EA name like Hünerberg could give rise to misunderstandings. It has nothing to do with poultry, even if chickens were once kept here. At that time, in the 8th or 9th century, the exposed elevation on the edge of the Taunus between Oberursel and Kronberg was massively expanded and probably permanently inhabited. There was room for cattle and a spring to withstand even prolonged sieges.
The name of the 375 meter high mountain in the early Middle Ages has not been handed down, and since the decay the authorship of the fortifications has been in the dark, hardly different with the double wall one floor higher on the Altkönig. Ignorance has always been considered the best spark of imagination, and so in a world of myths and fairy tales only giants or giants could have built the stone masses into walls. For the corrupted “Hüner” it was only a question of dialect custom.
Rocky flanks
This name has also been transferred to the scenic features in the vicinity, such as the nature-protected Hünerbergwiesen. The 20-hectare area is one of the last witnesses to the herding that once prevailed. The slopes were never as densely forested as they are today. However, it is no longer clear why a strip remained open during afforestation south-west of the Hohemark.
Beautiful view: Where the Bürgelplatte left some space, a “temple” was built in 1897 in honor of the Empress Dowager Victoria.
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Image: Thomas Klein
Nature thanked us with a species-rich mosaic of different grass communities – fresh and wet meadows contrasted with nutrient-poor grassland, but also peripheral alluvial forests. The mixture, which is rare for the Taunus, was even recognized as a fauna-flora habitat (FFH) within the framework of the European network “Natura 2000”.
Rocky flanks are more typical for the low mountain range, without which there would be no prehistoric fortresses. According to individual finds, the Hünerberg was also probably occupied much earlier. The last stage of expansion could only be best demonstrated when the up to 30 meter high cliffs were deliberately used as bastions and almost two meter thick dry stone walls were placed in between.
Conditions were less favorable on the so-called Bürgelplatte above Kronberg. This helped preserve one of the most impressive formations in the entire Taunus, forming only the surface portion of an approximately 750 meter long northwest-southeast trending quartzite range. A flattened area serves as the foundation of the temple built in 1897 in honor of the Empress Dowager Victoria. Its great field of view over the Rhine-Main area to the Odenwald is in no way inferior to that of the Hünerberg.
Directions
The Hohemark is the best access point for the varied tour between Bürgelplatte and Hünerberg. Apart from the good accessibility via underground, there are large car parks (free of charge at the end station), and the infrastructure has been upgraded in recent years with the tourist information center and an inn (“Waldtraut”).
We select the blue line from the hiking trails displayed. Between the parking lot and the school, it climbs towards the clinic complex. Before that, he turns right to continue uphill in the forest to the Emminghaus hut. The shelter, named after a comrade-in-arms of the Taunus Club founder August Ravenstein, gives us a hint to turn left, which begins a longer straight ahead.
Here we walk in the footsteps of aristocracy, as the widow of Emperor Friedrich III, Victoria, used this passage for trips from her retirement home in Kronberg. A stately oak also reminds of Empress Friedrich, as she called herself after the death of her husband in 1888. The next Josef-Ostertag-Hütte, a good 1200 meters away, offers the opportunity to take a shortcut, especially if you want to avoid the Bürgelplatte, which is slippery in snow. Then with the crossing green line on the left about a kilometer down to the connection to the black point of the main path.