Can a gallows be "beautiful"?

This is how a television film once described the place of execution near the Odenwald municipality of Beerfelden.

Scary-beautiful would be more appropriate to do justice to both the cruelty of the place and the aesthetic appeal, also based on the knowledge that you are standing at one of the best-preserved legal monuments in Germany.

425 years ago, the triangular high scaffold was erected instead of a wooden one.

Much is authentic, like the engraved "1597", for example the seven linden trees around the execution site, its stone enclosure or the cross embedded in the ground, over which the delinquents confessed for the last time.

The six meter high Tuscan-style sandstone columns are original, while the iron brackets and also the bands on the capitals, on which the metal-reinforced beams still rest today,

Six criminals could have been hanged at the same time.

But the times in the Odenwald were not that terrible.

Although often handed down for minor guilt, death sentences were the exception.

The last known story came in 1804 against a gypsy woman for "stealing the mouth" for her starving children.

More important was the deterrence of the gallows, which were visible from afar.

In addition, they marked a cent court and, like the Erbach counts here, the possession of the neck jurisdiction.

Why, contrary to the order of the Grand Dukes of Hesse-Darmstadt, the three-sleeper gallows, as it was called at the time, was not laid down in 1816 is less puzzling than is often assumed.

The fact that the ukase never arrived in remote Beerfelden cannot have been the reason; on the contrary, the population may have had other concerns after a city fire that destroyed almost everything in 1810.

The entire townscape, including the dominant parish church and the decorative twelve-tube fountain of the Mümling spring, is barely 200 years old.

Seclusion has long since turned into Beerfelden's capital.

It lies in an intact landscape of fields, forests and meadows, which opens up good possibilities for excursions, to the north to Marbachsee and the Ebersberger Felsenmeer, or to the south towards the ruined castle of Freienstein above the deep Gammelsbach valley.

But the walls are probably much older than the first mention in 1297.

Presumably going back to the Lorsch monastery, this is where the people of Erbach later protected their only direct connection to the Neckar valley.

Accordingly, the slope side was secured with a mighty shield wall.

Although largely restored since its collapse in 1988, the towering complex has the air of a jungle fortress due to a lack of regular pruning.

Directions:

There are sufficient parking spaces in the town of Beerfelden, for example on both sides of the federal highway 45 or around the parish church.

There is also a large space at the "Gallows".

You can get there on the footpath next to Airlenbacher Straße, a good 500 meters through an open corridor.

From the place of execution we have to walk along the road for a short while before we can turn left onto the asphalted service road with the yellow 2.

When the number bends to the right after almost a kilometer, keep going straight for another 500 meters and then follow the left-right curves to the wide path that leads into the country road on the right.

With it, the blue markings cross, dot and dash appear.

Between the streets of the fork, they point to an unusually large memorial to the dead of both world wars and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71.

Behind the grove of honor we cross the road and turn right under the trees before the hikers' car park.

Now the yellow 5 and shortly thereafter S 6 (green) come into play, and then head towards “Leonardshof” and the chapel ruins of the same name on the other side of the road.

Unchanged with the previous three-way network, the hamlet can also be left out.

But the detour is worth it just because of its location.

Like a mountain nest, the few houses around the former pilgrimage church cling to the flank high above the Finkenbach.

The signs lead through in a semi-arch – the ruins are somewhat hidden in the area of ​​the grassy passage – and out at the other end.