Stations of the Cross Altenbüren

A Christian testimony from times past.
by Willi Mester

584 meters high is the Windsberg located north of Altenbüren, on top of which stands a large oak cross with a Christ corpus the size of a human over 130 years old. This corpus was carved in the 19th century by an artist from Warstein.
The Windsberg was once in the imagination of the people living here a mountain surrounded by legends, whose secrets our ancestors took to the grave. At its base stands a pious wayside shrine, the first of the so-called seven footfalls. In earlier times, a Via Crucis with seven stations was called this way. The other stations are located at some distance from each other on the steep and arduous ascent to the summit of this mountain. Truly a Via Crucis!
Seven artistically crafted wayside shrines made of Anröchter sandstone from the 18th and early 19th centuries still bear witness to the Christian past of our ancestors today.
The origin and history of the wayside shrines dates back to the year 1756, as this year is carved in stone on the two oldest of these cultural monuments. The others date from the years 1783, 1810, 1811, 1819, 1826.

Believers who had to endure difficult times such as famine, war, and plague back then vowed to the Lord that if He let them survive these times of hardship and averted future dangers from them, they would erect a pious wayside shrine in His honor. They built them in the open field, at the edge of their fields.
The Seven Years' War, from 1756 to 1763, also affected Altenbüren. Requisitions, billeting, looting, and pillaging by armed mercenaries were often the order of the day. In 1760, there were no more horses in the village, they had been requisitioned. In 1761, people in the whole area suffered from a great famine, and in 1763, there was a contagious plague among the cows in the village, which claimed the lives of more than 200 of them. This distress prompted people time and again to implore God for help. To appease Him, they vowed to build wayside shrines in the field in His honor.
In the second half of the 19th century, seven of them were moved to the Windsberg to create a Via Crucis, the seven footfalls. Whether there were more of them in the field is no longer possible to determine today. At that time, around 1870-75, the Windsberg was replanted, and during this process, the wayside shrines from the field were also placed on the mountain. This is what the old lady Morgenroth, née Franke, told her grandson Günter Morgenroth in his childhood. She herself had helped with the replanting as a young girl.
On the summit, the large cross was placed, visible far and wide in all directions.

In 1931, work began to expand the Via Crucis to fourteen stations. From the entrance of the cemetery to the foot of the Windsberg, another seven, but less valuable, small houses were placed at the edge of the path through the "Rote Kuhlen".
During the Second World War, the people of Altenbüren always walked the Via Crucis when news of the death of a soldier from the community arrived. However, in 1944 and 1945, this was no longer possible, as it had become too dangerous to expose oneself to the strafing of Anglo-American low-flying aircraft in the open field.
After the war, this tradition was revived. The Via Crucis was now prayed in memory and in remembrance of the destruction of the village of Altenbüren on the second Easter day of 1945 and for the victims that this war claimed. This continued until Altenbüren Forest came into the possession of the city of Brilon after the municipal reorganization in 1975. Shortly after, the city began to clear the over hundred-year-old spruce trees of the Windsberg. During this clearcut, especially during the timber transport, the seven wayside shrines were heavily damaged, and some of them were simply knocked down and left lying. The Via Crucis could not be walked for a long time because fallen trees and branches made it impossible. This state lasted until the 1980s. No one cared, and no one felt responsible.
At the urging and requests of some citizens of Altenbüren to the city administration in Brilon to restore the old wayside shrines and have them listed as monuments, finally, someone listened. At the end of 1982, this request was granted by the Westphalian Office for Monument Preservation in a letter dated December 21 to the city.
The Via Crucis was then restored by the city of Brilon.
Through the possibility of using job creation measures (ABM) and receiving funding from the federal, state, and district governments for the preservation of wayside shrines and wayside crosses by the Sauerländer Heimatbund, the Altenbüren Via Crucis acquired its present appearance. The surroundings of the stations were also included in the measure.
In 1986, the parish council of Altenbüren had the summit cross redesigned, and the Christ corpus was restored. After its completion, the corpus was carried in a solemn procession from the parish church to the summit. All clubs and associations of the village participated and took turns carrying it. Pastor Wagner consecrated the stations and the newly designed Via Crucis. Sponsorships were spontaneously taken over for its care.

It has now become a tradition to walk the Via Crucis annually on Good Friday and at the same time to keep the memory of April 2, 1945 alive. It is walked in all weather conditions, and a large number of believers, especially young people, participate. At each station, there is a stop for prayer, and everyone brings their personal concerns.
The Altenbüren Women's Association (KFD) has also made it a tradition to walk the Via Crucis to the Windsberg every summer.
Often it is a lone hiker or a smaller group who climbs the steep path up to the summit to linger for a moment at the old wayside shrines, to pray, and to contemplate the path of suffering and the death of Christ on the cross.
However, time has taken its toll on the old stations. Weathering and moss growth have attacked the sandstone, and the chiseled reliefs and inscriptions were barely legible.
Through the initiative of the local mayor Heinz Meyer and the generosity of the citizens of Altenbüren, these cultural monuments were professionally restored from the ground up in the years 1999 and 2000.
Today, anyone walking the Altenbüren Via Crucis and undertaking the ascent to the summit will surely spend some time at each of the small sanctuaries. Their thoughts will take them back to the old times to the founders, what might have motivated them back then, and what they still have to tell us today.
For those who wish to read in the future, must first turn the pages of the past. Our ancestors have left the village of Altenbüren a monument with these silent witnesses from ancient times, which should be both a source of gratitude and obligation for us.