Cornberg

Coat of arms

Cornberg

Location of Cornberg within Hersfeld-Rotenburg district

Coordinates: 51°3′N 9°52′E / 51.050°N 9.867°ECoordinates: 51°3′N 9°52′E / 51.050°N 9.867°E

Country

Government

• Mayor

Achim Großkurth (Ind.)

Area

• Total

23.36 km² (9.02 sq mi)

Elevation

280 - 315 m (−753 ft)

Population (2015-12-31)

• Total

1,407

• Density

60/km² (160/sq mi)

CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)

36219

05650

HEF

Cornberg is a community in Hersfeld-Rotenburg district in northeastern Hesse, Germany. It is the district’s smallest municipality.

The community lies between the towns of Bad Hersfeld to the south and Eschwege to the north, each 27 km away. The municipal area lies between the Stölzinger Gebirge and the Richelsdorfer Gebirge (ranges), and in the upper reaches of the Sontra, which flows through the outlying centres of Rockensüß and Königswald. Through Cornberg itself flows the brook Cornberger Wasser, which empties into the Sontra near Berneburg (a constituent community of Sontra).

Cornberg borders in the north on the town of Waldkappel, in the east on the town of Sontra (both in the Werra-Meißner-Kreis), in the southeast on the community of Nentershausen, in the south on the town of Bebra and in the west on the town of Rotenburg an der Fulda (all three in Hersfeld-Rotenburg).

Cornberg’s Ortsteile are Cornberg, Königswald and Rockensüß.

The outlying centres of Rockensüß and Königswald had their first documentary mentions in 1274 and 1351 respectively. The village of Cornberg was founded only in 1938 as a mining settlement for Electoral-Hessian bituminous shale (Kupferschiefer) mining in the Richelsdorfer Gebirge. It is the only new settlement in the old Rotenburg an der Fulda district to arise since the Thirty Years' War.

There was however, from 1296, a Benedictine monastery here. It was long a provost’s seat of Hersfeld Abbey. The monastery was dissolved in 1526 and converted into an agricultural estate. In 1582, Philipp Wilhelm von Cornberg, a son of William IV, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel born out of wedlock, acquired the monastery and its lands as a fief. Philipp Wilhelm sold it in 1598 to his half-brother Maurice, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, who transferred it in 1627 to the so-called Rotenburger Quart. It became a Vogtei that remained in the ownership of the Landgraves of Hesse-Rotenburg until they died out in 1834, whereupon it passed back to the Electorate of Hesse. Until 1964, the former monastery was a state domain of the Land of Hesse. The trade and dwelling buildings around the monastery, which by this time were falling into ruins, were all torn down between 1957 and 1973. Only the Gothic cloister is preserved. Between 1990 and 1994 it was restored. The former two-naved church (the cloister’s north wing) with the still preserved nuns’ gallery is used today as a cultural stage. Two other wings house the community centre and the museum. In the east wing is found a gastronomical business.

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Wikipedia