Romkerhall (also frequently called Romkerhalle ) is a popular tourist destination on the River Oker in the Harz Mountains of Germany . There is a public car park here as well as a hotel and restaurant opposite the Romkerhall Waterfall. Romkerhall lies within the unincorporated area of Harz in the Lower Saxon county of Goslar in the Harz Mountains . The hotel and waterfall form a small tourist attraction which is marketed as the "Kingdom of Romkerhall - the smallest kingdom in the world!" (German: "Königreich Romkerhall − das kleinste Königreich der Welt!" )
31-658: Romkerhalle lies in the Upper Harz within the Harz Nature Park , around 5 kilometres south of the village of Oker in the borough of Goslar and about 1.5 kilometres (both distances as the crow flies ) northeast of the Oker Reservoir on the B 498 federal road which runs parallel to the River Oker, here at a height of 335 m above sea level (NHN) . About 200 metres to
62-645: A new town with the name 'Oberharz am Brocken'. There were major protests against this name in the borough of Oberharz in Lower Saxony. The reasons were that, on the one hand, there was a significant risk of confusion by having two similar names, and on the other hand that the new region had never belonged to the Upper Harz, but was part of the Lower Harz. Staubbach Fall Staubbach Falls ( German : Staubbachfall (sing.), lit.: dust creek fall)
93-574: A result it is maintained in the newspapers. For example, there are occasionally articles published in the Upper Harz dialect in the local section of the Goslarsche Zeitung . To illustrate the dialect here is the refrain of a Sankt Andreasberg folk song: The town of Elbingerode and the municipalities of Brocken-Hochharz in the district of Harz decided to merge on 1 January 2010, as part of regional reforms in Saxony-Anhalt, into
124-614: Is a waterfall in Switzerland , located just west of Lauterbrunnen in the Bernese Highlands . The waterfall drops 297 metres (974 feet) from a hanging valley that ends in overhanging cliffs above the Weisse Lütschine . The stream, on reaching the verge of the rocky walls of the valley, forms a cascade so high that it is almost lost in spray before it reaches the level of the valley. After rain, and early in
155-608: Is based on the function of the Harz as a natural watershed . On this basis "by taking the Brocken as the mid-point, the Upper Harz includes everything to the west of it; the Lower Harz everything lying to the east. […] All that drains from the western mountains belongs to the catchment area of the Weser , all that drains from those in the east, to that of the Elbe ". Heinrich Heine also used
186-771: Is checkpoint no. 116 in the Harzer Wandernadel hiking system. From Romkerhall several steep paths lead up to the crags of the Treppenstein , the Ahrendsberger Klippen to the south, the Mausefalle on the Huthberg hill to the north and from there to the Kästeklippen . From the Ahrendsberger Klippen there is a clear view of Romkerhall and the waterfall. The Hallesche Hütte hut near
217-655: Is how this old limestone comes to form the rocks over which the waterfall drops as well as the Rabenklippe crags to the west. In the intervening Oker valley is argillaceous Kulm slate. There is a path up to the top of the waterfall on the hillside north of the rocks. At its foot, a few metres of dark slate-hornfels rocks of the Lower Carboniferous have been exposed. The waterfall rocks at the lookout platform consists of upper Devonian limestones, which are tectonically heavily deformed. About 290 million years ago,
248-508: Is just east of the Bruchberg. The mines , more than anything else, have left a lasting impression on the region and left their traces in the towns and villages as well as the countryside (see e.g. Upper Harz Water Regale ). Clausthal-Zellerfeld was known as "Capital of the Upper Harz" in the heyday of the mining industry. It was also the administrative seat of the former Samtgemeinde ('collective municipality') of Oberharz . The part of
279-655: The Rohmkerklippe or Marmorklippe ). Its height makes it the highest artificial waterfall in the Harz Mountains. To create the waterfall, some of the waters of the Oker tributary, the Kleine Romke , are diverted along a roughly 350-metre-long ditch. The present location name of Romkerhalle (initially Rohmker-Halle ) was first used when Lüer's "board and lodging house" ( Restauration und Logirhaus von H. Lüer
310-591: The Second World War the Oker bridge of what is now the B ;498 was blown up near Waldhaus and immediately south of Romkerhalle. This did not prevent the advance of the US ;Army , however. In addition, the inn was badly damaged and its reconstruction lasted until 1948. Since 1988, the various managers of the local restaurant have advertised the place as the "Kingdom of Romkerhall". They justify this on
341-561: The Upper Devonian , about 370 million years ago, the area was covered by a sea. It was divided into basins and ridges. Limes were deposited on the ridges, which were closer to the surface of the water (carbonatic threshold facies of the Upper Harz Upper Devonian). About 300 million years ago, the rocks were folded, sunk, metamorphosed by intruding granites, later uplifted again, and then exposed by erosion. That
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#1732776738868372-543: The Brocken (1,141 m), Bruchberg, Wurmberg , Torfhaus and Acker, which lie above 800 m. The High Harz therefore includes most of the Harz National Park . One feature of the Upper Harz is, or was, the Upper Harz dialect ( Oberharzer Mundart ). Unlike the Lower Saxon, Eastphalian and Thuringian dialects of its surround area, this is an Erzgebirgisch dialect that goes back to the settlement in
403-418: The Brocken as the dividing line in his book Die Harzreise ("The Harz Journey") in 1824 and remarked that the "Lower Harz, as the eastern side of the Brocken is called, as opposed to its western side, […] called the Upper Harz". This definition extends the montane Upper Harz eastwards roughly to the state border with Saxony-Anhalt , so that e.g. Braunlage or Hohegeiß may also be counted as lying within
434-601: The Clausthal Kulmfaltenzone , it extends to the western and northern rim of the Harz and is bordered in the southeast by the Acker - Bruchberg ridge beyond the Söse valley. The Upper Harz was, for centuries, dominated by the hugely profitable silver mining industry and is also distinguished by its own dialect (see below). The mining area of Sankt Andreasberg occupies a special place in this regard, because it
465-460: The Oker valley to the "birch valleys" ( Birkentäler ). This was built from 1856 to 1861 with great difficulty, requiring the blasting of large quantities of rock down to the river banks and costing a total of 28,945 thalers. In 1865, under the direction of the chief smelting engineer, timber was rafted for the last time on the river and the weir on the Oker below the church, built in 1542, was removed. After that, several wood sanding works were set up in
496-427: The Upper Harz, as well as some high mountain ridges: The Upper Harz includes the plateaus of Clausthal and Andreasberg, some 2,000 feet high, and the ridges and peaks of the so-called Ackerberg, Bruchberg and Brocken which are almost twice as high […] To the east it transitions to the less prominent Lower Harz which descends gently eastwards. The High Harz ( Hochharz ) refers to the only sparsely populated region around
527-592: The accessibility of the property, the Harzburg Spa Commissar, Hermann Dommes, had a promenade path built from Harzburg across the Kästeklippen ( Käste ) to Romkerhalle. The first land registry records were only kept from when the Hulsch family took over the estate in 1890. In 1903, the "Villa Helene" was built as a guesthouse and, in 1928, a large hall was built over the Oker. In the last days of
558-498: The area of mining folk from the Ore Mountains of Saxony in the 16th century. The Upper Harz dialect is restricted to only a few places and so forms something of a language island in the Harz. The best known are Altenau, Sankt Andreasberg, Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Lautenthal and Hahnenklee. Today the dialect is rarely heard in everyday life in the Upper Harz. It is mainly members of the older generations that still speak it; as
589-633: The basis that the properties here do not belong to any municipality , but are located within an unincorporated area. Near Romkerhalle, on the rocky eastern flanks of the Oker valley below a spur of the Huthberg , the Kleiner Romke ( 441.7 m above NHN ), the Romkerhall Waterfall ( Romkerhaller Wasserfall ) tumbles through a height of about 64 metres over the Romke Klippe crags (contemporaneously also known as
620-477: The context. In its traditional sense, the term Upper Harz covers the area of the seven historical mining towns ( Bergstädte ) - Clausthal , Zellerfeld , Andreasberg , Altenau , Lautenthal , Wildemann and Grund - in the present-day German federal state of Lower Saxony . Orographically, it comprises the Harz catchment areas of the Söse , Innerste and Grane , Oker and Abzucht mountain streams, all part of
651-568: The crags is the location of checkpoint no. 119 in the Harzer Wandernadel . 51°51′34″N 10°28′17″E / 51.85944°N 10.47139°E / 51.85944; 10.47139 Upper Harz The Upper Harz ( German : Oberharz , pronounced [ˈoːbɐhaːɐ̯ts] ) is the northwestern and higher part of the Harz mountain range in Germany . The exact boundaries of this geographical region may be defined differently depending on
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#1732776738868682-529: The east and discharge into the Oker. In order to promote and facilitate traffic, the expansion of the road network in the area began in the early 19th century. In 1817, according to a plan by treasury secretary ( Kammerssekretrie ) von Eschwege, the first road was built in the Oker valley, running along the Ziegenrücken ridge past the Studentenklippe crags and Kästenecke. The extraction of timber
713-699: The ironworks that process its ore, and which lie on the northern foothills of the mountains near Ocker , Langelsheim etc. […] The actual Upper Harz, now part of the Prussian state and forming the district ( Bezirk ) of the Clausthal Mining Department, is that region west of the Bruchberge with mineral lodes in Devonian and Carboniferous mountains, which are divided into specific groups or seams. Another division into Upper and Lower Harz
744-466: The larger Weser watershed. Much of the Upper Harz area is up to 700 metres (2,300 ft) above sea level . In a wider sense, it also comprises the adjacent High Harz ( Hochharz ) range in the east, climbing to over 1,100 m (3,600 ft) in the Brocken massif. The region is centred on the geological structure of the region around the municipality of Clausthal-Zellerfeld, merged in 1924. From
775-660: The lower Oker valley. The rocks of the Romkerhall Waterfall had attracted attention even before the waterfall was created. From 1861, the Forestry and Hunting Division in Brunswick leased an area of 40 square rods and two acres from the forest hamlet of Käste No. 3, Oker Mining District, to innkeeper Lüer from Oker for the purpose of establishing an inn. A ceremonial opening by its owner and operator, H. Lüer, took place on 1 May 1863. In 1863, in order to improve
806-493: The molten Oker granite nearby hardened and overprinted all the nearby rocks in a process known as contact metamorphism . Romkerhall is both a departure point for several hiking trails as well as a waypoint on others. Downstream a path runs along the Oker, which is surrounded by high rocks that are used, mainly at weekends, by rock climbers. There are also many large boulders in the river which, in places, have formed small islands, including Betrothal Island ( Verlobungsinsel ), which
837-462: The mountain range lying west of the Brocken described in a geographical sense as the Upper Harz is divided from a miner's and ironworker's perspective into the Upper Harz ( Oberharz ), i.e. the plateau of Clausthal, with this town and Zellerfeld and the mining towns of Altenau, Lautenthal, Wildemann, Grund and Andreasberg, and the communion of the Lower Harz, i.e. the Rammelsberg near Goslar and
868-474: The season when fed by melting snow, Staubbach Falls is very striking. The force of the stream above the fall at such times is sufficient to carry the water clear of the precipice, and the whole mass descends in a condition of liquid dust, between spray and cloud, that sways to-and-fro with the gentlest breeze. In a dry summer, when the supply of water is much reduced, the effect is comparatively insignificant. A visit by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in 1779 provided
899-548: The south is the Romkerhalle Hydropower Station , in which electricity is generated from the waters of the reservoir. The inn belongs to the town of Goslar and the electricity station to the municipality of Schulenberg im Oberharz to the south of Goslar in the collective municipality of Oberharz . Between the power station and Romkerhalle the Große Romke and Kleine Romke streams approach from
930-399: Was now made easier and timber hauliers could easily reach the Upper Harz. This narrow and romantic road still exists on the eastern side of the valley on its lower slopes and is walkable. It descends to Romkerhalle, where once a large, arched stone bridge crossed the Oker. Under the direction of the chief mining engineer ( Oberbergmeister ), Ahrend, a new, "comfortable road" was driven through
961-618: Was opened in 1863. In order to enhance the appeal of newly opened inn, in the same year the artificial waterfall was laid out. This was initially only operated in the afternoons and formed a cascade which resembled the Staubbach Fall in Switzerland 's Lauterbrunnen valley in the Bernese Oberland , which attracted thousands of visitors. The rocks of the Romerkhall Waterfall consist mainly of limestones. In