Heilige Linien §2

In the following I present about half of the orientations that I have established so far.  It is the same number and selection as in the first edition; and also the explanations added to them are almost unchanged, since my request for expressions of opinion and for criticism has indeed brought forth confirmations and completions, but not a single reason to drop a line or orientation point.  Since I was unfortunately not in a position to deal with the sometimes very valuable suggestions and visit the sites, I must leave the evaluation of them to a later time and content myself here with kind thanks to those who sent them in. 

The explanations attached to the examples are for the most part not only of local significance, but also have a general value for our understanding of Germanic affairs, sometimes of a fundamental kind.  Local matters could not be dispensed with, but are set in small type. 

Further examples of orientation

Explanation of the abbreviations used here and below:

dev, followed by a number of degrees, indicates the angular deviation of the oriented line from the true astronomical direction, measured as accurately as possible, or calculated from the formula tanα = a/b.

All the smallest angular deviations, not measurable with a protractor 30 cm in diameter, are entered as 0.05°. 

If an angular deviation is not given, either the point is sited so near or so low down that a measurement from it and to it is ruled out, or there is no measuring point available that would be exact or distinct enough for us. 

km denotes the distance in kilometres; LT = lookout tower; TP = trigonometrical point.  — The examples are not arranged in order of probability. 

Waddenhausen is a place without a church; the cemetery next to the school at the crossroads is part of a still uncultivated common.  — The church site of the old locality Brake is shown by the street alignments to be an earlier moot-place.  — The name Saalberg occurring more than once on an oriented line tells us that places of assembly were placed by preference on the existing hill sanctuaries.  — A parish does not usually purchase a place for a memorial; Reher parish too will have given up a suitable piece of uncultivated common for the war memorial. 

In the Hünenschloss near Amelgatzen we have a highly enigmatic ruin.  It is a nodal point of the orientation system, as is the cemetery at Waddenhausen (Example 16):

After which we immediately take:

Köterberg The Köterberg, the highest elevation of this region west of the Weser, plays an important role in folktales.  Its name [214.1] is popularly interpreted as Götterberg, hill of the gods.  From it the giants in olden times threw stone hatchets or boulders at one another over the Schwalenberg and the Stoppelberg. 

Our diagram [Fig. 70], shows the orientation going out from the Köterberg in all four cardinal directions, something which is seldom to be found in such an impressive way.  Fig. 70 Moreover, the quite peculiar shape of the boundaries of the three regions Westphalia, Lippe and Hanover that meet on the Köterberg is highly remarkable.  Hanover pushes itself, as a strip of land only 60 m wide in places, right up to the old cult place.  What does this mean?  Since modern boundaries have often survived unchanged from the earliest times, and since it is hardly possible to conceive any reason for this boundary phenomenon in the Christian period, we are probably justified in assuming that there was once on the Köterberg a common sanctuary of the three regions that meet there.  It may be that originally the site was common property, like a border region, and that then, on the distribution of the border regions in the Frankish period, all three parties, including the shareholder lying out to the east, wanted to be able to exercise their ancient right to the place.  But it is more likely that this striking state of affairs arose as early as the Germanic period, and because there was no border region here and all three shareholders in the sanctuary wanted to assemble at the holy place on their own territory.  The pattern of boundaries on the Köterberg sheds light on many aspects of the pre-Christian period. 

Fig. 71 As confirmation of this line of thought, the next diagram [Fig. 71], shows even more clearly just the same phenomenon on the Herlingsburg (Hermannsburg) a few kilometres to the north, at whose highest point Waldeck-Pyrmont pushes itself as a narrow tube of land between Lippe and Prussia.  Here it can be seen quite clearly that the ancient occupiers of the Prussian part did not have a right to the peak of the hill as such, but only to the sanctuary sited there on the 334.6 m height (Example 31). 

At the summit of the Stoppelberg, within a huge earthwork, there is a cairn several metres high, which can tell us something about the use of the hill as an oriented station.  What we are confronted with on the Stoppelberg as a whole, remains a complete mystery.  It cannot have been a medieval fortified dwelling of any kind known to us, as becomes apparent after a short investigation [215.1]. 

There can be no doubt about the linguistic importance of “Hohelüchte”.  Here as elsewhere, names that have to do with light [Licht] and shining [Leuchten] have for us a high importance, to which we shall return later.  Here we have a hill slope “Hohelüchte”, now torn apart by quarrying.  – The name “Heiligengeisterholz” [Holy Ghost wood] speaks for itself.  But it is only a minor intermediate station.  When the adjoining southern sheet of the official map came to hand, I recently found a far more impressive and definite south point in the “Heiliger Berg” [holy hill] with its isolated chapel of St. Michael, a hill which is generally recognized as a Germanic sacred site (— 7½ km — dev 0.9°).  On this subject Wigand [215.2] writes (1817): “It is just as likely that religious services on this holy hill are as old as the settlements themselves, and that both go back into the Germanic period.  There is a strong tendency to place churches and chapels on the sites of pagan worship.” Our Fig. 70 has not yet been redrawn to show the holy hill. 

Further, both at the Hünenburg near Bielefeld, to which we now return, and at Sparenburg, there are grounds for assuming a northward orientation, and these cannot be overlooked in the whole context. 

The Nonnenstein [nuns’ stone] is of interest because of folk tales, one of which is connected with astronomy: the stone turns round at the ninth hour.  — Certainly we must here think of an adaptation of the tale in Christian times.  But still an adaptation.  Wherever any connection with a northward orientation shows up, our thoughts are necessarily led back to the pre-Christian era. 

Jöllenbeck and Bieren give rise to special considerations.  Jöllenbeck church stands on the site of the first land elevation between Sparenburg and the Weser Hills that came under consideration as an intermediate station on the north line. 

We have here a case where we need not trouble ourselves for the time being about the position of the church building.  For we know that Jöllenbeck parish is a later foundation of the year 1000, by which time it was no longer important to place the church exactly on the site of the old Germanic sanctuary.  Thus the first church stood some 100 m away, and it is only by chance that the present church has been brought back onto the old law place that lies on the Sparenburg line and is still called the “Thi” [= Thing, moot-place].  Thus the church now lies under the 149.1 m height that is crowned by the law place.  It is there that we must seek the old orientation marker.  – Bieren church, standing almost alone amid a few farmyards, is duly situated where the road pattern indicates the assembly place of an old settlement, and once again in a northerly orientation from Sparenburg, on the spot where the situation of the high points means that an intermediate station must be expected. 

Some time or other people in the Jöllenbeck region were faced with the question: where shall we set up the law place?  and in the Bieren region people asked: where is our assembly place to be? 

That the people of both Jöllenbeck and Bieren, in making this choice of place, stumbled blindly on the holy north–south line of the Sparenburg is hard to believe in itself, but becomes even less likely the more often we encounter the same phenomenon. 

Continued northwards, the line intersects the crossroads in “Piepenbrink”. 

This name often occurs at oriented stations, and, according to my findings to date, almost only there.  Like the names Klockenbrink, Dönberg, Heulmeier, Klapperberg, Sackpfeife, Flötepfeife, etc., it is probably connected with the sound signals that were sent out along with light signals from these watch-places. 

This orientation of three old churches, at sizable places in a region with few villages, on the north pole as a fourth point strikes the eye immediately and demands careful consideration, particularly if a straightedge laid down after carefully establishing the meridian line reveals such exactness as exists here.  The site of Werther church, with its old “Romanesque” tower, is linked with an unusual legend.  The freeing of the “Wichbolde” [municipal areas] at Werther and “in der Halle” from public service was probably bound up with religious obligations.  At the places where this line crosses the Teutoburg forest the maps show nothing; whether any traces can still be recognized, remains to be seen.  Steinhagen, even before its separation from Dörnberg in 1334, had an old chapel [216.1]. 

Just as impressive as the line through Werther is a line of churches north of Hanover in the Lüneburg Heath, where churches are even scarcer. 

Along with the unmistakable orientation of these three churches on the east point, we must notice the occurrence of the name “Thören” for a small village on this east line, midway between Schwarmstedt and Winsen, where on account of their distance apart an intermediate station was needed. 

At the beginning of my researches I kept strictly away from the name question, which as regards these Thören names has quite serious consequences for our discussion, in order to avoid the errors that can so easily arise from names, and to begin by setting things on a sound basis.  But certain names soon crowded so consistently on the identified lines, that I could no longer ignore them.  For that reason, in presenting my evidence shall I not suppress important names occurring on the lines. 

The size of the angular deviation in degrees must be omitted in cases where at first we have only the names to go on.  For, especially with measurements over a short distance, a point must be available that is defined with enough precision.  This question has only slight importance where we are not dealing with high-lying stations, but with sites that were situated on the line mainly for the sake of their religious feeling, though they could then be used in bad visibility as intermediate stations for relaying the fire signals. 

The names alone have already often eased my task of finding more-exactly defined places through which an orientation could then be established.  To these names belong e.g. “Tören, Thören, Dören, Döhren, Dooren, Doren, Dorn” and the like.  The very variable pronunciation of the Lower German word for “tower” [Turm in standard German] down to the present day has been known to me personally since childhood; t, th, d spill over into one another in speech, and the vowel sound is almost never representable in writing.  That the t sound could not become a d is contrary to practical experience.  Most of the Dören etc. seem to me to have nothing to do with Dornen [thorns], but rather to mean “tower”.  The possibility of a sound-shift is established very clearly by the spelling of Dornberg in the 12th century; at that time Kirchdornberg near Bielefeld was called “Thornbergon” (see Example 14).  It is admittedly amazing that the “tower” meaning of “Dören” seems to have died out in folk-memory.  But it is not at all improbable to me that literate people of the 9th century lent a hand according to the Book of Deuteronomy and caused the alteration of the name and its meaning.  In Example 16 we shall be greatly helped by the name of a forest site.  – Incidentally the rules of sound-shifting are powerless in our case, because of course the tower and even the memory of it were lacking, so that the laziness of Lower German speech, which would rather say d than t, had free play.  I have constantly experienced this bad habit with regard to my own name. 

For all other Dören names, that do not mean tower, the reason for the name is not to be sought in the common thorn bush, but in the thorn hedge that enclosed the sanctuary.  To these thorns belongs first and foremost the holly. 

The tower was obviously one of the forms in which the ancient people constructed their sacred buildings.  Both the towers and bells of Christian churches must be seen as a legacy from Germanic culture.  The earliest church buildings in the Mediterranean countries had no towers, any more than their models the temple buildings; bells were not seen in Rome until the 7th century, when the connection with Germanic culture had already become close, and when numerous Germanic customs had been absorbed by Christendom.  At first, so it seems, there was an attempt to destroy the bells that had served for Germanic worship, or they were sunk in water – hence the many legends of submerged bells.  But then came the baptism of bells, through which the old bells were made fit for Christian worship; and then they were hung in a tower near the church.  That one or two old towers were also prudently allowed to stand and likewise baptized, I will neither affirm nor deny.  For us the dogma that the Germanic people never built with lime mortar, whereas other nations had lime mortar long before, has in any case become weak, for reasons already given (Chapter 7). 

In connection with “Thören”, I cannot resist drawing attention to a number of lines with towers. 

The first arouses interest both because of its span of over 100 km and because of a number of striking names. 

If it should turn out that the Lister Turm near Hanover (placed in parentheses above), inside the park through which the line passes, once stood alongside the present building, then this line would provide us with no fewer than five towers.  But even without the Lister Turm it is notable because of the numerous interesting places and names that mark its route, and because of its length. 

Again, on the stretch between Thören near Winsen and the Lister or Döhrener Turm near Hanover conspicuous points are not altogether lacking (e.g. the site of the Hainhaus nearby to the northeast). 

In the low-lying sandy country, where earthworks are liable to rapid destruction, we cannot expect much.  But orientation existed there too, as the following line shows.  It likewise includes a tower. 

The Kattenturm, demolished in 1803, was according the Chronicle of Bremen built in 1309 where the highway to Brinkum crosses the river Ochtum.  Thus its site is exactly fixed for us. 

Bremen prompted me to turn my attention to Minden and Osnabrück, and once again I found towers on the lines. 

The name “Thören” is applied on the map to some isolated houses.  I was unable to follow this up, but the name in this place says enough.  Likewise the Pilgrimage Mill [Wallfahrtsmühle].  Why did people go on pilgrimage to this place exactly on the astronomical north line of Minden Cathedral? 

Here as an impressive endpoint we have a castle ruin surrounded by old circular ramparts, further a “Lechten”berg and also a tower.  The following investigation also leads to a Limberg.  The word “Dorn” in Kirchdornberg, north-west of Bielefeld, made me wonder whether a tower might not be meant here too. 

This investigation was rewarding in two directions.  Historically, I ascertained – as already remarked – that in the 12th century the locality was still called “Thornbergon”, which confirmed my hypothesis that in many hill names and place names the meaning of Dorn, and thus also of Dören, is in fact “tower”.  That is extremely useful for our researches.  The Germanic importance of Dornberg is clear from the fact that it was the site of an old law court [219.1].  Moreover, drawing these lines was for me a signpost to the discovery of the Hünenburg near Riemsloh, whose position I did not know. 

As regards the importance of towers, the “Dörenberg” near Sternberg-in-Lippe arouses keen interest. 

The summit of the Dörenberg shows a very remarkable disturbance and rooting up of the soil, which seems most unlikely to have been caused by the beginnings of a quarry.  Wagons for carrying stone have never travelled to this spot; travelled roads lead rather to the quarry 150 m away.  The official map shows three tumuli and the word “Auss.” [lookout], although the wood now blocks the view.  The 393.1 m trigonometric point lies at about the same height 100 m away.  Our guide, who lived on the spot, showed us a place about 25 m² in area inside the disturbance, and informed us that time out of mind people living nearby had made their vows at this wretched place of devastation!  Let us remember the first Edict of Nantes that I placed at the head of my discussion.  The edict has thus not altogether achieved its purpose.  The religious sentiment of our Lower Saxons, feeling itself tied to a particular spot, did not allow itself to be driven away from the holy place, though even the deepest foundation stones of the building, perhaps even the underlying rock, had been torn away!  There is something touching in that.  From the name of the hill we learn that the sacred building will have been a tower. 

But still more.  The summit of the Dörenberg was the given watchpoint for an old camp lying a short distance away and 30 m lower, with its ramparts still well preserved, which has had to put up with the name “Poles’ redoubt”.  The story goes that it was laid out by the Hussites in order to besiege the Sternburg, and was equipped with a cannon.  Maybe it had once to serve this purpose, but that the enormous labour of creating this camp, which has into the bargain two huge ditches leading towards it from over 100 m away, was carried out by a passing troop of Hussites for the purpose mentioned, is on military and commonsense grounds simple unbelievable.  Until new excavations shed more light on the neighbourhood of this hilltop sanctuary than those carried out so far, we must assume that Germanic hands raised up the ramparts, and that the camp was perhaps re-used at a later time. 

The furnishings of the Dörenberg are still completed by the name of a small village “Hohensonne” [high sun] on the mountain slope 1 km to the south-east.  The connection of the name with the hill sanctuary is not improbable.  It is important to note that the whole of the hill, whose summit is the Dörenberg, is called “Sternberg” [star hill].  The castle (later a forestry headquarters) was the lord’s residence and gave the surrounding district its name and its coat of arms.  A highly interesting circular rampart “Altsternberg” 2½ km away presents riddles which finds of foundation walls and potsherds there have still not solved. 

We can now probably explain the Dörenschlucht in the Teutoburg forest, well known from discussions on the defeat of the Roman general Varus, as Turmschlucht [tower ravine].  The are further reasons in favour of this interpretation.  In the sand of the Senne region, which in places quite covers this ravine in massive dunes, thorns cannot grow at present and have probably never been able to do so since the Ice Ages.  Why then should the name be interpreted as Dornenschlucht, thorn ravine?  But now we can add something else, which gives excellent support to our conjecture.  The forest place bears the now unintelligible name “Wohr”.  But in old documents it is called “Wahrde”! [220.a]

When I visited the Dörenschlucht a few months ago, I discovered on the sizable hill immediately above the Rethlager springs (which may be considered holy springs and are often visited for their beauty) an old military camp with its surrounding ramparts still distinct.  An excavation carried out with School Inspector Schwanold did not contradict this assumption.  For a lookout and beacon at the top of the pass in this varied ravine terrain the camp itself was the right place.  On the rampart at the highest point, near the edge of the hill, where the hill falls away in a remarkably exact funnel-shape to one of the springs, there is a mound, already opened by urn collectors and resembling a large barrow, on which the tower will have stood.  As a final witness for the “tower” interpretation of Dörenschlucht there is a north line, which is in any case defined by two noteworthy points, and for which the above-mentioned mound on the rampart above the springs is sited as a survey point. 

The cemetery at Waddenhausen, which was needed as an intermediate station for fire signals at night and in bad visibility, and is sited at exactly at the right spot, is already known to us from Example 3.  Where such nodal points occur, they support the hypothesis that both lines are correct.  The present ruin of the Steinbeck lookout in the col of the Salzufler range is undoubtedly to be regarded as a medieval building, a fact which of course is no evidence against the use of this splendid site in prehistoric times – on the contrary!  Recent finds testify in favour of it. 

If Dören can also mean “tower”, then all the frequently occurring hills and localities in Germany that bear this name become candidates for having been the sites of oriented lookouts. 

The following tower-example has been of personal value to me.  Since it has no angle measurements, I leave it without a number. 

When I was a boy my father once stood me before the ruins of the Wietersheim tower, which still existed in those days and from which a few isolated houses of his parish took their name, and said: “What on earth could have made anybody build a tower just here?” Now the tower reappears for me as a member of the above line. 

We shall come back to the “Licht” places, and I shall also reserve for later a closer connection of this example with the markpoint in the Leistrup Forest. 

The name “Christenberg” can obviously only date from the conversion period, in which a probably blunt pagan name for a site that had been dedicated to “idolatry” was changed – perhaps by the inhabitants’ own request – into an emphatically Christian one.  The high importance of the Christenberg for Germanic prehistory was later proved to my satisfaction from well-informed sources.  On “Sackpfeife” [bagpipes] see Example 31 under Flötepfeife [flute-pipe]. 

From the great number of orientation lines that I have come across to date, on which the sites of present-day lookout towers occur and give clearly-defined support for the measurements, let us here firstly give a few examples without comment and only in a fragmentary way, concentrating on lookout towers. 

18.	Wittekindsburg, Porta Westfalica — 13 km — dev 0.1° LT Idaturm [tower] near Bückeburg — 30 km — dev 0.05° LT Annaturm in the Deister range — east point.
19.	LT Idaturm near Bückeburg — 3½ km — dev 0.5° 187 m height above castle ruins at Todemann — 3½ km — dev 0.1° abbey church at Rinteln — (½ km knacker’s yard) — Nottberg above Thie and Hilgenplatz — 8½ km — dev 0.1° Almena church — south point.
20.	LT above Ahrenfeld — 6½ km — dev 0.1° LT above Deinsen — east point.
21.	LT above Ahrenfeld — 4 km — dev 0.1° Gross Oldendorf church — north point.
22.	LT Lauensteinberg — 2 km — dev 0.3° Bisperode church — west point.
23.	LT Lauenstein — 12 km — dev 0.2° Königszinne hill near Bodenwerder — south point.
24.	LT north-east of Stadtoldendorf — 2 km — dev 0.05° Ruins at Homburg — north point.
25.	“Döhrenkopf” — 2½ km — LT at Deisterwarte — 6 km — dev 0.05° “Burg” [castle] south-east of Altenhagen I.  — south point.
Johannis- Steine
26.	LT on the Beutling (north-west of Borgholzhausen) — 1½ km — dev 0.05° Wellingholzhausen church — north point.
27.	LT at Ebberg (near Hillegossen, Bielefeld) — 15½ km — dev 0.3° Johannissteine [St. John’s stones] near Lage — 2½ km — 0.5° Heiden church — east point.
28.	LT Ebberg — 12½ km — dev 0.6° School with “bell tree”  [222.a] (now chapel at Laar) — 12 km — dev 1.1° Bünde church — 8 km — dev 1.2° Babilonie, 295.3 m height — north point.
Babilonie

Our Dörenberg near Sternberg (No. 15) was also a station of a north–south line:

The ruin called “the old lookout” on the Dickerberg, Fig. 72 which has already been mentioned as a building quite similar to the “Detmold lookout” in the chapter on medieval Detmold, is illustrated here [Fig. 72].  The assumption that it was once an oriented firetower of the old religion, which for some reason escaped complete destruction, is far more likely than the mere opinion of old von Donop (op. cit.) [222.b], that it is a medieval watchtower built by one of the Counts of Lippe.  With a diameter of about 3.80 m, the circular stump of the tower, which is built with lime mortar, has at its centre a square hole 55 × 55 cm in size, which entirely rules out human occupation and climbing of the tower, so that a medieval watchtower is not to be thought of.  The chimney has underneath an opening to the outside, which seems to have had a size of 40 cm.  Fig. 73 An identical arrangement exists at the Ziegenberg lookout (Fig. 73), 3 km from Horn, with its vast burial ground. 

A masonry wall 1½ m thick and a hole ½ m or so in diameter must have had a purpose either in itself or in the creation of a raised surface, which in any case would not, or not principally, have served the purpose of a lookout.  For that purpose, the hole in the middle would have been not only pointless, but a hindrance. 

It seems to me impossible to find a halfway reasonable explanation for the base of the tower, other than that it is a raised support for a stack of firewood with an air supply from underneath.  As positive evidence for its cultic importance can then be added: 1. its name “Teufelsturm” [Devil’s tower] or “Teufelsloch” [Devil’s hole] which is given to it by people living nearby and which preserves the memory of an old religious site; 2. its orientation in a north–south line with Galgenkuhle, Grotenburg, and the hilltop sanctuary on the Dörenberg already discussed in Example 15. 

Close around the tower, at 2 m distance, there seems to have run a smaller rampart as an enclosure.  Otherwise, I have not found any remains of buildings or ramparts in the plain woodland solitude of this narrow mountain ridge.  Considering that the wood entirely blocks the superb view that ought to stretch for miles around, the number of visitors to the tower base in this sparsely populated region, unaffected by tourism, is remarkable; countless names carved into the trees bear witness that these poor ruins in a charmless woodland spot have a remarkable attraction for people living nearby (cf. Example 15).