Woelfersheim ), in the Middle Ages and iron ore. Some site names suggest today, such as at the Ludwig hut.

History

Prehistory

The Wetterau is one of the oldest cultural landscapes in Germany. Because of their profitable even under the then simple conditions soils it has been in Altneolithikum ( Linear Pottery culture ) to a dense population. The subsequent cultures have also left many traces. As outstanding finds the tombs of the Bronze Age level Woelfersheim be mentioned or the Celtic finds from Glauberg. Many cultural and historical artefacts that time, and from other historical periods are exhibited in the Wetterau Museum in Friedberg.

Roman time

During the Roman era in the Wetterau see main article: Civitas Taunensium

In Roman times the Wetterau had a high strategic importance for the advance of the free Germania. The old settlement chamber seems, however, no longer inhabited at the time of arrival of the Romans at the Rhine close to numerous oppida the La Tène period were largely abandoned. Instead, in the first century, some German groups in the Wetterau tangible. After the German campaigns of Augustus ( 69-79 AD) were amplified created forts and roads in the Wetterau from the vespasianischen time. A comprehensive Aufsiedlung the Wetterau with civilian vici and rustic villas began a little later around 100 AD In a wide arc of fertile Wetterau Limes closed with a. The region was part of the Civitas Taunensium with the main town Nida (Frankfurt- Heddernheim ). The Wetterau remained until the limit case in the 3rd century part of the Empire region.

Middle Ages

The documentary was first mentioned place in the year 779 in the Lorsch Codex, as a woman Meginburc their entire in Arilbach (today: Frankfurt Nieder-Erlenbach ) located possession of the monastery Lorsch bequeathed, with Arilbach in Gau Wetteraiba ( Wetterau ) was. The Wettergau was one of the provinces which were administered in the Frankish Empire on behalf of the King by Earl. In the southern Wetterau a larger area in the possession of the Counts of Nürings is tangible in the 12th century, referred to as a county Malstatt.

The agricultural profitability of Wetterau was well known. Erasmus Alberus praises precisely these agricultural profitability in its Short description of the Wetterau, 1552. Profitability of the Wetterau has been increased since the time of Frederick I. by the targeted promotion of urban centers, Frankfurt, Wetzlar, Gelnhausen and Friedberg. The Wetterau cities with their representative buildings were at the royal travel activities important bases and central places for the exercise of royal rights in the fields of economics and jurisprudence. Levels of economic power were the royal and later ministerial coinage by Kuno I von Hagen coins mountain and the urban market operation, from the princely privilege with since the 13th century grew a fixed sequence of Wetterau fairs in Frankfurt and Friedberg. The Frankfurt Messe exists today in an unbroken tradition.

The resulting economic area increased after statement of the imperial tax list of 1241, headed by the cities and Jews were the Wetterau, play an outstanding role. Therefore, the kingdom in the crisis of the years 1241-1254 found there support.

With the end of the Hohenstaufen in the kingdom and with the extinction of the Münzenberger 1255, the various political forces of the Wetterau were more clearly, especially the great families of those of Hanau, Eppstein, Falkenstein and Isenburg - Büdingen, the Friedberger Castle team that often contained Ganerbengemeinschaften constituent down aristocratic associations, the free dishes (especially Kaichen ) and the cities. There have obtained bourgeois elites despite ongoing commitment to the kingdom in late and nachstaufischer time greater autonomy and secured them in the 13th and 14th centuries in regional and city leagues. Because of a lack of hegemonic power, the kingdom was able to get his formative influence in the Wetterau long. Served this purpose in their skills still unclear assignment of Gerlach Büdingen by Frederick II in 1219, based on the re-launched from the Roman-German King Rudolph I bailiwick as a summary and management of the royal rights and possessions in the Wetterau. However, to 1419 detectable bailiffs took advantage of their position increasingly to assert its own territorial interests.

Modern Times

The regional unit of Wetterau was thus not the primary political action concept, but the result. The late medieval country peace policy led since 1422 to first gemischtständischen Einungen of knights, lords and Count of the Wetterau. This Einungen donated regional identity that was not resolved even with increasing corporative demarcation.

Four stabilizing elements can thus make the transition from the Middle Ages to modern times of the Wetterau:

• The four imperial cities (Frankfurt, Friedberg, Gelnhausen, Wetzlar ), which ultimately serves only Frankfurt on the duration approached significance;
• A composite of knights and nobles low, resulting in the Castle team of imperial castle Friedberg concentrating Wetterau knighthood;
• From the low needle setting down, the Wetterauische Reichsgraf College in which about 20 Count lines were represented;
• A number of Ganerbschaften ( Reifenberg, Kronberg, Falkenstein, Lindheim, Dorheim, Staden ), partly the same person as the two aforementioned groups.

The profitability of the Wetterau, she was also the undoing of the Thirty Years' War, however. Pull-through end military ravaged again and again villages and towns of the area which suffered dramatic population losses to some extent.

The complexity of domination in the Wetterau was in spite of the decreasing importance of many smaller territories to the media coverage at the end of the old empire, fell as much of the Wetterau to the Grand Duchy of Hesse -Darmstadt.

Quote

" The deeper we get into the colorful Roman Empire, so flowery, the statistics so that we politically really do not know anymore, right where we are and what the spots heard on which we walk. Darmstadt, Hanau, Solms Castle County, Kurmainz and Pütter - knows-how - many governments play here in such a mess Blindekuh that one should believe this part of Germany would be broke once and been together pasted hastily on good luck again. I thank heaven that this my journey is not random and that I therefore do not need me to worry about whether Peter or Paul have something to say. What most suffers, our cars and our shoes; because roads seem just as little as we know who would maintain, and in this uncertainty, they are getting worse. "