Externsteine
Interesting facts
- Stone tools of the Ahrensburg culture show that Ice Age reindeer hunters sheltered under the rocks more than 11,000 years ago.
- The loose boulder balanced on top of the fourth pillar, the Wackelstein or 'wobbling stone', was pinned in place with iron hooks in 1813.
- Beside the pond, an arched niche with an open stone sarcophagus is cut into the rock; some scholars see it as a copy of the Holy Sepulchre.
- In 1564 Hermann Hamelmann called the rocks rupes picarum, rock of the magpies, though linguists now link the name to an old word for a sharp ridge.
- The oldest recorded forms of the name, Agistersten and Eggesterenstein, appear in a document dated 1093.
- By the early 16th century the medieval hermitage had become a hideout for bandits, and the rulers of Lippe dissolved it.
- Around 1592 the count's forest warden was living in the caves cut into the rock.
- The pond at the foot of the pillars is artificial, created in 1836 by damming the Wiembecke stream.
- Until 1936 a main road from Aachen to Königsberg ran between two of the pillars, and a tram stopped beside the rocks from 1912 to 1953.
- Above the grotto entrance is a hollow cut in the shape of a winged creature, apparently made to hold a relief of some other material that has since vanished.
Why it is worth it
The Externsteine are a row of sandstone towers rising abruptly out of the beech woods of the Teutoburg Forest near Horn-Bad Meinberg in North Rhine-Westphalia. The rock is a hard Cretaceous sandstone, laid down in horizontal beds around 100 million years ago and later tilted almost upright by earth movements; erosion then stripped away the softer surroundings. Thirteen numbered pillars run along the ridge for several hundred metres, the tallest standing some 37.5 metres above the ground beside a small pond.
People worked the rocks for centuries. A grotto with three connected chambers was cut into the first pillar, and an inscription in it records the consecration of an altar in 1115. On the outside of the same rock is a large relief of the Descent from the Cross, usually dated to around 1160–1170 and considered the oldest monumental relief carved into living rock north of the Alps. High on the second pillar, reached by steps and a bridge, is a small chamber with an apse, an altar niche and a round window. Hermits are recorded here in the 14th and 15th centuries, and Abdinghof Abbey in Paderborn held rights over the site from 1366. Around 1660 Count Hermann Adolph of Lippe turned the place into a hunting lodge and pleasure retreat, adding towers and a gatehouse whose walls were more ornamental than defensive.
Since the 16th century a popular tradition has identified the rocks as a sacred site of the pagan Saxons, even the place of the Irminsul pillar said to have been felled by Charlemagne, though archaeology has found nothing to support it. That idea was taken up in the 1930s, when a foundation presided over by Heinrich Himmler sponsored excavations in 1934–35 in search of a Germanic cult centre. The area became one of Lippe's first nature reserves in 1926 and was named a national geotope in 2006.
Getting there
The rocks stand about 8 km from the centre of Detmold and just outside Horn-Bad Meinberg. The nearest airport is Paderborn Lippstadt Airport (PAD), about 35 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Externsteine is a distinctive sandstone rock formation located in the Teutoburg Forest, near the town of Horn-Bad Meinberg in the Lippe district of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The formation is a tor consisting of several tall, narrow columns of rock which rise abruptly from the surrounding wooded hills. The Hermannsweg, a long-distance hiking trail, passes through the formation.
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