St. Oswald's Chapel (Höllental)

St. Oswald’s Chapel (German: St. Oswald-Kapelle) lies in the Höllental in the High Black Forest, at its eastern end near the Ravenna Bridge. Administratively it lies in the civil parish of Steig in the municipality of Breitnau in the county of Breisgau-Hochschwarzwald in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. Ecclesiastically it belongs to the parish of Hinterzarten. The chapel is dedicated to Oswald of Northumbria, a 7th-century Anglo-Saxon king. He is depicted in several places on the main altar of the chapel..

The chapel was consecrated in 1148 by Bishop Hermann I of Konstanz as a proprietary church of the lords of Falkenstein (after their castle in the Höllental valley. According to the first detailed investigation by Ekkehard Liehl (1911–2003) it was the seedcorn of settlements in the region, the mother church of Hinterzarten and Breitnau and the oldest surviving parish church in the High Black Forest. Today it is also suspected, however that the settlement had been established on the upland and that there had been a parish church in Breitnau before St. Oswald was founded. From the 13th century onwards, St. Oswald became a chapel of the church at Breitnau. This changed when, in 1416, Hinterzarten 1416 was given its own church, the present parish church of Maria im Zarten. Since then, St. Oswald has been ecclesiastically part of Hinterzarten. Attempts to abandon the "old dive" (alte Spelunke) or "most superfluous of all chapels" (entbehrlichste unter allen Kapellen), were ended in 1812 by the grand ducal government in Karlsruhe.

The chapel holds up to 250 people and is used for weddings, patron saint festivals and at Christmas (by the Hofgut Sternen). In addition, since 2012 during the summer months there is a fair here once a month around midday.

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