Author Archives: kcosumano

Weekend Mountain Blogging: To The Gletschermühle

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A walk through the quiet and somewhat mysterious Ullwald, in the shadow of the Patscherkofel, earlier this week.


The local sights include the Gletschermühle, a small “glacial mill” carved into the stone by thousands of years of ice age melt.


As water poured off the melting glacier, the churning water, mixed with stones, hollowed out a “kettle” in the rock below.


When I scrambled over the rocks to the other, lower side, an idea struck me. Although this “carving” is a natural formation, it must have been important to earlier inhabitants due to its rarity. And if 4000 B.C. Man was really no less genetically primitive than 2000 A.D. Man, he would have to have been impressed with this rock face in a majorly theatrical way, as backdrop for ritual. Perhaps the massive cathedral high altar of today is a descendants of the mass of rocks behind the priestess/priest. My camera couldn’t do it justice, unfortunately.

Not far away, what 2000 AD Man has been up to: A stone labyrinth, close to the Mühlsee tram station.

Pagans In Tirol: Bergisel

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(Source: Bing Maps)

Fellow blogger Zeitspringer recently bemoaned the fact that the sacrificial burning site in Gauting, Bavaria, has little information about it posted in the Web, and nothing at the site itself, and contrasts that lack of information with the excellent resources about the Goldbichl here in Tirol. While he is right to wish for more in Bavaria, I offer up here a similar site which has been all but forgotten, on the large hill here known as Bergisel.

Bergisel is known today as the site of one of the “Four Hills” ski jumps (and a very nice one at that). Historically, it’s connected with Andreas Hofer and the battles fought there in the early 1800s, and as the location of the new Tirol Panorama Museum. There is also a pretty trail along the Sill Gorge, on the back side of the hill. But there are other interesting things about it.
Bergisel was in fact known to be a significant archaeological site, if at first only the northern spur, since at least the 1840s. The partial collection of a large treasure find is housed in the Tirol State Museum Ferdinandeum, the other part having been “carried off by the wagonful and sold by weight to bellmakers.” The exact location of the discovery was not given, however the most likely place is the current site of the Kaiserjäger Museum, as that was the only area where extensive digging and construction had been conducted at the time.

Deposits of ritual offerings have been found in other parts of the Alps, for example in nearby Fliess, west of Innsbruck. These offerings were destroyed, smashed, bent or cut into pieces, but are rarely found with burn marks. In Ancient Greece, cult images were draped with fabrics which had to be replaced periodically. Holy apparel and it’s trimmings, such as metal clasps, could not simply be thrown out, and so chambers were dug into the earth on or near sacred ground, where these items could be deposited. A tour around the early history exhibits in the basement of the Ferdinandeum will show a large number of these clasps having been found all over Tirol, which points to a similar practice. Also — in prehistoric graves found north of the Alps, the dead were outfitted in their finest, including metal objects such as clasps and armbands. The inhabitants of Tirol did not do this, which leads to the idea that their belongings were then offered to their deities for the common good.


(Source: “Ur- und Frühgeschichte von Innsbruck”, Katalog zur Ausstellung im Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum 2007.)

More recent excavations (between the demolition of the old ski jump in 2001, and the construction of the new one) have uncovered a site for burnt offerings near the highest point of the hill, just a few meters east of the ski jump tower. Animal bones were found which had been burnt at a temperature of over 600°C. Of course when the old jump was built in the 1960s, a large swath of earth had been removed, and a great deal of archaeological evidence went with it. But the eastern side seems to be relatively intact, and awaiting additional future, as-of-yet unplanned excavations. The articles found have been dated to as early as 650 BC to as late as 15 BC, when the Romans arrived.

This information is all public, either via the internet or from Ferdinandeum publications such as the one named above. However, there is absolutely NO information at the site itself. There are barely trails — practically dog paths — up the steep grades. I only made it up (and down) by grabbing onto tree roots and watching very carefully where I stepped. Autumn’s leaves, needles and pine cones added a certain slipperiness to the adventure. (The sites, such as they are, are on the outside of the fenced-in ski jump area, so you can’t just take the incline.)

The altar mound as seen today, on the highest point of the hill.

The fence around the sport area runs through the mound, which seems a little unfortunate. Below: the man-made terraces on the north side of the hill, found above the old shooting range. Evidence of housing (from different eras) was unearthed on them, possibly for whomever tended to the holy sites.

In the museum book, it is noted in summary that no other area of excavation in central Europe has revealed so much sacred activity — the Raetians, from the evidence found, seemed to have devoted more of their time to religious rites than any other tribe, and for over 600 years.

Pagans In Tirol: Schalenstein

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My best blogposts lately have been inspired (stolen) from others’ efforts, and this one will be no exception. Earlier this month fellow blogger Paschberg went exploring on the newer trails carved out by the mountainbikers, and came across a rock cliff with cup markings carved into the top. This would be the second set found, after the boulder near Tantegert. Naturally, I needed to go find this for myself, and so, equipped with a marked google earth map graciously sent to me, I set out to find the Schalenstein.

After wandering around the general area (there are all sorts of named and unnamed tracks criss-crossing around over there), I circled back and came across this rock face, part of a longer ridge that cuts through the woods.

And sure enough, at the top was a flat, square-shaped boulder, with three cup markings bored into the surface. I was delighted to find it, and at the same time wanted to kick myself for passing so close to this area regularly for nearly two years, and never looking around over this way. This Schalenstein was practically in front of my nose, or better said, over my head.

Behind the rock is a kind of partly enclosed ledge, big enough to sit on. That’s where I noticed the bolt anchors — there are several of them driven into the rock at different heights. Clearly, this cliff is being used for rock climbing practice.

And at the so-called “witch’s cottage”, just a minute or two down the path, it became a little clearer that the climbing practice has some connection to whoever uses the cottage now. Note the climbing holds decorating the wall, and the photograph next to the door.

I walked further uphill along the ridge to inspect more boulders, but they are all covered with thick moss and tree roots. There’s just no telling what’s underneath them. The Schalenstein was the only rock that was somewhat free of moss — which leads me to believe that it’s being somehow, anonymously, maintained.
I once asked an archaeology-minded friend about the cup markings in the rocks here, and she responded with cynicism. There are fakes, there’s no proving their antiquity. She has a point, and the rocks don’t seem to be of interest to anyone official (Not that I can see. Maybe I’m wrong about that.) But they are there. The sacrificial altar sites at Goldbichl and Bergisel are not all that far away, nor is the possibly-Pagan “Judenstein”. It is said there are other marked stones in the area, hidden away in the woods, waiting to be visited.

Forgotten Innsbruck: A Photo Book

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Recently an old, tattered copy of a photo book on Innsbruck by one Adolf Sickert (Innsbruck: Ein Farbbildwerk, published by Meinhold Verlagsgesellschaft, Dresden 1943) fell into my hands, and some of the photographs I found interesting enough to scan and post here. For example this view of the Serles over the snow-covered rooftops of the old town, with its swastika-draped facades.

This town square still looks pretty much the same — the fountain is still there, and the grass, and even that nice big tree. The old ladies are gone, replaced by young homeless men and their dogs. The name of the square, too — at the time it was Adolf-Hitler-Platz, but it went (back?) to Theaterplatz after all that business ended.

The old Hungerburgbahn — would this be one of the original cars? — had open windows from which one could lean out. This track is no longer used since the new line was built, but the bridge is still there.

The arch, where Maria-Theresien-Strasse meets Maximilienstrasse. The gun shop is now a bakery/lunch counter. The “oldtimer” trams, like the one shown here, are pulled out and run every so often.

Pagans In Bavaria: Leutstetten

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The church of St. Alto, in Leutstetten, north of Lake Starnberg. This church has a curiosity in its sanctuary.

This 1643 oil on wood painting features three unusual saints: Ainpet, Gberpet and Firpet. These are local, alpine-regional deities, so to speak. They’re not on the official register of Roman Catholic saints, and it has been postulated that they are pre-Christian, reformed into good Catholics simply by putting new stories on them and calling them the Three Virgins. Other paintings of them are found in scattered churches, and one is (was?) in the church of St. Vigilius, in Obsaurs, Tyrol. I have not been there and can only refer to it. This painting here was not always at St. Alto — it originally hung in the chapel in the village of Einbettl (Ainpet, Einbettl) which was torn down in the 19th century.

Here the chapel at Petersbrunnen, or St. Peter’s fountain; however, the name may well stem from “Betenbrunnen”. In any case the water was long considered to have healing properties, and in the 16th century Duke Wilhelm IV had the chapel built, alongside facilities for cure-seekers (to keep the riffraff separate from the paying guests). The baths are gone, the chapel is still there. In his book “Romerstraßen und Kultplätze” (Roman Roads and Ritual Sites), Martin Bernstein sees an irony in the fact that the chapel, built over a possible heathen holy site, has to be renovated frequently due to problems with moisture. The revenge of the Beten, perhaps.

The Villa Rustica (country villa and farm), built in 150 AD, excavated in 2002. The glass structure covers the part of the house which had heated floors (Hypocaustum) and a bath. Nearby Gauting (then Bratananium) was where the Roman road crossed the river Würm (Starnberger See was once the Würmsee. It began its name change in the 1800s and made it official in 1962.) Evidence of crops and livestock raising were found. Romans were good at adapting to what grew here already (spelt, emmer-wheat) and introduced wheat and rye. From other Roman farm excavations it is certain there were also animal stalls, silos, barns, and lodging for the farm workers. A millstone was found near this site, indicating a flour mill.
The method used to heat the floors allowed smoke to escape from behind the walls, thereby also heating the rooms to a comfortable temperature. To realize that, even over a thousand years later, kings were living in cold drafty castles, drives home the meaning of the term Dark Ages.

Finds from the nearby spring, most likely offerings, all copies for display here: two house keys, pottery, a slate writing tablet. The large stone is a copy of a Roman gravestone which is believed to belong to the owner of this villa. It is written that he came from Braga (northern Portugal), had a long military career, and that his loving wife erected this stone for him. The original stone was discovered to have been built into the side altar in the above-mentioned St. Alto church (where it remains today), presumably hauled off from one of two Roman urn graves nearby. Whether the stone, the graves and the villa all deal with the same 2 people is speculative, but highly probable. This spring, incidentally, provided the means of determining the date that the farm was in use — the farmer had had a wooden, box-shaped well built on it, which was nicely preserved upon discovery. The wood fragments of the well itself — plus other pieces which had been used to fill it when the farm was abandoned — were then dendochronologically dated.
The Villa Rustica is not directly accessible by car, but one can walk there along the bike path — from the above-mentioned village of Einbettl. And with that, the circle is complete.

Pagans In Bavaria: Viereckschanzen in Holzhausen

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Along with the Sunderburg and the pre-Christian grave mounds hidden here and there, the area immediately north of the Ammersee also contains two fairly well-preserved Celtic Viereckschanzen, rectangular earthen enclosures, called Holzhausen 1 and 2. Their function is disputed among archaeologists as to whether they held sacred groves or were built for more practical purposes as forerunners to medieval city walls. They were certainly large enough for whole clans to live in them, being roughly 100 meters long and 75 meters wide, which would make for an unusually wide football field.

Holzhausen 1 has an entrance gate, or at least a higher break in the wall where a gate would have been built. A nearby sign suggests how one would have looked.

A path now leads along the top of the wall, bringing the visitor all the way around and back to the gate.

Inside the wall is meadow, and, interestingly, a small copse of young trees about right in the middle. Much older trees had stood here but had been cut down. We didn’t count the rings in their stumps but there were many. Possibly someone is maintaining their own sacred grove.

At Holzhausen 2, the forest has taken over. The ground inside the wall has filled in over time so that the earthwork is now more of a plateau. Here is the edge, from above on the wall.

Here again, just about in the middle of the Schanze, an unusual circle of plant life. I’m going to assume that fires were made here in the recent past, and the wood ash left the earth especially fertile for this plant. I’m not very romantic about the past — I tend to think people had way too much to do trying to stay alive and healthy and keep what they had, than to put all this work into a little sacred circle. But hey, that’s me. It’s clearly someone’s sacred circle now, and it’s nice to know that these someones are caring for this speck of land.

By each Schanze is a small sign explaining the site, and nothing more. Better that way — it’s not easy to find, not easy to reach (we took our mountain bikes), and less liable to be wrecked. Holzhausen is just south of Fürstenfeldbruck, near Schöngeising, 40 kilometers west of Munich.

Forgotten Bavaria: Sunderburg

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High above the Amper River lies a mountain spur known as the Schlossberg (Castle Hill) or the Sunderburg, where evidence has been found of settlements from different eras. Excavations have shown that people lived here as early as the early Bronze Age (app. 1700-1600 BC). and there have been finds belonging to the Urnfield Culture (app. 1200-800 BC, and there are indeed grave mounds nearby.) In the Hallstadt Culture years the settlement was apparently abandoned. I have no knowledge as to whether the Romans used the hill for any strategic purpose, although it is rather close to the Via Julia, the roman salt road which ran from Salzburg to the Donau at Günzburg.

In the 11th century a fortress was allegedly erected on the hill by Count Friedrich of Diessen-Andechs, and Middle Age archaeological finds confirm this. The name Sunderburg was first mentioned in records in 1447. The House of Wittelsbach built a hunting lodge there in the 16th century.
On the steep slope to the river one finds mixed forest an, below that, rare flora in the wetland meadows downriver.

There is no information on hand about the earthwalls an the plateau, they could have been constructed in any of the periods where people used the hill.
An old local tale about the Sunderburg tells of it going under with all its inhabitants and treasures. A peasant, finding glass shards on the ground, took one home to find it had turned to gold. When he returned for more shards, they had all vanished. Another story tells of two pails of gold deep in the castle well, guarded by spirits which cannot be banished, which sinks further into the mountain every year. Similar stories of ancient gold in ancient fortresses can be found in Tirol, and probably wherever old, pre-christian settlements are known to have been. The locals may have known nothing of those prehistoric people, but the myths and legends often contain something of them.

Hannah and Her Lovers

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The site of the long log house today.

When Theophilus Gates, the founder of the Battle-Axe religious movement, passed away in 1846, the “indomitable” Hannah Williamson succeeded him as leader among the saints. She was already well-known in “Free Love Valley”, preaching and prophecying in the fields and roads.

She also became attached to the Stubblebine family. One mate, however, could not suffice for this remarkable woman. In the long log house near the Cold Springs, lived young Dave, Dan and Hannah. Dave was a carpenter, Dan a smith. The brothers farmed a little, but their specialty was small hand coffee mills. Dave did the woodwork, Dan the iron, and when they had a supply they took them to Philadelphia. The carpenter shop was in the log house, the smithy back in the woods, and there was a springhouse over which Hannah had a room for herself.
The state had already seized a thousand dollars in cash, cattle and farm goods for the support of Dave’s discarded wife. When his brother-in-law had endeavored to inform Dave of the hearing at Court upon this question of who was to provide for the upkeep of Catherine Stubblebine, he had refused to receive the paper, or to hear it read, observing that it might as well have been left in West Chester, and that no honest man would have anything to do with it. Catherine continues to live with her brother in the valley, and was an important witness at the trials of 1843, where her husband was dealt a sentence of eighteen months imprisonment.*

…

Hannah, as the world was learning, thought and acted in superlatives, measured life in the grand proportions which her torrential emotions demanded. When she found herself with child, it was a new messiah that was to be born, and when the baby died, it was laid away to await a mighty resurrection. Twice “Christ” was born in the log house, and buried, once under a great Chestnut tree nearby, once in a field by the road.

Valley children used to pick through for the log house’s rubbish heap for discarded round pieces of wood, cut from the tops of the coffee mills, to make wheels for their wagons.

But it was always with a thrill of terror that they passed the small hollows in the ground that marked the graves. At night, with the tangled shadows and the ghostly rustling of the woods about one, it was a difficult matter to get past at all. Even older people had a solemn stare for the places “where they buried Christ.” The neighbors feared both the place and its people. Israel Miller said he would not go to the log house for the best horse you could give him.

 

Text from “Theophilus The Battle-Axe”, Charles Sellers, 1930. Patterson & White, Philadelphia.

* Along with several others, for disregard of marriage law.

Grave Mounds near Grafrath

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In the northern part of the ground moraine flatlands near the villages of Grafrath and Mauern, south of Fürstenfeldbruck, stretches one of the largest pre-historic grave mound necropoleis in Bavaria. Systematic surveillance has revealed at least 124 mounds. It is possible that more grave mounds existed outside the forested area, but were worn away over centuries of farming and building.


Research into this grave mound area began in the late 18th century, through the efforts of a local minister who made an early map of the mounds. Some excavations occurred in 1839 and 1870.  Later, in 1893, the Munich historical painter Julius Naue dug out 93 of the graves. Part of the finds are in the Archäological National Collection in Munich.
In the customs of the times, the dead were buried in their traditional clothing along with fine jewelry and vessels containing provisions. Some of  the men were buried with weapons. Some cultures buried cremated remains. The oldest burials are from the middle Bronze Age (1600 B.C.) Later burials occurred in the “Urnfield” culture in the late Bronze Age (1200-800 B.C.) and especially in the early Celtic “Hallstatt” culture (800-500 BC). The most recent, from the Celtic “Latène” era (500-100 BC,) consist of burials in existing mounds.

Thanks to the Fürstenfeldbruck Civic Trust for putting up this information on their nahTourBand walking trail.

Also special thanks to the guy who manages the Kraftvolle Orte website, which lovingly details what appears to be every single Pagan sacred place in Bavaria, including directions and GPS coordinates.. Gotta love those Germans.

The Hidden Jewish Cemetery in Utting

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Looking for other archaeology sites on the local map, one stumbles across other, less expected things. For example, a KZ (concentration camp) cemetery outside of the small lakeside town of Utting, where there had been a tannery which made use of forced laborers from Dachau — there were satellite camps all around, this was Camp 5 (Lager V).

We almost didn’t find it. In fact we had come to a dead end in a field and started to turn back, when a local came by on his bicycle. When he heard what we were looking for, he generously walked us there (we never would have found it on our own, once we saw where we were headed — through a patch of forest,  someone’s back lawn and  a wooded archery range — but we had come in from the wrong road, it seemed.

About 500 male prisoners worked here from August 1944 until April 1945. This cemetery is for the 27 who died from the brutal treatment.

A large stone inside the cemetery wall commemorates the 27 victims, from “the rescued compatriots of Schaulen” (Šiauliai, in Northern Lithuania, was an important leatherworking town. Which explains why its sons were brought to the tannery).

In my research I came across this poem by Yehuda Amichai, translated into English by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld. The description could fit just about any of these little memorial graveyards, including this one.

“A Jewish Cemetery In Germany”

On a little hill amid fertile fields lies a small cemetery,
a Jewish cemetery behind a rusty gate, hidden by shrubs,
abandoned and forgotten. Neither the sound of prayer
nor the voice of lamentation is heard there
for the dead praise not the Lord.
Only the voices of our children ring out, seeking graves
and cheering
each time they find one–like mushrooms in the forest, like
wild strawberries.
Here’s another grave! There’s the name of my mother’s
mothers, and a name from the last century. And here’s a name,
and there! And as I was about to brush the moss from the name–
Look! an open hand engraved on the tombstone, the grave
of a kohen,
his fingers splayed in a spasm of holiness and blessing,
and here’s a grave concealed by a thicket of berries
that has to be brushed aside like a shock of hair
from the face of a beautiful beloved woman.

Historical information on the cemetery found here. This is the work of one Othmar Frühauf, who has photo-documented Jewish cemeteries in Germany for Alemannia Judaica (Both links are in German). My hat goes off to him.

Poem found here