Schieferbruch-Weg KC 81

Slate in the Franconian Forest

Specialists believe that Franconian settlers from the Moselle-Rhine region were familiar with slate from their homeland and "discovered" it in their new home. However, there is evidence that it was not mined until the 15th century. The largest quarries on the continent were in Lehesten and Unterloquitz. There were also slate quarries around Wilhelmsthal. In open-cast mining, slate was often extracted using crowbars, wedges, hammers, point irons, handsaws and mallets. Slate was also mined from 1811 to 1813 and in 1834 at the site that our circular route touches. From 1876 and 1878, quarrying was resumed for the production of styluses and then stopped again due to the poor quality and unfavorable transport connections. We are rewarded for the long climb with magnificent views of the plateau.

From Grüntal, as the lower part of Wilhelmsthal is called, we walk uphill on the birch path to the left after the village sign (towards Hesselbach) to the end of the village and the forest. With every step, the view of Wilhelmsthal, situated on the steep hillside of the Eichsberg, with the towering St. Joseph's Catholic Church and the Grümpel Valley and its surroundings becomes wider and more beautiful. We walk uphill on a forest path.

At the halfway point, we separate from the Floßherren-Weg trail that accompanies us and walk only briefly downhill and then long and comfortably uphill through the open spaces created by the bark beetle.

First near the road leading to Hesselbach, we turn left onto a natural forest path and follow it, becoming steeper, past a pond to the heights and into the open meadow to a farm track. On this path, we walk across a valley depression with a pond through beautifully structured fields uphill to Hesselbach, 590 m above sea level, where there is a beautiful panoramic view of the clearing islands of the nearby Franconian Forest with their church villages.

We walk through the village, cross the main road straight ahead and follow Bühlstraße uphill to the hilltop. There, we recommend a detour to the left to the Schneihanneskapelle chapel.

It was built in the 1950s by the owner of Schneihanneshof, Appel G., in gratitude for his return home from the Second World War. In the village and in the surrounding area there are numerous testimonies of deep piety. About 300 m along the road to Lahm there is a sandstone martyr with the year 1764, showing a relief of the Glosberg Mother of God, St. Aegidius and the Coronation of the Virgin Mary. Our sympathy goes out to the two siblings from Grümpel who froze to death in a snowdrift on their way to school here in 1764.

However, our Schieferbruch trail turns right onto a road to Böhla-Platz, where there is a magnificent view over the wooded heights of the Franconian Forest as far as the Döbraberg: to Presseck, the viewing tower at Birnbaum and the surrounding villages. We continue along the ridge path and soon reach the mighty, 10 m high "High Cross" on the 568 m high Eichsberg, which is illuminated at night. From a certain spot, the view extends as far as the Veste Coburg on a clear day.

Just next door, we can pause for a moment of silent prayer in the Marienkapelle chapel built (and maintained) by the Peter family in 1998, before passing the kindergarten and arriving at the parish church of St. Josef. The completely renovated church is worth a visit for its warm atmosphere, the modern, colorful windows in the new choir and the new Metzler organ.

After visiting the church, we walk down the narrow, steep village street, accompanied by the Stations of the Cross along the way, and only now realize how steep and long the built-up slope is and how the houses cling to the mountainside like swallows' nests. The view from the church of the steep, wooded slopes of the deeply incised valleys (Steinberg in the background) and the houses of Wilhelmsthal is uniquely beautiful.