Rahnfels

Last updated
Rahnfels
Highest point
Elevation 517 m above  sea level (NN) (1,696 ft)
Coordinates 49°28′18″N8°05′23″E / 49.4716861°N 8.0896083°E / 49.4716861; 8.0896083 Coordinates: 49°28′18″N8°05′23″E / 49.4716861°N 8.0896083°E / 49.4716861; 8.0896083
Geography
Location Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany
Parent range Palatine Forest
Geology
Type of rock Bunter sandstone

The Rahnfels is a hill in the Palatine Forest in Germany, about 2 kilometres northwest of the ruins of Hardenburg castle. With a summit height of 517 m above NN the Rahnfels is the highest point in the Palatine Forest north of the River Isenach.

Germany Federal parliamentary republic in central-western Europe

Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central and Western Europe, lying between the Baltic and North Seas to the north, and the Alps, Lake Constance and the High Rhine to the south. It borders Denmark to the north, Poland and the Czech Republic to the east, Austria and Switzerland to the south, France to the southwest, and Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands to the west.

Contents

Summit plateau

On the summit plateau of the Rahnfels there is an observation point, the Frankenthaler Hut. This simple, wooden refuge hut was erected in 1906 by the Frankenthal branch of the Palatine Forest Club and offers shelter to hikers in inclement weather. [1]

Palatine Forest Club organization

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.

During the Cold War there was a US Forces radio relay site and a telephone call forwarding facility for the DSN network on the southern side of the summit. The tarmac road to the summit dates to this period and ends today at an enclosed and privately owned forest clearing in which the ruins of the military installation are still recognisable.

Cold War Geopolitical tension after World War II between the Eastern and Western Bloc

The Cold War was a period of geopolitical tension between the Soviet Union with its satellite states, and the United States with its allies after World War II. A common historiography of the conflict begins between 1946, the year U.S. diplomat George F. Kennan's "Long Telegram" from Moscow cemented a U.S. foreign policy of containment of Soviet expansionism threatening strategically vital regions, and the Truman Doctrine of 1947, and ending between the Revolutions of 1989, which ended communism in Eastern Europe, and the 1991 collapse of the USSR, when nations of the Soviet Union abolished communism and restored their independence. The term "cold" is used because there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two sides, but they each supported major regional conflicts known as proxy wars. The conflict split the temporary wartime alliance against Nazi Germany and its allies, leaving the USSR and the US as two superpowers with profound economic and political differences.

Radio stations that cannot communicate directly due to distance, terrain or other difficulties sometimes use an intermediate radio relay station to relay the signals. Examples include airborne radio relay, microwave radio relay, and communications satellite. The American Radio Relay League was founded for this purpose but did not change its name when this became a less important part of its work.

The Defense Switched Network (DSN) is a primary information transfer network for the Defense Information Systems Network (DISN) of the United States Department of Defense. The DSN provides the worldwide non-secure voice, secure voice, data, facsimile, and video teleconferencing services for DOD Command and Control (C2) elements, their supporting activities engaged in logistics, personnel, engineering, and intelligence, as well as other Federal agencies.

Transport

The Rahnfelsen may be accessed either on a scenic, country walk(Waymark: red dot) or via the L518 state road, which starts at the southern edge of Leistadt at a roundabout. At kilometre 7 a tarmac lane branches off to the left on a right-hand bend. After about 1.5 km the summit plateau is reached.

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