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34-1037: The Odenwald is located between the Upper Rhine Plain with the Bergstraße and the Hessisches Ried (the northeastern section of the Rhine rift) to the west, the Main and the Bauland (a mostly unwooded area with good soils) 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

68-639: A downfaulted trough through which the river Rhine flows. The Upper Rhine Plain was formed during the Early Cenozoic era, during the Late Eocene epoch. At this time, the Alpine Orogeny , the major mountain building event that was to produce the Alps , was in its early stages. The Alps were formed because the continents of Europe and Africa collided. It is thought that because the collision

102-799: Is a cluster of volcanic hills to the northwest of Freiburg, within the Rhine Graben. The highest point of this small, isolated volcanic centre is the Totenkopf (557 metres). Volcanic activity was most prevalent in the Miocene epoch, some 15 million years ago. Today, the Kaiserstuhl volcano is extinct. In 1356, the Basel earthquake occurred in the Rhine Plain. It was perhaps the most destructive earthquake ever in northwest Europe , destroying

136-557: Is a collective term for two, very different early sections of the Upper Germanic-Rhaetian Limes , a Roman defensive frontier line that may have been utilised during slightly different periods in history. The Neckar-Odenwald Limes consists of the northern Odenwald Limes ( Odenwaldlimes ), a cross-country limes with camps , watchtowers and palisades , which linked the River Main (Latin: Moenus ) with

170-489: Is connected with monsters (knight Georg fights against the man-eating lindworm near Frankenstein-castle ) and creatures of nature with magic potency (a water spirit changed into a fox near Niedernhausen, the merwoman in the Meerwiese of Waldürn). Secondly the local legend is connected with the genre of the historic saga: a historic person or an original is portrayed anecdotally (the count of Erbach and Luther, resp.

204-558: Is known as a leisure destination easily accessible from the urban areas of Mannheim and Frankfurt . It is known for its clean thin air and was once known for its health sanitariums. There are many marked hiking paths through the rural areas. Wild blueberries , strawberries and mushrooms are to be found in the forests. The planned extension to the Odenwaldautobahn , that is, the A ;45 ( Dortmund – Aschaffenburg ),

238-580: Is ongoing. The Odenwald Limes begins in the north on the River Main, either near Obernburg or near Wörth , and runs southwards from there, skilfully using the topographical features of the Odenwald highlands, to the River Neckar, which it probably reached in the area of the present-day county of Heilbronn . The Neckar line forms its extension in a southerly direction as far as Arae Flaviae in

272-552: The Raubacher Joggel , landgrave Ludwig VIII: of Hesse-Darmstadt, robber Hölzerlips ). Thirdly a local tale explains an etiological or original myth (aetiological saga). For example, there is explained: Beside these legends there are two famous and well-known Odenwaldsagas: In the Nibelungenlied (see also Nibelung ) the dragon slayer Siegfried , on a hunting trip (instead of a failed campaign) leading from

306-632: 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 ( Siegfriedsbrunnen ), Mossautal-Hüttenthal Lindelbrunnen ) or Heppenheim ( Siegfriedbrunnen ). The ruins of Rodenstein (below-mentioned) and Schnellerts near Fränkisch-Crumbach are

340-784: The Main . Parts of the Odenwald now lay in Roman-ruled Germania Superior . About 159, the Limes was shifted about 30 kilometres (19 miles) 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

374-487: The Neckar (Latin: Nicer ), and the adjoining southern Neckar Limes ( Neckarlimes ), which in earlier research was seen as a typical 'riverine limes' (German: Nasser Limes ; Latin: limes ripa ), whereby the river replaced the function of the palisade as an approach obstacle. More recent research has thrown a different light on this way of viewing things that means may have to be relativized in future. The resulting research

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408-861: The Neckar valley is sometimes called the Kleiner Odenwald ("Little 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. 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

442-697: The North Sea reached far inland, across the Wetterau Depression into the Rhine Valley. About 2500 BC, there is evidence that the Linear Pottery culture settled along the northern (Gersprenz) and southern (Neckar valley) edges of the Odenwald. About 400 BC, Celts (Gauls) 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

476-554: The Odenwald on the eastern side. The extension induced by the formation of the Alps was sufficient to thin the crust and provide suitable dilational conduits for magmatic and volcanic activity to occur. This resulted in the emplacement of mafic dykes , which follow the general structural trend of the extensional faults. In addition, isolated volcanoes such as the Kaiserstuhl were formed. The Kaiserstuhl (literally "Emperor's Chair")

510-797: 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 . 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,

544-803: 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 (98-117). This stretch of the Empire's border ran from Fort Wimpfen in the Valley ( Kastell Wimpfen im Tal ) 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

578-652: The Mümling- and the Neckar-Valley. Songs have been written about the Odenwald: Upper Rhine Plain The Upper Rhine Plain , Rhine Rift Valley or Upper Rhine Graben ( German : Oberrheinische Tiefebene , Oberrheinisches Tiefland or Oberrheingraben , French : Vallée du Rhin ) is a major rift , about 350-kilometre-long (220 mi) and on average 50-kilometre-wide (31 mi), between Basel in

612-542: The city of Basel and flattening buildings as far as 200 km away. It was the most significant historic seismological event to have occurred in Central Europe. Its epicenter was between Waldkirch and St. Peter in Breisgau-Hochschwarzwald . However, it remains disputed whether the fault that ruptured to cause this earthquake was part of the Rhine Valley extensional system, or simply one of

646-480: The formation of an extensional basin. As a consequence, the highest mountains exist immediately adjacent to the margin of the basin, and become increasingly low outwards. The boundaries between the hill ranges and the Rhine Graben are defined by major, normal fault zones. The northern section of the Rhine Plain is equally framed by somewhat lower mountain ranges, the Palatinate Forest on the western and

680-482: The job of opening the empty woods up by the central Frankish power ( Carolingian ), 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

714-461: 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,

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748-434: The land up into districts. In the 7th and 8th centuries came Christianization by Irish - Scottish and Anglo-Saxon monks ( Pirmin , Boniface ). 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

782-657: The length of the basin. To the west, in France, these hills are known as the Vosges mountain range and in the east, in Germany, the hills comprise the Black Forest . These ranges exhume the same types of rocks in their cores, including deep crustal gneiss . Both ranges correspond to uplifts of more than 2,500 metres, much of which has since been eroded. This uplift has occurred because of the isostatic response associated with

816-694: The many thrust faults that make up the Alps to the south. Doubts have been raised over the adequacy of the seismic evaluation and design of the Fessenheim Nuclear Power Plant , built in the Rhine Plain close to the faults. Located below the plain, the Upper Rhine aquifer – one of the largest in Europe – holds an estimated 45,000 km (11,000 cu mi) of fresh water and supplies some 3 million people in France and Germany, supplying 75% of their drinking water and 50% of

850-584: 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

884-481: The setting of an Odenwald ghost story: during the night the knight Rodenstein (the Rodensteiner ) flies with a berserker-cornet through the air to prophesy the beginning of a war ( Wild Hunt motif). Countless streams rise in the Odenwald, the longest of which are the following: There are a few bodies of standing water in the Odenwald, among which are the following: Odenwald is twinned with: The Odenwald

918-667: The south and the cities of Frankfurt / Wiesbaden in the north. Its southern section straddles the France–Germany border . It forms part of the European Cenozoic Rift System , which extends across Central Europe . The Upper Rhine Graben formed during the Oligocene , as a response to the evolution of the Alps to the south. It remains active to the present day. Today, the Rhine Rift Valley forms

952-612: The terrain of the present town of Rottweil , where it oriented itself to the course of the river. The Neckar-Odenwald Limes probably emerged in the area of the Odenwald Limes during the Trajanic period and, in the area of the Neckar line, in the principate of Domitian or early Trajanic period, and, in the area of the old Neckar camps, under Vespasian . It went through several rebuilding phases and did not become obsolete until

986-628: The water used by industry. Since the 1970s it has suffered increasingly serious pollution from nitrates , pesticides , chloride and VOCs . A collaboration of 25 universities and government agencies have been researching seismic hazards, neotectonics, and water management of the Quaternary Graben fill. The research focuses on four themes: 48°57′54″N 8°14′02″E  /  48.9650°N 8.2340°E  / 48.9650; 8.2340 Neckar-Odenwald Limes The Neckar-Odenwald Limes ( German : Neckar-Odenwald-Limes )

1020-438: Was irregular , the initial contact between the two continents resulted in the formation of dilational (extensional) structures in the foreland basin to the north of the Alps. The result was substantial crustal thinning, forming a major extensional graben and causing isolated volcanic activity. The stretch factor is estimated to be ~2. To both the east and west of the Rhine Plain, two major hill ranges have formed that run

1054-407: Was crossed. The following are some theories about the origin of the name Odenwald : 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. The numerous Odenwald folk legends are mostly connected with historic geographic sites (castle, town, rock, road and so on) They relate: In some stories the local aspect firstly

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1088-728: Was never realized. Nevertheless, all these Bundesstraßen run through the Odenwald: Furthermore, the Nibelungenstraße and the Siegfriedstraße run through the Odenwald, partly along the roads listed above. The Odenwald is home to many historic castles and palatial residences. In times past the fortresses on the top of the Odenwald mountains controlled Bergstraße and the Weschnitz-, the Gersprenz-,

1122-614: 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 (or Keuper). The South German Cuesta Land thus formed. When

1156-487: 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,

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