The Bavarian Forest Club (German : Bayerische Wald-Verein), or BWV, is a German club that promotes culture, local history and folklore, nature and landscape conservation, and walking in the Bavarian Forest. It has its head office in Zwiesel and is registered in the register of clubs and societies in the district office at Deggendorf (VR 10158).
The founder of the club was Anton Niederleuthner, senior judge in Passau. The foundation of the club in 1883 goes back to his meeting with foresters in Bodenmais. The Bavarian Forest Club was founded in Deggendorf Town Hall on 25 November 1883. The Bodenmais townsman, Bartholomäus Stölzl, was appointed as its first chairman. On 6 June 1885, Niederleuthner founded the Passau Branch, the club's first local branch. On 22 August he was elected the first president and made Passau the base of the club. He managed the club for over 20 years and founded over 40 other local branches. The club emblem used today goes back to Niederleuthner.
A club magazine, Der Bayerwald, was also launched. Its editor in the 1930s was the Nazi, Eugen Hubrich.
The main goals of the club were the development of the Bavarian Forest as a hiking and holiday area, the creation of a dense network of hiking trails and the construction of refuge huts. Later they concentrated on the maintenance and waymarking of trails, the conservation of refuge huts and viewing towers as well as measures such as the protection of the Schachten , the historical grazing areas of the highlands. Until the founding of the Bavarian Forest Nature Park in 1967 and the Bavarian Forest National Park in 1970, the Bavarian Forest Club was the only major institution that placed the culture and nature of the Bavarian Forest at the centre of its activities.
In 2016, the club comprised 60 branches and had about 20,000 members. [1] The individual branches own important buildings and refuge huts. For example, Kollnburg Castle and Neunußberg Castle are owned by the Viechtach branch, and the Lusenschutzhaus by the Grafenau branch. Important annual events include the Bayerwaldtag (Bavarian Forest Day) and the art exhibition, Zwieseler Buntspecht, in Zwiesel. On the Oberbreitenau a youth education centre has been created in the Landshut House named after the Landshut branch.
On 26 October 2008, the club celebrated its 125th anniversary in the festival hall of the old town hall of Deggendorf. Minister of State, Josef Miller, gave the speech at the spot where the Bavarian Forest Club was founded on 25 November 1883.
Since early 2016, the club has become a member of the German Hiking Association, to which it had already previously belonged until its departure on 31 December 2006. [2] [3] In the interim, the Interessensgemeinschaft Bayerischer Wald, consisting of the Dreiburgenland and Ruderting-Neukirchen branches, was a member of the German Hiking Association from June 2008 to the end of 2013. [4]
The Bavarian Forest is a wooded, low-mountain region in Bavaria, Germany that is about 100 kilometres long. It runs along the Czech border and is continued on the Czech side by the Bohemian Forest. Most of the Bavarian Forest lies within the province of Lower Bavaria, but the northern part lies within Upper Palatinate. In the south it reaches the border with Upper Austria.
The Bavarian Forest National Park is a national park in the Eastern Bavarian Forest immediately on Germany's border with the Czech Republic. It was founded on 7 October 1970 as the first national park in Germany. Since its expansion on 1 August 1997 it has covered an area of 24,250 hectares. Together with the neighbouring Czech Bohemian Forest the Bavarian Forest forms the largest contiguous area of forest in Central Europe.
Zwiesel is a town in the lower-Bavarian district of Regen, and since 1972 is a Luftkurort with particularly good air. The name of the town was derived from the Bavarian word stem zwisl which refers to the form of a fork. The fork of the rivers Großer Regen and Kleiner Regen and the land that lies between these two rivers were called Zwiesel.
The Großer Arber ; Czech: Velký Javor, "Great Maple") or Great Arber, is the highest peak of the Bavarian/Bohemian Forest mountain range and in Lower Bavaria, with an elevation of 1,455.5 metres (4,775 ft). As a result, it is known in the Lower Bavarian county of Regen and the Upper Palatine county of Cham as the "King of the Bavarian Forest". Its summit region consists of paragneiss.
The Royal Bavarian Eastern Railway Company or Bavarian Ostbahn was founded in 1856. Within just two decades it built an extensive railway network in the eastern Bavarian provinces of Upper Palatinate (Oberpfalz) and Lower Bavaria (Niederbayern) that had previously been largely undisturbed by the railway. Much of this network is still important for local and long distance rail traffic operated by the Deutsche Bahn today.
The Zwiesel–Bodenmais railway was the last railway line to be built in Lower Bavaria, a province of the state of Bavaria in southeast Germany. Nowadays it is route number 907 in the timetable. Construction started in 1921 as part of a move to support this depressed area and it was taken into service on 3 September 1928. The 14.3 km long stub line connects to the Bavarian Forest railway from Plattling to Eisenstein opened on 16 September 1877 and also to the line to Grafenau, Bavaria, opened on 1 September 1890.
The Bavarian Forest Railway links the heart of the Bavarian Forest around Regen and Zwiesel to Plattling and the Danube valley on one side, and the Czech Republic through Bayerisch Eisenstein on the other. In the Danube valley it forms a junction with the Nuremberg–Regensburg–Passau long-distance railway and, to the south, regional lines to Landshut and Munich.
The Bayerwald-Ticket is a special, low-cost, local railway ticket introduced in 1999 for the counties (Landkreise) of Regen and Freyung-Grafenau in the Bavarian Forest in southeast Germany. Until 2003 it was only valid between May and October; from 2004 it has been valid all-year round.
Zwiesel station is the most important railway hub in the Bavarian Forest. It is the only station of the Lower Bavarian town of Zwiesel. Apart from this station, the town also contains Lichtenthal station in the Zwiesel district of Lichtenthal. It is classified by Deutsche Bahn as a category 3 station and has four platform tracks. Zwiesel is located on the railway between Plattling and Bayerisch Eisenstein/Železná Ruda-Alžbětín, also called the Bavarian Forest Railway. In Zwiesel station the lines to Grafenau and to Bodenmais branch off the Bavarian Forest Railway. The lines are maintained by DB Regio and the services are operated by Regentalbahn.
The Passau–Freyung railway, also known as the Ilz Valley Railway or Ilztalbahn, is a branch line in Bavaria, Germany. It runs from Passau to the town of Freyung in the Bavarian Forest. At Kalteneck it forms a junction with the branch line to Eging-Deggendorf. At Waldkirchen the Waldkirchen–Haidmühle line branches off towards the Czech border, where since 1945 there has been a junction with the Czech railway network.
The Deggendorf–Plattling Railway company was an early German railway company founded in 1865 with an original capital of 300,000 gulden and established to build a railway line between Deggendorf and Plattling in Bavaria, southern Germany. The capital was divided into 3,000 shares of 100 gulden each.
Plattling station is a central railway hub in eastern Lower Bavaria in southern Germany.
The Mittagstein is a 1,034-metre-high (3,392 ft) mountain peak which rises in the middle of the Kaitersberg in the Bavarian Forest in southern Germany.
The Kleiner Arber, sometimes also the Little Arber, in the Bavarian Forest is a mountain, 1,383.6 m above sea level (NHN), and the highest peak in the Bavarian province of Upper Palatinate. The border with Lower Bavaria runs over its summit and that of the Großer or Great Arber to the east. An elongated rock outcrop west of the summit cross is the actual highest point in the Upper Palatinate.
The Dreitannenriegel is a mountain, 1,090.2 m above sea level (NHN), in the Bavarian Forest.
The Einödriegel is a mountain, 1,120.6 m above sea level (NHN), in the Bavarian Forest in Germany. It rises southwest of the Lower Bavarian county town of Regen and northeast of the county town of Deggendorf. It is the highest point in the Danube Hills and the county of Deggendorf and lies in the municipality of Grafling.
The Großer Falkenstein or Great Falkenstein, is a mountain, 1,315 metres (4,314 ft) high, in the Bavarian Forest about five kilometres southeast of Bayerisch Eisenstein in the Falkenstein-Rachel region of the Bavarian Forest National Park.
The Palatine Forest Club is a hiking club in the former Bavarian Palatinate, i.e. the southern part of the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate and the Saarland county of Saarpfalz-Kreis. In 2011 it had 221 local branches with around 27,000 members.
The Anterior Bavarian Forest, also variously called the Vorderer Forest, Vorderer Wald or Danube Hills, is part of the Bavarian Forest, a low mountain range in Germany.
The Bavarian Forest Nature Park covers an area north of the Danube as far as the border ridge with the Czech Republic. Its sponsor organisation is the Naturpark Bayerischer Wald whose head office is in Zwiesel, Bavaria. It was established in 1967 and is thus the oldest nature park in Bavaria.
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