The Black Forest ( ) is a large forested mountain range in the state of Baden-Württemberg in southwest Germany, bounded by the Rhine Valley to the west and south and close to the borders with France and Switzerland. It is the source of the Danube and Neckar rivers.
The area is roughly oblong in shape, with a length of and breadth of up to , it has an area of about . Its highest peak is the Feldberg with an elevation of above sea level.
Historically, the area was known for forestry and the mining of ore deposits, but tourism has now become the primary industry, accounting for around 300,000 jobs. There are several ruined military fortifications dating back to the 17th century.
History
In ancient times, the Black Forest was known as , after the Celtic deity Abnoba. In Roman times (Late antiquity), it was given the name ("Marcynian Forest", from the Germanic word marka, "border").Tabula Peutingeriana; Ammianus Marcellinus 21, 8, 2; The Black Forest probably represented the border area of the Marcomanni ("border people") who were settled east of the Roman . They, in turn, were part of the Germanic tribe of Suebi, who subsequently gave their name to the historic state of Swabia. With the exception of Roman settlements on the perimeter (e.g. the baths in Badenweiler, and mines near Badenweiler and Sulzburg) and the construction of the Roman road of Kinzigtalstraße, the colonization of the Black Forest was not carried out by the Romans but by the Alemanni. They settled and first colonized the valleys, crossing the old settlement boundary, the so-called "red sandstone border", for example, from the region of Baar. Soon afterwards, increasingly higher areas and adjacent forests were colonized, so that by the end of the 10th century, the first settlements could be found in the red (bunter) sandstone region. These include, for example, Rötenbach, which was first mentioned in 819.
Some of the uprisings (including the Bundschuh movement) that preceded the 16th century German Peasants' War, originated in the Black Forest. Further peasant unrest, in the shape of the saltpetre uprisings, took place over the next two centuries in Hotzenwald.
Remnants of military fortifications dating from the 17th and 18th centuries can be found in the Black Forest, especially on the mountain passes. Examples include the multiple baroque fieldworks of Margrave Louis William of Baden-Baden or individual defensive positions such as the Alexanderschanze (Alexander's Redoubt), the Röschenschanze and the Schwedenschanze (Swedish Redoubt).
Originally, the Black Forest was a mixed forest of deciduous trees and firs. At the higher elevations spruce also grew. In the middle of the 19th century, the Black Forest was almost completely deforested by intensive forestry and was subsequently replanted, mostly with spruce monocultures.
In 1990, extensive damage to the forest was caused by a series of windstorms. On 26 December 1999, Cyclone Lothar raged across the Black Forest and caused even greater damage, especially to the spruce monocultures. As had happened following the 1990 storms, large quantities of fallen logs were kept in provisional wet-storage areas for years. The effects of the storm are demonstrated by the Lothar Path, a forest educational and adventure trail at the nature centre in Ruhestein on a highland timber forest of about 10 hectares that was destroyed by a hurricane. Several areas of storm damage, both large and small, were left to nature and have developed today into a natural mixed forest again.
Geography
The Black Forest stretches from the High Rhine in the south to the Kraichgau in the north. In the west it is bounded by the Upper Rhine Plain (which, from a natural region perspective, also includes the low chain of foothills); in the east it transitions to the Gäu, Baar and hill country west of the Klettgau. From north to south, the Black Forest extends for over , attaining a width of up to in the south and in the north. The Black Forest is the highest part of the South German Scarplands, and much of it is densely wooded, a fragment of the Hercynian Forest of antiquity.
Administratively, the Black Forest belongs completely to the state of Baden-Württemberg and comprises the cities of Freiburg, Pforzheim and Baden-Baden as well as the following districts (Kreise). In the north: Enz, Rastatt and Calw; in the middle: Freudenstadt, Ortenaukreis and Rottweil; in the south: Emmendingen, Schwarzwald-Baar, Breisgau-Hochschwarzwald, Lörrach and Waldshut.
Natural regions The natural regions of the Black Forest are separated by various features.
Geomorphologically, the main division is between the gentle eastern slopes with their mostly rounded hills and broad plateaux (so-called Danubian relief, especially prominent in the north and east on the Bunter Sandstone) and the deeply incised, steeply falling terrain in the west that drops into the Upper Rhine Graben; the so-called Valley Black Forest () with its Rhenanian relief. It is here, in the west, where the highest mountains and the greatest local differences in height (of up to 1000 metres) are found. The valleys are often narrow and ravine-like. The summits are rounded, and there are remnants of plateaux and -like landforms.
Geologically the clearest division is also between east and west. Large areas of the eastern Black Forest, the lowest layer of the South German Scarplands composed of Bunter Sandstone, are covered by seemingly endless coniferous forest with their island clearings. The exposed basement in the west, predominantly made up of metamorphic rocks and granites, was, despite its rugged topography, easier to settle and appears much more open and inviting today with its varied meadow valleys.
The most common way of dividing the regions of the Black Forest is, however, from north to south. Until the 1930s, the Black Forest was divided into the Northern and Southern Black Forest, the boundary being the line of the Kinzig valley. Later the Black Forest was divided into the heavily forested Northern Black Forest, the lower, central section, predominantly used for agriculture in the valleys, was the Central Black Forest and the much higher Southern Black Forest with its distinctive highland economy and ice age glacial relief. The term High Black Forest referred to the highest areas of the South and southern Central Black Forest.
The boundaries drawn were, however, quite varied. In 1932, Robert Gradmann called the Central Black Forest the catchment area of the Kinzig and in the west the section up to the lower Elz and Kinzig tributary of the Gutach. A pragmatic division, which is oriented not just on natural and cultural regions, uses the most important transverse valleys. Based on that, the Central Black Forest is bounded by the Kinzig in the north and the line from Dreisam to Gutach in the south, corresponding to the Bonndorf Graben zone and the course of the present day B 31.
In 1959, Rudolf Metz combined the earlier divisions and proposed a modified tripartite division, which combined natural and cultural regional approaches and was widely used. His Central Black Forest is bounded in the north by the watershed between the Acher and Rench and subsequently between the Murg and Kinzig or Forbach and Kinzig, in the south by the Bonndorf Graben zone, which restricts the Black Forest in the east as does the Freudenstadt Graben further north by its transition into the Northern Black Forest.
Work of the Institute of Applied Geography The Handbook of the Natural Region Divisions of Germany published by the Federal Office of Regional Geography () since the early 1950s names the Black Forest as one of six tertiary-level major landscape regions within the secondary-level region of the South German Scarplands and, at the same time, one of nine new major landscape unit groups. It is divided into six so-called major units (level 4 landscapes). This division was refined and modified in several successor publications (1:200,000 individual map sheets) up to 1967, each covering individual sections of the map. The mountain range was also divided into three regions. The northern boundary of the Central Black Forest in this classification runs south of the Rench Valley and the Kniebis to near Freudenstadt. Its southern boundary varied with each edition.
In 1998, the Baden-Württemberg State Department for Environmental Protection (today the Baden-Württemberg State Department for the Environment, Survey and Nature Conservation) published a reworked Natural Region Division of Baden-Württemberg. It is restricted to the level of the natural regional major units and has been used since for the state's administration of nature conservation:
No. Natural region Areain km2 Population Pop./km2 Settlementareain % Open landin % Forestin % Majorcentres ofpopulation Middle-sizedcentres ofpopulation 150 Black Forest Foothills 930 268,000 289 7.69 29.33 62.92 Pforzheim Calw,Freudenstadt 151 Black Forest Grinden and Enz Hills 699 60,000 86 1.92 6.39 91.51 152 Northern Black Forest Valleys 562 107,000 190 4.12 19.48 76.41 Baden-Baden,Gaggenau/Gernsbach153 Central Black Forest 1,422 188,000 133 3.35 30.25 66.39 Haslach/Hausach/Wolfach,Waldkirch, Schramberg154 Southeastern Black Forest 558 80,923 112 3.03 32.44 64.49 Villingen-Schwenningen 155 High Black Forest 1,990 213,000 107 2.44 26.93 70.31 Schopfheim,Titisee-Neustadt
The Black Forest Foothills (, 150) geomorphologically form plateaux on the north and northeast periphery of the mountain range that descend to the Kraichgau in the north and the Heckengäu landscapes in the east. They are incised by valleys, especially those of the Nagold river system, into individual interfluves; a narrow northwestern finger extends to beyond the Enz near Neuenbürg and also borders the middle reaches of the Alb to the west as far as a point immediately above Ettlingen. To the southwest it is adjoined by the Black Forest Grinden and Enz Hills (, 151), along the upper reaches of the Enz and Murg, forming the heart of the Northern Black Forest. The west of the Northern Black Forest is formed by the Northern Black Forest Valleys (, 152) with the middle reaches of the Murg around Gernsbach, the middle course of the Oos to Baden-Baden, the middle reaches of the Bühlot above Bühls and the upper reaches of the Rench around Oppenau. Their exit valleys from the mountain range are all oriented towards the northwest.
The Central Black Forest (153) is mainly restricted to the catchment area of the River Kinzig above Offenburg as well as the Schutter and the low hills north of the Elz.
The Southeastern Black Forest (, 154) consists mainly of the catchment areas of the upper reaches of the Danube headstreams, the Brigach and Breg as well as the left side valleys of the Wutach north of Neustadt – and thus draining from the northeast of the Southern Black Forest. To the south and west it is adjoined by the High Black Forest (, 155) with the highest summits in the whole range around the Feldberg and the Belchen. Its eastern part, the Southern Black Forest Plateau, is oriented towards the Danube, but drained over the Wutach and the Alb into the Rhine. The southern crest of the Black Forest in the west is deeply incised by the Rhine into numerous ridges. Immediately right of the Wiese above Lörrach rises the relatively small Bunter Sandstone-Rotliegendes table of the Weintenau Uplands () in the extreme southwest of the Black Forest; morphologically, geologically and climatically it is separate from the other parts of the Southern Black Forest and, in this classification, is also counted as part of the High Black Forest.
Mountains