The 75. Birthday of the “Groß-Hessen” this year offers a good opportunity to look at the beginnings of the core country in the Frankish-German Empire. Only the early days of nature are less precisely datable, like those American “proclamation No. 2” of 19.September 1945, the first to be merged, what is understood largely as the Hessian, of course, never as a unit stock.

But still: Before the – and Roman history aside, already for the 8. and 9. Century writing, and even architecturally well-documented settlement activities, played but the space between the Werra, Lahn, and Main a prominent role as an Outpost, and mission to the centre of the Frankish Expansion to the North-East. More than 1000 (and not only from Hesse) places thanks to the monks of the monastery of Lorsch your birth certificate, and nowhere are so many buildings, from Carolingian times, such as here.

In the dance of Lorsch or the einhard basilicas in Michelstadt-Steinbach and Seligenstadt your Name is called, however, rarely is the Theutbirg Basilica in Wetzlar-Nauborn. The main reason may be simple: because of the current situation in the forest is the house of God is easy to miss, after it disappeared for centuries, and it is only through the investigations of the Nauborner pastor Karl slate stone again had come.

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He went to the entry in the Lorsch Codex, literally, on the ground that a certain Theutbirg anno 778 a Basilica in “Nivora” of the Abbey had given. The priest succeeded, in 1927, to locate the facility South of the municipality and with the help of his confirmation to be exposed. The subsequent scientific analysis, where a small cemetery appeared, allowed to restore the foundations. Similar to the founder cell of the monastery of Lorsch, the old münster, the never changing Church an idea of how the earliest Christian stone looked like: buildings in Germany, to ancient requirements-oriented, to the East-oriented nave with a rectangular apse, the semi-circular choir.

Even if the after the founder, named Basilica is now off, it was built not far from the world gear. Early in the Wetzbachtal and the mountain were inhabited flanks. In the Neolithic age appropriate information, you can find numerous barrows and several ringforts plating suspended from an old-growth forest vegetation-covered. From the highest tops of a 1929 on the Stoppelberg built observation tower stands out but, fortunately, the magnificent Panorama extends over Wetzlar and the Lahn valley to the cone-shaped Dünsberg and in the other, southerly direction to the Big dirt track in the Taunus.

directions

As a starting point for a Hiking round through varied forests between Stoppelberg and Theutbirg-Basilica of the southern Wetzlars in the area of the hospital is best. To get there leave from the train station, two bus lines, and opposite – in front of the forest – there is plenty of Parking space. To his left, the start marker passes lying Y (black).