The place of “1C1A-CHARLEMAGNE” connects memories from the medieval ages with a land art project from the 21st century.

Ohrum

Geography
Location
Ohrum lies a few kilometres south of Wolfenbüttel on the eastern edge of the Oderwald forest, which slopes gently down to the Börßum-Braunschweig Oker valley. The valley of the Oker narrows to a few hundred metres at Ohrum and, until its regulation in the 1950s, contained an extensive gravel ford which provided a convenient crossing of the river. To the east, the terrain rises relatively steeply and reaches the Ösel and, further on, the Asse. In terms of natural landscape, this area belongs to the Okerrand Heights of the East Brunswick Hills, which is very fertile with its loess soils.

The neighbouring villages to the east are Kissenbrück, which reaches the eastern bank of the Oker with the Fährmühle in the district of Hedwigsburg, and Neindorf on the Ösel. About 5.5 km to the south is the former railway junction Börßum, and to the north, halfway to Halchter, the Bungenstedt Tower with the neighbouring windmill marks the former border between the Kingdom of Hanover, to which Ohrum belonged, and the Duchy of Brunswick, which also extended along the east bank.

The highest point of the municipality and the Oderwald is the Hungerberg with an altitude of 205 m a.s.l.

Oker
The Oker, which flows from the Harz to the Aller, used to take in the similarly water-rich Harz River Ilse shortly before Kissenbrück. Its course still exists as the Alte Ilse near Hedwigsburg. The Oker divided at Ohrum, the eastern branch being used as a millrace for the ferry mill and the western ditch as a free flood. The weir was located far above the present bridge. A bridge was not mentioned until 1381 (documented in 1535) and was probably built together with the ferry mill.

History
Numerous Neolithic tools and utensils have been found on the eastern slope of the Oderwald near the village in recent centuries, dating to the 4th-5th millennium B.C. Similar discoveries have also been made from the eastern bank of the Oker River, which have also been assigned to the Bandkeramic culture. Many finds indicate long-distance trade relations in the Neolithic period. Other finds date from the Merovingian period.

Ohrum was significant in the Middle Ages because of the Oker ford, which was part of the historical “Deitweg”, an important route for long-distance trade. It connected the region of Goslar with Schöningen and led supra-regionally from the Rhine to the Elbe. Old path fortifications were found on the Schmiedeweg, which runs towards Cramme into the Oderwald through a hollow way. Towards the east, this path crossed the Oker to Kissenbrück. From the south, a path led in from Goslar via the imperial palace of Werla, which presumably crossed the Oker in pre-Frankish times and continued north on the east bank via Salzdahlum towards Lüneburg (the later federal road 4). The road was a strategically important crossing point.

The strategically important crossing was the scene of historical decisive battles: As early as 747, the place with Schöningen was first mentioned in the Frankish annals as “Orhaim”, because Pippin the Short fought here with his brother Grifo for his inheritance. Pippin’s son Charlemagne subdued the Eastphalian Count Hessi here and carried out the traditional mass baptism. Ohrum is thus considered one of the oldest places in Lower Saxony.

Ohrum’s importance was consolidated in 1022, at a time when Bernward, Bishop of Hildesheim, was lord of the village. The construction of the monasteries in Heiningen and Dorstadt along the north-south road to Goslar also dates from this time. The strategically important Oker crossing lost its importance with the foundation of Wolfenbüttel in the 12th century.

Until the Hildesheim Collegiate Feud in the 16th century, Ohrum belonged to the Hochstift Hildesheim, then temporarily to the Duchy of Brunswick and after the Thirty Years’ War to the Hochstift Hildesheim again until 1803, then to the Kingdom of Hanover.

Origin of the name

The first mention of Ohrhaim in 747 is interpreted in the Ohrum Chronicle with reference to Blume, among others, as containing the word aur in addition to the suffix -heim. This is also assumed to be a component of the river name Ohre and is derived from the Old Norse term for “gravel” and “sandbank”. It is still present in various Scandinavian languages and is found, for example, as “-ör” in many place names on the Baltic Sea. This, along with other place names (see -büttel) and historical finds (Hünenburg near Watenstedt), would suggest a living connection or migratory movement between the region and northern Europe in the pre-Frankish period.

With brick 1B1A we enter the second hexagonal protocol placement in Germany. It was at Castle Borbeck’s park in Essen. 

It is considered one of the oldest landscaped parks in the Rhineland. In the 18th century, the last prince abbess of Essen, Maria Kunigunde of Saxony (1776-1803), had the garden redesigned in the “English-Chinese” style.

This included decorative elements such as a pavilion, a “Wirtshäusgen” and a “Bauernhäusgen” as well as an artificial ruin. In addition to this particular form of English landscape garden, the castle park also shows characteristics of a Baroque Garden to this day: the former cascade, lined by straight paths and leading axially towards the palace.

Whatever design elements may have been ‘in vogue’ at the time: Ever since the prince abbesses began to transform the former beech forest into a woodland park in the 16th century

the park has always represented the wealth and power of the authorities as well as the cultural concepts of landscape art in England in China.