Very early on, in the Upper Paleolithic, there were human beings in our region. The first finds date back to the early history of the Siebengebirge. In Oberkassel, the bones of a man, a woman, and a dog were found who must have lived around 13,000 BC. You can see them in the museum Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Bonn.
In the Roman era, the Siebengebirge was a military area at the border of the Roman Empire, province Germania Inferior. Roman quarries at Drachenfels supplied stones for Bonn, Cologne, Xanten and Nijmegen. For about 500 years, the events within the Empire and its long defense fight determined life on both sides of the frontier.
Ar the time of the Kingdom of the Franks, under the Merovingians and Carolingians, the first villages in the Siebengebirge came into being. At the beginning of the 5th century, two groups of Franks had emerged: the Salian Franks lived at Tournai, Cambrai and Arras, today’s Belgium and northern France, back then part of the Western Roman Empire.
The castle ruins Drachenfels, Löwenburg and Rosenau, Heisterbach Abbey and the ruins of the medieval church on Petersberg remind us of the Middle Ages in the Siebengebirge. It is the time of knights, minnesang, medieval castles and the crusades.
Ottonian and Salian dynasty. The Holy Roman Empire comes into being, in our region the archbishopric of Cologne. Rhineland, around 900. Our region was part of the medieval Duchy of Lorraine in the west of the East Francia. While the Capetians continued to reign in West Francia, they had died out in East Francia.
The castle ruins Drachenfels, Löwenburg, Rosenau and Heisterbach Abbey remind us of Hohenstaufen era in the Siebengebirge. We will meet famous men.
There is a lot to report and above all to see from the late Middle Ages in the Siebengebirge as well. Large parts of Cologne Cathedral were built with stones from Mount Drachenfels; the coats of arms of the Siebengebirge towns Bad Honnef and Königswinter date back to the reigns of those times.
The stone crucifixes from the 17th and 18th century all along the “Petersberger Bittweg”, the ancient procession way from Königwinter city to the chapel on Mount Petersberg, remind us of the early modern period in the Siebengebirge. . The years that the locals set up these crucifixes correlate with years of wars and plagues in the Rhineland.
The Rhineland around 1530, the time of the Protestant Reformation. Although the Rhineland remained Catholic, there were Lutheran, Anabaptist and Calvinist congregations.
Both rulers in the Rhineland, the Duke of Berg and as the Prince-Elector of Cologne, were drawn into the European wars of succession. Holy Roman Empire, at the end of the 17th century. After the Thirty Years’ War, large parts of Central Europe lay in ashes.
Copyright © 2024 | MH Magazine WordPress Theme by MH Themes