It is called after Watterbach, stood in Breitenbach and can be found today near Preunschen.

Even considering that this building is around 550 years old, its stations are as unusual as the solution to the riddle.

The half-timbered house went on the move twice when it was threatened with demolition at its original location, the municipality of Watterbach in the south-eastern Odenwald.

In order to save the stand construction, it was demolished in 1966 and rebuilt in the lonely hamlet of Breitenbach so that it would become the nucleus of an open-air museum of local conditions.

Because the plan fell through, the "oldest farmhouse in the Odenwald", which had been thoroughly researched in the meantime and dated 1475, was dismantled again in order to move it in 1982 to Preunschen, which is 470 meters high and is still somewhat isolated today.

The slogan was now preservation through use, but because even there no one wanted to live under one roof with the cattle any more, the saving thought came in the form of a forest museum.

After a long period of planning, it was opened 25 years ago thanks to the combined efforts of the district of Miltenberg, the municipality of Kirchzell and various authorities and experts.

Ruin lying behind dense growth

Under the open ridge (without deduction!) with its elaborate construction of 35 support beams, more than a millennium of forestry is followed in vividly designed scenarios, at the end of which almost everything in many places was felled, quilted or prepared for the needs of hunting and forest grazing.

Only the idea of ​​sustainability, which germinated in the early 19th century, with the decreasing importance of wood for building and heating, allowed the forests to recover.

There are also models of the nearby Wildenberg Castle.

The ruins, which are now atmospheric behind the dense growth, embody like no other the Hohenstaufen self-image of underpinning claims to power through representative architecture.

On the outside, the 90-meter-long rectangle of the Lords of Dürn was completely clad with hump ashlars, and on the inside, three-arched, capital-supported windows based on the models of the Gelnhausen or Wimpfen palaces are surprising.

Directions

The starting point is Kirchzell in the Gabelbach valley.

There is not much space left for parking, preferably in the wider Schulstraße (after the town hall in the direction of Watterbach) or on the weekends in front of the school itself. There - or already from the neo-Gothic parish church in the main street - there are several signs from the market town , an N and K 4 and 5 (all green).

For a while they accompany the meandering Gabelbach in the Wiesengrund before they move away when they reach the forest.

Immediately the ascent begins over 300 meters to Preunschen.

Only when the group of three lagged behind about 500 meters further in the wide right-hand bend to the left in favor of O 1 (white) did it become more moderate at times, then, on the other side of an extensive boulder heap, it even changed into an incline.

But that is deceptive, as the steepest passage is still to come when the red N of the Nibelungenweg crosses after a good two kilometers.

With him on the left, it starts by path for the final sprint to the top.

As soon as we are at the top, the landscape seems transformed - an extensive plateau, characterized by meadows and undulating cornfields, opens up.

Ahead lies Preunschen, whose wreath of new buildings around empty farmsteads involuntarily raises the question,

who actually manages the land (still)?

As a sort of supplement to the Watterbacher house with the forest museum, which stands free in front of the east side, earlier wooden equipment hangs on two former barns.