The Eifelgau was a Frankish gau in the region of the present day Limestone Eifel in Germany.
Contents
- Location and history
- Gaugraves
- Settlements in the Eifelgau
- Neighbouring gaus
- Literature
- See also
- References
The Eifelgau was a Frankish gau in the region of the present day Limestone Eifel in Germany.
The Eifelgau derives its name from the Eifel mountains between the Rhine, Ahr, Rur, Our, Sauer and Moselle rivers. [1] It encompasses the source regions of the rivers Erft, Urft, Kyll and Ahr, and is thus located mainly in the northern and northwestern foothills of the Eifel. [2] The Gau was part of Lower Lorraine and belonged to Ripuaria. It corresponded geographically to the Eifel Deanery of the Diocese of Cologne. [1]
Julius Caesar, in his reports about the Gallic War (58–51 BC), called the whole mountain range between the Rhine, Meuse and Moselle, the Arduenna Silva ("Arduenna Forest"). [3] Roughly around the 7th century the Franks used the term Ardennes for the mountain range and divided their empire into gaus. The Eifelgau lay east of the Ardennengau.
Over the centuries the name Eifel, originally covering the same area as the Eifelgau, came to be used for a larger and larger region. In the meantime the German part of the mountain range became known as the "Eifel", while the Belgian, French and Luxembourgian areas on the other side of the border became the "Ardennes". An exception is the eastern part of Belgium, where it is still called the Eifel.
In the 11th century the gaus lost their political relevance.
The gau was ruled by gaugraves ("gau counts"):
Ahrdorf, Antweiler, Aremberg, Arloff, Baasem, Bad Münstereifel, Barweiler, Betteldorf, Bewingen, Bouderath, Buir, Dahlem, Engelgau, Frohngau, Gilsdorf, Hillesheim, Holzmülheim, Insul, Iversheim, Kerpen, Kesseling, Lammersdorf, Lessenich, Leudersdorf, Lindweiler, Lommersdorf, Marmagen, Müsch, Nettersheim, Nohn, Oberbettingen, Pesch, Prüm, Reifferscheid, Ripsdorf, Roderath, Satzvey, Schmidtheim, Schuld, Sellerich, Steffeln, Tondorf, Üxheim, Weyer, Wiesbaum and Zingsheim. [4]
The Moselle is a river that rises in the Vosges mountains and flows through north-eastern France, Luxembourg, and western Germany. It is a left bank tributary of the Rhine, which it joins at Koblenz. A small part of Belgium is in its basin as it includes the Sauer and the Our.
The Eifel is a low mountain range in western Germany and eastern Belgium. It occupies parts of southwestern North Rhine-Westphalia, northwestern Rhineland-Palatinate and the southern area of the German-speaking Community of Belgium.
The Hunsrück is a long, triangular, pronounced upland in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is bounded by the valleys of the Moselle-Saar (north-to-west), the Nahe (south), and the Rhine (east). It is continued by the Taunus mountains, past the Rhine and by the Eifel past the Moselle. To the south of the Nahe is a lower, hilly country forming the near bulk of the Palatinate region and all of the, smaller, Saarland. Below its north-east corner is Koblenz.
Gau is a Germanic term for a region within a country, often a former or actual province. It was used in the Middle Ages, when it can be seen as roughly corresponding to an English shire. The administrative use of the term was revived as a subdivision during the period of Nazi Germany in 1933–1945. It still appears today in regional names, such as the Rheingau or Allgäu.
Bad Münstereifel is a historical spa town in the district of Euskirchen, Germany, with about 17,000 inhabitants, situated in the far southwest of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The little town is one of only few historical towns in the southwest of North Rhine-Westphalia, and because of this is often overcrowded by tourists throughout spring and summer.
Rheinbach is a town in the Rhein-Sieg-Kreis district (Landkreis), in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It belongs to the administrative district (Regierungsbezirk) of Cologne.
Koblenz Hauptbahnhof is a railway station in the city of Koblenz in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. It is the focal point of rail transport in the Rhine-Moselle-Lahn area. It is a through station in southern Koblenz built below Fort Großfürst Konstantin and opened in 1902 in the Neustadt, which was built after the demolition of the city walls in 1890. The station replaced two former stations on the Left Rhine railway, which were only 900 m apart, and the former Moselle line station. Koblenz-Stadtmitte station opened in April 2011 in the old centre of Koblenz. Koblenz Hauptbahnhof is on the West Rhine Railway and connects to the Moselle line, the East Rhine Railway and to the Lahn Valley Railway. It is used daily by about 40,000 travelers and visitors. In the station forecourt are a bus station and a pavilion.
The County of Sponheim was an independent territory in the Holy Roman Empire that lasted from the 11th century until the early 19th century. The name comes from the municipality of Sponheim, where the counts had their original residence.
The Gau Westmark was an administrative division of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. From 1925 to 1933, it was a regional subdivision of the Nazi Party.
The Nahegau was in the Middle Ages a county, which covered the environs of the Nahe and large parts of present-day Rhenish Hesse, after a successful expansion of the narrow territory, which did not reach the Rhine, to the disadvantage of the Wormsgau. Among other expansions were Ingelheim in 937, Spiesheim in 960, Saulheim in 973 and Flonheim in 996, until after the end of the expansion the Selz set the southern limit and the limit to the Wormsgau.
The County of Virneburg was a territory of the Holy Roman Empire in the region of the Eifel in present-day Rhineland-Palatinate.
The Hürth-Kalscheuren–Ehrang railway is a non-electrified line in the German states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate running from Hürth-Kalscheuren via Euskirchen and Gerolstein to Trier-Ehrang through the Eifel hills.
The Ahrgau was a medieval Frankish gau that lay either side of the River Ahr in the north of the present-day German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, but also reached the gates of Bonn, especially after the dissolution of the Odangau.
The Michelsberg, at 586.1 m above sea level (NHN), is the highest point in the borough of Bad Münstereifel in the county of Euskirchen in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The hill, which rises near the village of Mahlberg belongs to that part of the Eifel mountains known as the Ahr Hills (Ahreifel), and is the second highest point in the range.
The Jülich-Zülpich Börde is a landscape in the Rhineland in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia on the northern edge of the Eifel. It forms the western part of the Lower Rhine Bay, west of the Rhine, excluding the actual Cologne Lowland, from which it is separated by the ridge of the Ville. It is divided into the Jülich Börde around the town of Jülich in the north and the Zülpich Börde around the town of Zülpich in the south, the two areas being separated from one another by the Bürge forest. Both parts are natural region major units of the Lower Rhine Bay.
The Roman road from Trier to Cologne is part of the Via Agrippa, a Roman era long distance road network, that began at Lyon. The section from Augusta Treverorum (Trier) to the CCAA (Cologne), the capital of the Roman province of Germania Inferior, had a length of 66 Roman leagues. It is described in the Itinerarium Antonini, the itinerarium by Emperor Caracalla (198–217), which was revised in the 3rd century, and portrayed in the Tabula Peutingeriana or Peutinger Table, the Roman map of the world discovered in the 16th century, which shows the Roman road network of the 4th century.
Münstereifel Forest is densely wooded region in the northern part of the Eifel mountains in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. In the south it borders on the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. It has an area of 237 km² and lies at a height of between 200 and 500 m above sea level (NHN).
Arloff is a village in the borough of Bad Münstereifel in the district of Euskirchen in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
The Viking raids in the Rhineland were part of a series of invasions of Francia by the Vikings that took place during the final decades of the 9th century. From the Rhineland, which can be regarded as the nucleus of Frankish culture, the Franks had previously conquered almost the whole of Central Europe and established a great empire.