Hirschhorn

About

Hirschhorn (Neckar) (German pronunciation: [ˈhɪʁʃˌhɔʁn] ) is a small town in the Bergstraße district of Hesse, Germany, and is known as "The Pearl of the Neckar valley”. Hirschhorn is a climatic health resort situated in the Geo-Naturpark Bergstraße-Odenwald.

Hirschhorn is situated at a horseshoe bend of the River Neckar, roughly 19 km east of Heidelberg. The Neckar has dug its way through the wooded hills of the Odenwald here. Hirschhorn stretches along the right bank of the Neckar, i.e. north of the river. Ersheim, Hirschhorn's oldest part, has the distinction, however, of being the only bit of Hesse south of the Neckar. In Hirschhorn, two northern tributaries, the Ulfenbach and the Finkenbach, join to become the Laxbach before flowing into the Neckar.

In the north, Hirschhorn borders the villages of Heddesbach ( Rhein-Neckar-Kreis, Baden-Württemberg ) and Brombach (part of Eberbach), and on the parish of Rothenberg ( Odenwaldkreis ). The town of Eberbach (east of Hirschhorn) is also in the Rhein-Neckar-Kreis and therefore in Baden-Württemberg. South of Hirschhorn there is the parish of Schoenbrunn (Rhein-Neckar-Kreis); the town of Neckarsteinach is towards the south-west, and to the west of Hirschhorn there is the town of Schoenau (Rhein-Neckar-Kreis), with the forest district of Michelbuch in between, which has its own peculiar status and does not belong to any village or town.

Apart from the town itself, the following villages belong to Hirschhorn:

- Unter-Hainbrunn (in the Finkenbach valley)

- Hessisch-Igelsbach (Badisch-Igelsbach is part of Eberbach)

Hirschhorn is situated at a horseshoe bend of the River Neckar, roughly 19 km east of Heidelberg. The Neckar has dug its way through the wooded hills of the Odenwald here. Hirschhorn stretches along the right bank of the Neckar, i.e. north of the river. Ersheim, Hirschhorn's oldest part, has the distinction, however, of being the only bit of Hesse south of the Neckar. In Hirschhorn, two northern tributaries, the Ulfenbach and the Finkenbach, join to become the Laxbach before flowing into the Neckar.

In the north, Hirschhorn borders the villages of Heddesbach ( Rhein-Neckar-Kreis, Baden-Württemberg ) and Brombach (part of Eberbach), and on the parish of Rothenberg ( Odenwaldkreis ). The town of Eberbach (east of Hirschhorn) is also in the Rhein-Neckar-Kreis and therefore in Baden-Württemberg. South of Hirschhorn there is the parish of Schoenbrunn (Rhein-Neckar-Kreis); the town of Neckarsteinach is towards the south-west, and to the west of Hirschhorn there is the town of Schoenau (Rhein-Neckar-Kreis), with the forest district of Michelbuch in between, which has its own peculiar status and does not belong to any village or town.

Apart from the town itself, the following villages belong to Hirschhorn:

- Unter-Hainbrunn (in the Finkenbach valley)

- Hessisch-Igelsbach (Badisch-Igelsbach is part of Eberbach)

The first document in which the settlement of Ersheim is mentioned is the Lorsch codex in an endowment dated 773 (Lorsch Documents, no. 2624). This settlement, which in 1023 under the name of Erasam belonged to the property of a monastery affiliated to Lorsch, St Michael's on Heiligenberg near Heidelberg, was one of the oldest in the Neckar valley. Whereas almost the whole of the surrounding area came into the possession of the diocese of Worms in the 11th century, Ersheim together with the nearby village of Ramsau downriver on the right bank remained an exclave of Lorsch. From here several villages were founded in forest clearings from the 12th century onward, among them Weidenau, Unter-Hainbrunn, Igelsbach and Krautlach, but they were largely abandoned again afterwards.

Foundation of the town by the Lords of Hirschhorn

The town of Hirschhorn southwest of Ersheim on the right bank of the Neckar derives its name from its founders, the Lords of Hirschhorn, whose coat of arms shows a stag's antler. The first Lord of Hirschhorn was probably a son of a knight of Steinach. Hirschhorn Castle ( Burg Hirschhorn ) was built about 1250/60 on land given as a fief by Lorsch Abbey, which since 1232 was in the possession of the Archbishop of Mainz. Engelhard I (1329–61) increased his influence and his dominions considerably through Imperial fiefdoms and land mortgaged to him in return for loans. His son, Engelhard II, waged various feuds and was placed under the Imperial ban ; Engelhard II's sons, however, managed to enlarge the family's estates again.

Hirschhorn ( Hirtzhorn ) was surrounded by a town wall after the brothers Hans V, Albrecht and Eberhard of Hirschhorn had received its town charter from King Wenceslaus in 1391. When Elector Palatine Ruprecht III was elected King in 1400, Hans V of Hirschhorn was employed in Imperial service as an adviser, diplomat, and financier. His diplomatic missions also took him to the English court. King Henry V of England held Hans in such high esteem that he granted him a lifelong annual payment of 100 marks.

Hirschhorn was endowed with the right to have a weekly market in 1404. The oldest town seal dates from 25 July 1406. It was in that year that Hans V, together with his brothers, founded the Carmelite monastery with its Church of the Annunciation on the slope below the castle. The first enlargement of the town ( Vorstadt ) is mentioned as early as 1413. The inhabitants of the neighbouring villages sought protection within the precincts of the fortified town, so Ersheim, Ramsau, Krautlach and Weidenau were soon abandoned. For centuries Ersheim only consisted of the Ziegelhütte ("brick plant", built in 1553) and the church compound.

Between 1522 and 1529, the Knights of Hirschhorn converted to Protestantism. They quarrelled with the Carmelites and closed their monastery down in 1543. In 1555 the town was hit by the Plague, and in 1556 a devastating fire destroyed nearly the whole of the oldest part of the town ( Hinterstädtchen ). Extensive flooding aggravated by thawing ice occurred in 1565.

While Hirschhorn was not involved in the German Peasants' War, major changes were brought about by the Thirty Years' War. After the Lords of Hirschhorn had died out with the demise of Frederic III in September 1632 - he had fled to Heilbronn in order to escape the turmoil of the war - the castle and the town passed to the archdiocese of Mainz. The Plague of 1635 decimated the population. After the end of Swedish occupation in 1636, Hirschhorn was mortgaged to an official at the court of the Elector of Cologne, Rudolf Raitz von Frentz. The population, which had already been afflicted by the war, had to suffer exploitation and impoverishment. The Carmelites moved back into their monastery. Around the middle of the seventeenth century, Hirschhorn's population only amounted to a fifth (c. 200) of what it had been at the beginning of that century. Following the Peace of Westphalia (1648), new inhabitants from Palatinate, the Electorates of Mainz and Trier, Lorraine, Tyrol and Switzerland settled in the town. Between 1676 and 1699, Hirschhorn was mortgaged to Westphalian baron Johann Wilhelm von der Reck, but in 1700 direct rule by the Electorate of Mainz was established. Hirschhorn was now the seat of an Amtskellerei (an administrative unit) within the higher administrative unit ( Oberamt ) of Starkenburg with its centre in Heppenheim.

In 1803, Hirschhorn came into the possession of the Grand Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt, and the monastery was again dissolved. From 1821 to 1832 Hirschhorn was an administrative district of its own, then it became part of the district of Heppenheim, and from 1848 to 1852 it belonged to the district of Erbach. There were skirmishes between revolutionaries and Federal troops in and around Hirschhorn in 1849 in connection with the revolution of 1848/49 in Baden. In 1852 Hirschhorn was joined to the district of Lindenfels, and in 1856 it returned to the district of Heppenheim, which later became the district of Bergstraße.

Steam navigation on the Neckar was introduced in 1841 and meant a moderate economic upturn. Horse-drawn barges finally disappeared from the river in 1878, when a seventy-mile-long chain was put on the river bed on which tugs could pull themselves upstream or downstream. A lot of bargemen became redundant and lost their jobs. The Neckar Valley Railway started to operate, connecting Hirschhorn with Heidelberg and Mosbach. The railway station was built outside the historical precinct of the town in the direction of Neckarsteinach, thus providing an incentive for further expansion of the town in this direction. On the Neckar, a weir with a lock and a bridge was completed in 1933. A second lock was added in 1959. The bridge linked Hirschhorn and Ersheim, which had been practically deserted centuries before; so as early as in the 1930s a few houses and a new school for Hirschhorn (which was enlarged in 1970) were built on the left bank.