Waldhufendorf

The Waldhufendorf is a rural settlement, which typically occurs in clearing areas and is characterized by a regular shape. There is a range village, mostly double-spaced followed in which the land in each case as a broad stripe on the court situation.

This form of settlement is considered to be characteristic of a systematic settlement of the northern Black Forest in the 11th and 12th centuries. On the most fertile higher crests of the upper Buntsandstein the farms were (also called " hooves " or " strokes " called ) applied along a road through clearing. As the " Franconian hooves " means a plot of 24.2 hectares, in which extended up to the left on the ridge forest behind the buildings elongated plots approximately perpendicular to the central axis. These structures are still visible. New research into question, that it was by scheduled start-ups. There may have been older forms of settlement, which consisted rather of isolated lying Einzelhofsiedlungen. Similar observations could be made ​​in series settlements in Saxony.

In the 12th and 13th centuries was the shape of the Waldhufen village in Thuringia, Saxony and Silesia the preferred form of settlement of the German settlers in the country's development. Because of this most of a hedge ( Hag ) surrounded by land was also called Hagen hooves villages these settlements.

Waldhufen and Hagen hooves villages are particularly im Vogtland, in the Ore Mountains and its foreland in eastern Saxony, in the Sudeten and Beskid, in the Thuringian Forest, the Fichtelgebirge, the Bavarian Forest, Bohemian Forest, the Spessart, Odenwald, in the Westrich, in the northern Black Forest and found in North Western Pomerania.

The central axis of the settlement is next to the road usually also a stream, on whose banks there was owned by the village pasture. Also along paths or roads were Neusiedler strip-shaped pieces of land in the size of a hoof, which they cleared. On the way, almost always outside of the floodplain of the creek, the courtyards were built. On the underlying surface agriculture was operated. At the end of the hooves often remained forest or forest residues obtained, to which one " approach worked " with the passage of time on new arable land if necessary. The long, mid-mountain and its forelands usually located up the hillsides withdrawing parcel boundaries often ranged up to the back line of the ridge and were either paths or formed as a stone back. Beyond the ridge the Waldhufendorf often lying in the neighboring valley joined with its corridors.

Chained together Waldhufen villages draw, for example, in the Saxon foothills up to 25 km in the valleys along. The core of a Waldhufen village is also still visible in villages in other German low mountain ranges. The only around the church, designed as a village center Waldhufendorf ( basically cake shaped) is the district Neuweiler - Gaugenwald. As probably the oldest Waldhufendorf Germany is considered the first documented in the year 877 Zotzenbach in the Hessian Odenwald.