Hotzenwald

The Hotzenwald is a landscape and region in the Southern Black Forest in the county of Waldshut. Its headquarters was the Waldvogteiamt.

The region of Hotzenwald is not precisely defined in the records. In a narrower sense the Hotzenwald is the southernmost region of the Southern Black Forest, bounded in the west roughly by the Wehra, in the north approximately by the upper reaches of the Alb near St. Blasien, in the east by the hill ridge between Alb and Schlücht and in the south by the High Rhine and Klettgau. This definition of the Hotzenwald more or less covers the same area as the territory of the old County of Hauenstein.

In a wider sense, other regions may be counted as part of the Hotzenwald that were linked to St. Blaise Abbey or the County of Hauenstein, both of which were historically important in the Southern Black Forest. These additional areas include, for example, the parish of Gersbach (Schopfheim), which was first mentioned in 1166 by the gift of a church to St Blaise Abbey and which lies immediately northwest of the Wehra. Others include the regions in the northwest as far as the middle and upper reaches of the Wiese and in the east to the hill ridge between Schlücht and Steina.

Whichever definition is used, the region mainly covers the central and high areas of the Southern Black Forest. It climbs rapidly from the level of the High Rhine (about 300 m above sea level (NN)) up to heights of 500 to over 1,000 m above NN across the majority of the area. The region drops from the summits of the Southern Black Forest in the north to the High Rhine in the south and is characterised by sunny plateaux and high valleys.

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