Langeleben
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Langeleben is a historical location at 260 m above sea level, in the northern part of the Elm ridge in Lower Saxony, Germany and today belongs to the nearby town of Königslutter am Elm. Langeleben was a crossing point for three ancient roads through the Elm district. In the past a respectable stately home, a Water castle, built in the middle ages stood here. Also a Hunting Lodge and Hamlet which were also called Langeleben. This once important estate and village with an average of 80 residents was responsible for the clearing and management of a large area of the then dense forest. A lightly wooded area for a cemetery contain many old graves under the trees. From the original castle only some remnants of the foundations can today be seen. No trace can be found from the village or former hunting lodge which once belonged to the Duke of Brunswick in the 18th century.
History
Middle ages
The first discovered mention of Langeleben was in documents from 1160 as Langelage which recorded it as a forestry clearing. The ending of the old name ...lage "-la(g)h" denotes its connection to the forest. The first mention of a stockade like fortification there was recorded in 1258, and Langeleghe as a Hamlet or villa was first recorded in 1328. In 1400 it is recorded that they even had their own Vicar. The adoption of the ending "-leben" was slowly taken and means nothing more than "living" such as living together. At this time Langeleben was one of the bigger villages on the Elm, which in part is due to the excellent supply of clean water from the spring of the brook called "Schierpker Bach". During the 13th to 15th centuries, records note the existence of an Imperial Knighthood of Langeleben. Duke of Brunswick as fudal Fiefdom owner of the land rights, allowed the assignment of a castle and rights to the Graf of Asseburg.[1]
Reconstruction
In 1555 Henry of Asseburg (Heinrich von der Asseburg) took over the castle and village from Henry of Veltheim (Heinrich von Veltheim) on Destedt. The castle and most of the houses were empty and desolate, reportedly without roofs and in some parts timbers. Outhouses and barns had fallen apart and were generally unusable. The new owner had the castle and an infrastructure of key houses (like smithy, bakery, peat-cutter, brewery, etc.) be built up around it and appropriate tradesmen were attracted. In 1609 the lessening military significance of such locations over becoming a station along the trades routes was recognised and wagons repaired, or travellers given hospitality for a small sum. Already in 1605 there was a significant number of cattle and horses, and records show there were 14 horses, 54 cattle, 83 pigs and about 200 sheep. Several small lakes were made and fish breeding taken up. By 1575 the owners of small farms surrounding the location could boast of more than fourteen hides per 30 morgen of arable land, which today has reverted to common woodland.
Destruction and Hunting Lodge
In 1626, during the thirty years' civil war the castle and village were destroyed by fire by troops involved in the Battle of Lutter and the siezure of Wolfenbüttel. In 1661 the Duke of Brunswick (Braunschweiger Herzog Anton Ulrich) acquired the ruins of Langeleben believing them to be an ancient seat of power that he dearly wanted. These rights (on which he insisted), allowed him the right to hunt over great parts of the Elm. The locaation had only a few destroyed walls remaining of the castle and a barn or two, which he was not interested in, then he did not want to live here, just use the hunting rights assigned to the land title. He had trees planted to hide the remnants of the destroyed village and castle. After he died his son, the arch-prince August Wilhelm of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel and Langeleben, being a passionate hunter, ordered the construction of a hunting lodge and Folly on the same site as the old one in 1689. It was a two story timbered building with overhanging balconies between the towers.
The building occupied some 114 by 54 feet (35 m × 16 m) floorspace. Around it there were other buildings such as a dairy (1699), a large barn (1700), a large servants' quarters (1702) and a blacksmith's forge(1707). Behind the castle he had a massive "English Garden" constructed (1731). The spring of the Schierpkebach was fitted with a waterhouse (1705) allowing water to be taken during the coldest of winters. Of great importance for that time was the stud farm, that had up to 140 horses. The newly cleared land (1731) was surrounded by a six kilometre long fence until hedges grew to replace it.
Dukedom and castle life
In the 18th century, the dukes did not come for just the odd hunting day, but in fact spent weeks and even months at Langeleben. Due to the close family ties between the duke's and the Prussian royal family, the "Preußen-Könige" Frederick William I of Prussia and Frederick II of Prussia were regular guest at Langeleben. The permanent staff was, despite the high rank of the guest, relatively small, and only 15 people. The hunt encompassed wide ranging areas of the Elm.
Renewed decay
In the middle of the 18th century (1754) the stud farm was moved to Brunswick and families of the nearby forestry workers housed in the stalls. In 1799 the castle was given to the Forestry Master and later made into an wax cloth factory. Over these years the substance of the building and contents ran down and soon the building was beyond repair. In 1830 the remains and a few outhouses were sold to a brick kiln owner for 3,000 Taler who had them torn down. In 1846 the local forestry started to replant trees on the site to restore it to the state is was many years before. The number of people living in and around Langeleben at that time numbered about 115 people.
20th centrury
In 1926 the District Council of Helmstedt erected a children's recovery home in Langeleben. Today this building is an old people's home. The community Langeleben was dissolved on 1 April 1936, as the numbers for an own governance were no longer viable. The resident staff of the local pub and the children's home staff were assigned a new governance from the nearby village of Lelm (today also part of Königslutter am Elm). about this time the last houses of the forestry workers were pulled down.
In the closing days of the Second World War there was a tragic event. On 11 April 1945, just one day before the Allies took the area, an American low level attack aircraft flew over Langeleben. It destroyed the building of the local pub and also the children's home. Within a few minutes 53 people were dead, under these 35 small children between 4 and 6 years of age and two nurses. The children had been evacuated from an orphan's home in Brunswick to this "safe" location to protect them from allied bombings. The remaining dead were civilians who had been brought to this "safe" location by Brunswick Police only the day before and were trying to avoid being caught up between the advancing American forces and the retreating German forces.[2]
The civilian victims of that fateful 11th of April were buried in Langeleben and in 1953 a monument and small garden erected to remember them.
In 1951 the Social Youth Movement Germany opened the Falk home for youth recovery and in 1959 another building to take the growing numbers.
British Intercept Station
After the second world war and with the subsequent division of Germany, the British set up a static listening post at Langeleben to intercept and analyse the radio traffic of the Eastern Block and monitor the movements of the Warsaw Pact Military. The location was ideal, being only a few Kilometres from the Iron Curtain Border. At first (in 1951) a temporary location was set up using specialised "QLR" vehicles and tents and nine members of the "101st Wireless Troop" Royal Signals. At first considered just a temporary facility it soon became clear that the division of East and West Germany would possibly be a long time, and so as staffing levels grew, wooden huts were erected. With the building of the Berlin Wall in August 1961, the clear need for a bigger and better "Permanent" facility at the location became apparent and so in 1963/64 the camp was totally rebuilt.
"Royal Signals Residents 1951 to 1992"
| Year | Unit |
|---|---|
| 1951 - 1959 | 101st Wireless Troop, deployed at first just 9 then over next years ever more signallers |
| 1959 | Growth in numbers of the "101st Wireless Troop" results in creation of "13th Signals Regiment" |
| 1959 - 1967 | 13th Signals Regiment |
| 1967 - 1977 | 225 Signal Squadron |
| 1977 - 1992 | 14th Signal Regiment EW (Electronic Warfare) |
All the time these Royal Corps of Signals members were accompanied by members of the Intelligence Corps.
The military camp officially was known as "Anderson Barracks". with the fall of the wall in 1989 and reunification the need for a listening post in the middle of the new merged Germany became superfluous. In 1992 the camp closed and the occupants were merged into various other units and locations. The unused buildings were soon vandalised.
After demolition in 2008 there are no buildings to be found there any more, just the roads and concrete foundations that show where they once stood. The fence and gates as all other scrap metal has been removed and Nature is slowly taking over the site as it had don so many times in the centuries before.
On the 13th of June 2009 Members of the Langeleben Association (former Royal Signals and Intelligence Corps members) were back on parade again and after marching down from the demolished camp, in a clearing nearby erected a dual language stone to commemorate their service there between 1951 and 1992. The stone was carved by Paul Ellis[3], son of a former Langeleben Serviceman and a UK stonemason of some repute[4] who is Stonemason in Lincoln Cathedral. He offered his services at cost and these were paid for by the members was officially blessed and unveiled.[5]
Castle ruins
of the medieval and in 1626 destroyed Water castle (see picture at top) only a part of the end wall of a once 36-foot (11 m) high building is left, the other material having been taken to build the various buildings that came and when over the years. Some seven hundred "Fuder" (A medieval unit of about 15 hl volume) of large worked and shaped stones were taken to build part of the 1689 built hunting lodge. A later erected church tower with two bells was built, but today only the shape on the ground of the foundations gives physical evidence of its existence.
The details (Foundations or debris) of the former hamlet cannot be located and so these exist only in old records.
Friedwald-Cemetry
From 2005 parts of the forest around Langeleben are being made into "peaceful woods" (Friedwald) for the alternative to conventional "burial". The cremated ashes of a deceased person are used to fertilise the roots of a newly planted tree (at a location agreed with the Forester). The tree carries a nameplate with the usual details that normally would be on the gravestone and is protected from being felled by a 99-year lease. The tree serves as a living memory of the deceased as well as a contribution to restoring nature.
Further Elm ruins
On the back of the ridge of the Elm, there are many more medieval ruins and locations of similar castles and defences.
- The Reitlingsbefestigungen is a round stockade going back to possibly Roman times, in the middle of which in Reitlingstal on a small raised area the "Krimmelburg" was built as normal medieval Castle.
- The Elmsburg was an 11th Century built medieval castle that straddles the remains of a long forgotten early stockade ring defence at about 270 m high in the Schöninger-Forest above the town of Twieflingen.
- Castle Warburg was one of the more important medieval castles Turmhügelburg along the east side of the Elm ridge. Oral history reported that it had been stormed by enemy forces and totally destroyed in the year 1200, that archaeological excavations in the 1960s confirmed.
- A water castle of the German Order of Knights of the great lake (Großen Teich) in Reitlingstal, was later transformed and today is a large farm.
Literature
- Natur-Erlebnispfad "Elfenpfad Langeleben". Freilicht und Erlebnismuseum Ostfalen (FEMO), ISBN 3-933380-10-3, Königslutter 2002.
- Hans Adolf Schultz: Burgen und Schlösser des Braunschweiger Landes, Braunschweig 1980, ISBN 3-878840128
References
- ^ See de:Asseburg_(Adelsgeschlecht) Template:De icon
- ^ Polizei im Rückspiegel. Die Geschichte der Polizeidirektion Braunschweig, Volker Dowidat, Braunschweig, 2003
- ^ http://www.langeleben.co.uk/images/memorial/ded_paul.jpg Paul with the completed stone
- ^ Prinz Charles and Paul Ellis
- ^ http://www.langeleben.co.uk/reunions/memorial.htm details of the planning of the stone
