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"Like in a thriller": Research on the 600-year-old well in the Ebersberg Forest

2023-01-13T14:44:56.741Z


"Like in a thriller": Research on the 600-year-old well in the Ebersberg Forest Created: 01/13/2023 15:33 By: Josef Ametsbichler Historian Thomas Warg, left with a commemorative plaque for Abbot Philipp Höhenberger from the Ebersberg Church of St. Sebastian. He probably did not create the well: the abbot was prevented from major projects by serious financial worries. © Stefan Rossmann Like a c


"Like in a thriller": Research on the 600-year-old well in the Ebersberg Forest

Created: 01/13/2023 15:33

By: Josef Ametsbichler

Historian Thomas Warg, left with a commemorative plaque for Abbot Philipp Höhenberger from the Ebersberg Church of St. Sebastian.

He probably did not create the well: the abbot was prevented from major projects by serious financial worries.

© Stefan Rossmann

Like a criminologist, Thomas Warg evaluates clues that should lead him to the trail of the well builder in the Ebersberg forest.

As a historian, he searches the past.

County

– The noose is tightening.

"It's like a thriller," says Thomas Warg as he pushes the laptop with the maps on the screen aside for the moment and opens a monastery chronicle.

Meinhard, Wernhard, Eberhard: For the Ebersberg historian, the names of the abbots read like a list of suspects.

It must have been one of them, says Warg.

One of the Ebersberg monastery lords had the well dug deep in the Ebersberg forest, which fascinates laypeople, archeology and history fans and experts alike.

Mysterious well in the forest: A search for suspects follows a breakthrough

The breakthrough in the laboratory in the C14 dating of the centuries-old oak beams deep at the bottom is also a signal for Warg to start: Now it's down to business in the search for the previously unknown client for the well construction.

According to the historian, the corset of the years 1411 and 1444, the range given by the dating of the fountain box, is not as tight as it seems.

"One tends to orient oneself towards the younger end of the range," he argues - and gives another date: According to the laboratory, the fountain could have been created in 1295 at the earliest.

And the remaining possibility remains that the fountain box has already been renewed.

“Public and notorious bedfellow”: This Ebersberg abbot fails in terms of character

Now Warg is neither a radiochemist nor a well builder.

But searching for the past, he can do that like no other.

And so his historical-criminological flair now applies to the list of Ebersberg Benedictine abbots who fall into the period in question.

The name Simon Castner would fit the time of the concrete cover on the well shaft - he was abbot for 29 years from 1412 to 1442. According to a chronicle, however, he was considered a spendthrift and "public and notorious bedfellow", who was even to be deposed in 1434, but simply himself refused to leave the monastery.

A case for other crime stories from the time, perhaps, but for a caring well builder, Warg thinks it's too slovenly a character.

"It must have been someone who not only took care of the building of the church, but also of the forest," says the district home caretaker.

This requires peaceful times and the necessary change.

The fountain, as the shape reveals, was finished within half a year.

A pit with a ramp had to be dug, which was gradually filled in as the well wall was built up.

For others it took decades.

The main suspect in the well construction: the Ebersberg Benedictine abbot Otto Siegersdorfer (right), in office from 1299 to 1343 in a historical drawing.

But his predecessor Ulrich Moser (left) is also a possibility.

© Repro: Warg

600-year-old well in the forest: The monastery had financial problems

Abbot Philipp Höhenberger, who was in office from 1385 to 1412, is also not in favor of Warg. His work was marked by notorious money worries - thanks to his predecessors Meinhard and Wernhard, about whom historiography sourly noted: "Winter eats up what summer collects." Diagnosis: total failure.

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What is meant by the mentioned summer, however, is the tenure of Otto Siegersdorfer, whom Warg also calls the "second founder of the Ebersberg monastery".

Because on May 4, 1305, the chronicles reveal, a monk who heard voices set fire.

And with it the church and monastery in rubble and ashes.

Siegersdorfer, abbot from 1299 to 1343 for 44 years, saw to it that the buildings were up again within three years.

"And nicer than before," says Warg.

Such a person could also have had a well built in the forest in the cross, says the historian.

For the "Forestari" (forester), who was responsible for the "Hutung" (guarding) of the monastery forest.

Especially since historical maps for nearby Sigersdorf, from which the abbot of the same name apparently came, indicate a willingness to build wells - every farm there had such a water point.

And there's more: The building blocks for the fountain in the forest come from the vicinity of today's gravel pit on the Schafweide.

Thomas Warg does not see the Brunnen case as solved, although he says: "Otto Siegersdorfer is the main suspect." But there was also his predecessor, Ulrich Moser, who had a successful term in office.

And it wouldn't be the first time in the research for the Forst fountain that another surprise turns things upside down.

You can read more news from the Ebersberg region here.

By the way: everything from the region is also available in our regular Ebersberg newsletter. 

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2023-01-13

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