The Rhön Mountains () are a group of low mountains (or Mittelgebirge) in central Germany, located around the border area where the states of Hesse, Bavaria and Thuringia come together. These mountains, which are at the extreme southeast end of the East Hesse Highlands (Osthessisches Bergland), are partly a result of ancient volcanic activity. They are separated from the Vogelsberg Mountains by the river Fulda and its valley. The highest mountain in the Rhön is the Wasserkuppe (), which is in Hesse. The Rhön Mountains are a popular tourist destination and walking area.
Origins
The name Rhön is often thought to derive from the Celtic word raino (=hilly), but numerous other interpretations are also possible. Records of the monks at Fulda Abbey from the Middle Ages describe the area around Fulda as well as more distant parts of the Rhön as Buchonia, the land of ancient beech woods. In the Middle Ages beech was an important raw material. Large scale wood clearing resulted in the "land of open spaces" (Land der offenen Fernen), 30% of which, today, is forested.
Geography
Location Lying within the states of Hesse, Bavaria and Thuringia, the Rhön is bounded by the Knüll to the northwest, the Thuringian Forest to the northeast, the Grabfeld to the southeast, Lower Franconia to the south, the Spessart forest to the southwest and the Vogelsberg mountains to the west.
Division by type of volcanic activity Based on the effects of ancient volcanic activity, the Rhön can be divided into the "Anterior Rhön" (Vorderrhön), the "Kuppen Rhön" (geographical region 353, Kuppenrhön) and the "High Rhön" (354, Hohe Rhön).
The terms "Anterior Rhön" (Vorderrhön) and "Kuppen Rhön" (Kuppenrhön or Kuppige Rhön) are somewhat misleading, since the "Anterior Rhön" also consists mainly of Kuppen or low mountains with dome-shaped summits. The name has genuine historic origins: the "Anterior Rhön", as viewed from Thuringia, forms the foothills (or anterior part) of the mountain region.
In this gently rolling landscape numerous individual dome-shaped mountains rise on both sides of the border of Hesse and Thuringia and also, in some places, in Bavaria. These Kuppen are the remnants of ancient volcanos or volcanic activity.
Natural regions Natural region divisions The Rhön and its immediate declivities are divided by the Handbook of the Natural Region Divisions of Germany into the following natural regions:Various authors: Geographische Landesaufnahme: The Natural Region Units in Individual 1:200,000 map sheets. Bundesanstalt für Landeskunde, Bad Godesberg 1952–1994. → Online-Karten Sheets marked with an asterisk (*) have not so far been included in the list. Sheet 150: Mainz (Harald Uhlig 1964; 39 pp.) Sheet 160: Landau i. d. Pfalz (Adalbert Pemöller 1969; 47 pp.) Sheet 169*: Rastatt (Heinz Fischer 1967; 31 pp.)
(to 35 East Hesse Highlands (Osthessisches Bergland) 353 Anterior and Kuppen Rhön (Vorder- und Kuppenrhön) (with the Landrücken) 353.0 Hessian Landrücken (Hessischer Landrücken) 353.1 Western Rhön Foreland (Westliches Rhönvorland) 353.2 Western and Eastern Kuppen Rhön (Westliche und Östliche Kuppenrhön) 353.20 Brückenau Kuppenrhön (Brückenauer Kuppenrhön, to ) 353.21 Milseburg Kuppenrhön (Milseburger Kuppenrhön, to ) 353.22 Soisberg Kuppenrhön (Soisberger Kuppenrhön, to ) 353.23 Middle Ulster Valley (Mittleres Ulstertal) 353.24 Auersberg Kuppenrhön (Auersberger Kuppenrhön to ) 353.25 (?) Middle Felda Valley (Mittleres Feldatal) 353.26 (?) Anterior Rhön (Vordere Rhön, to ) 353.3 Eastern Rhön Foreland (Östliches Rhönvorland) 354 High Rhön (Hohe Rhön) 354.0 Southern High Rhön (Südliche Hochrhön)(Umweltatlas Hessen: Südliche Hohe Rhön) 354.00 Dammersfeld Ridge (Dammersfeldrücken, to ) 354.01 Black Mountains (Schwarze Berge, to ) 354.02 Kreuzberg Group (to ) 354.1 Central Rhön (Umweltatlas Hessen: Hochrhön) 354.10 Wasserkuppenrhön (to ) 354.11 Long Rhön (to ) 354.12 Eastern slope of the Long Rhön (to ) 354.13 Upper Ulster Valley (to 355 Fulda-Haune Tableland) 355.3 Haune Plateau 355.30 Rombach Plateau 355.31 Haune Valley (and Hünfeld Basin) 355.32 Buchenau Plateau (zu 357 Fulda-Werra Uplands) 357.20 Seulingswald (to 358 Salzungen Werra Upland) 359.0 Stadtlengsfeld Hills (Stadtlengsfelder Hügelland) (to 13 Main-Franconian Plateaux (Mainfränkische Platten) (to 1381 Grabfeld) 1381.0 Western Grabfeld (to 1382 Werra Gäu Plateaux (Werra-Gäuplatten or Meininger Kalkplatten) 1382.0 1382.00 Mellrichstadt Gäu (Mellrichstädter Gäu) 1382.01 Bibra Saddle 1382.? Dreißigacker-Sülzfeld Rhön Foothills (Dreißigacker-Sülzfelder Rhönabdachung)exact official name not known (to 14 Odenwald, Spessart and South Rhön) 141 South Rhön (Südrhön)
High Rhön
The High Rhön ( or Hochrhön) is that part of the central Rhön that lies in Hesse, Bavaria, and to a lesser extent in Thuringia; it covers an area of Landscape fact files by the BfN (cf. section on Natural region division) and is up to and whose highland plateaux with elevations starting at are covered by solid basalt. Its core area in the northeast used to be called the Plattenrhön. The High Rhön is a natural regional major unit in the East Hesse Highlands; see Natural regions.
The High Rhön has five main mountainous regions:
Wasserkuppen Rhön Long Rhön (Lange Rhön) Dammersfeld Ridge (Dammerfeldrücken) Kreuzberg Group Black Mountains (Schwarze Berge)
At the heart of the Rhön, albeit only the fourth highest summit of these mountains, is the Heidelstein () on the border between Bavaria and Hesse on the Rhine-Weser watershed. It forms the main high point on the plateau of the Long Rhön, which runs northeast over the Stirnberg () as far as the Ellenbogen (Schnitzersberg) () without crossing any significant lower ground. Within the Long Rhön the basalt layer is almost unbroken.
At the Heidelstein, another natural region, the Wasserkuppen Rhön, branches off in a north to northwesterly direction to the Rhön's highest summit, the Wasserkuppe (), whose basalt likewise covers a wide area, but is broken in places by bunter sandstone and muschelkalk – in particular the basalt kuppen of the Weiherberg (, northwest) and Ehrenberg ( northeast) are slightly separated from the rest.
Between the northeastern end of the Wasserkuppen Rhön at the Ehrenberg and the plateau of the Long Rhön from the Heidelstein to just beyond the Stirnberg is the Upper Ulster valley, which cuts into the bunter sandstone by up to about and divides the Plattenrhön in two.
The Long Rhön runs southwest along the main watershed to the Dammersfeld ridge which continues along the watershed via the Hohe Hölle () and Eierhauckberg () to the Dammersfeldkuppe (), the ridge being clearly narrower than the Long Rhön and its basalt layer being interrupted several times. The Großer () and Kleiner Auersberg (about ), separated by the valley of the Schmale Sinn, are also part of this natural region.
South of Heidelstein and Hoher Hölle the narrow head of the Brend valley near Bischofsheim forms the boundary with another mountain group of the High Rhön, the Kreuzberg Group, which contains the Arnsberg () and the Kreuzberg (). In between these two mountains lies the source of the Sinn. This river, which forms a wide and deep valley head flanked by the Dammersfeld ridge, flows to the southwest.
On the other side of the Sinn valley, and southwest of the Kreuzberg Group, are the Black Mountains (), which include the Schwarzenberg (Feuerberg, ) and Totnansberg (). They are separated from the Kreuzberg Group by the narrow valley of the Premich's upper reaches, the Kellersbach.
Clearly different from the aforementioned ridges is the eastern slope of the Long Rhön, which forms the transition zone from the High Rhön to the muschelkalk region of the Mellrichstadt Gäu (Mellrichstädter Gäu), the eastern part of the Werra Gäu Plateaux. Individual domes rise from the descending Triassic beds east of the solid basalt covering of the Long Rhön in the of the tributaries of the Franconian Saale between Brend and Streu, notably the Gangolfsberg () and the Rother Kuppe (). This landscape bears a clear resemblance to the Kuppen Rhön.
The Wildflecken Training Area, which covers an area of , equivalent to almost a quarter of the High Rhön, is not accessible to the public.
Kuppen Rhön
The of the "Kuppen Rhön in its narrow sense", to which the Anterior Rhön also belongs,In the name of the major landscape unit, the "Anterior and Kuppen Rhön (with the Landrücken)" the Anterior Rhön is used in another sense, see Anterior Rhön#Other uses of the term! is the wide outer fringe of markedly different relief, that circles around the High Rhön from the northeast (in Thuringia) through the northwest (in Hesse) to the southwest (with small parts in Bavaria). Numerous dome-shaped isolated mountains and hills rise above the valleys to , whose basalt covering is concentrated around the summit regions and does not blanket the entire landscape, as it does in the High Rhön. The domes or kuppen are the stumps of heavily weathered former volcanoes or volcanic pipes. Between pointed cones and broad domes lie many small plateaux, especially common in the Anterior Rhön.
Over a foundation of Middle Bunter sandstone lie stratigraphic sequences of Upper Bunter (Röt), muschelkalk and keuper, the last two rocks only surviving where they have been protected by an overlying sheet of basalt. Woods cover less than a third of the area and are largely restricted to the summit regions. Five natural regions may be distinguished:
Anterior Rhön Auersberg Kuppenrhön Soisberg Kuppenrhön with the Hessian Skittles Milseburg Kuppenrhön Brückenau Kuppenrhön
The eastern part of the Kuppen Rhön is the Thuringian Anterior Rhön, which reaches a height of at the huge plateau of the Gebaberg in the southeast. There is hardly any keuper escarpment there at all. The kuppen and plateaux rest directly on a bedrock of muschelkalk. This natural region runs northeast from the wide, pyramidal Pleß, , far into the Bunter sandstone of the Stadlengsfeld Hills that descend to the River Werra. In the west the Middle Felda Valley forms a natural boundary between Kaltensundheim in the south and below Dermbach in the north.
West of the Felda valley is the Auersberg Kuppenrhön (Auersberger Kuppenrhön), which lies mainly in Thuringia, but extends into Hesse in the southwest. This natural region runs from the town of Auersberg in the south, which gives the region its name, to the boundary with the Long Rhön at the Ellenbogen, . In the northeast of the region, the prominent kuppe of the Baier reaches a height of , but its northernmost summit is the popular viewing mountain of Oechsen. The western boundary is the Middle Ulster Valley between Hilders in the south and below Buttlar in the north.
West of the Ulster valley is the Soisberg Kuppenrhön (Soisberger Kuppenrhön), which lies mainly in Hesse, with elements in the southeast also extending into Thuringia. This region reaches a height of at the Soisberg in the north where the countryside is enclosed by the Seulingswald forest. It reaches even greater elevations in the extreme southeast, where the Habelberg () west of Tann stands opposite to and north of the Auersberg. This natural region is well known for the Hessian Skittles, a striking regular array of high, gently rounded, basalt cones up to . North and south of the skittles most of the kuppen in this natural region are also arranged in a row along the watershed between the Werra and the Fulda and between the Ulster and the Haune respectively. To the west they do not quite reach the Haune at the Haune Plateaux; to the south the Nüst valley below Obernüst forms a natural boundary.