Aegidienberg (Ripuarian: Jillienberch or Jillienberg) is a borough (Stadtbezirk) of Bad Honnef in the Rhein-Sieg-Kreis, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It consists of thirteen villages and is located east of the Siebengebirge range in the Niederwesterwald foothills. Until 1969, Aegidienberg was an independent municipality in the former district (Kreis) of . The name refers to Saint Aegidius, the patron saint of the local Catholic parish church; until the 16th century, the locality was known as Hunferode or Honnefer Rott.Paul Clemen, rev. Edmund Renard, Die Kunstdenkmäler der Rheinprovinz, Volume 5.4 Die Kunstdenkmäler des Siegkreises, Düsseldorf: Schwann, 1907, , p. 713 Population: 7089 (2013).
Geography The borough of Aegidienberg encompasses the parts of Bad Honnef located east of the Honnef urban forest, in other words east of the Siebengebirge. In geographic terms, the area forms part of the in the foothills of the Niederwesterwald. The various parts of the borough are distributed across hills which all lie within the broader boundary of the Siebengebirge Nature Park. The Siebengebirge itself, with its peaks up to in height, separates Aegidienberg from Bad Honnef proper, which is about away in the Rhine Valley. Aegidienberg is located at an average altitude approximately above Bad Honnef. The two are linked by Landesstraße 144 through the long Schmelz Valley.
Within Aegidienberg are two small lakes, Lake Himberg (Himberger See) in the West and Lake Dachsberg (Dachsberger See) in the East. Both are former basalt quarries, which were worked until after the Second World War. Two streams which are sources of the Pleisbach, the Logebach and the Quirrenbach, rise in the area and run through it. The Kochenbach is a tributary of the Quirrenbach. Amongst the hills within the district of Aegidienberg are the Himberg (), the Hupperichsberg (According to the Deutsche Grundkarte; topographic map, ), the Markhövel (also called the Romert; ) and the Dachsberg (According to the Deutsche Grundkarte; topographic map, )—the last being the highest point in the district. The main village of Aegidienberg, on the eponymous hill, is at altitude. Within the district are two contiguous forest areas, the Aegidienberg Forest (Aegidienberger Wald) to the East and the Vogelsbitze to the West of the A3 autobahn. At the eastern extremity of the district, part of the Eudenbach gliding area and nature reserve lies within Aegidienberg.
The District of Aegidienberg includes 13 localities: Aegidienberg (Kirchdorf), Brüngsberg, Efferoth, Himberg, Höhe, Hövel, Neichen, Orscheid, Retscheid, Rottbitze, Siefenhoven, Wintersberg and Wülscheid. The Rottlandhof farm is within the municipality of Rheinbreitbach, but portions of it lie within the territory of Aegidienberg and thus of Bad Honnefer. The district is bordered to the north-west by Ittenbach and to the north and north-east by the Oberhau, both sections of the city of Königswinter; and to the east and south by Windhagen and Rheinbreitbach, both of which are in Rhineland-Palatinate.
History
Governance and economy since the early Middle Ages A 948 charter of Archbishop of Cologne established the territorial boundaries of the priory of Oberpleis and included within it what is now the district of Aegidienberg. These boundaries have persisted to the present day as town boundaries and to the South and East, district and state boundaries. There is no information for that time about habitation; it is thought that there were isolated farms and charcoal-making operations in the area. Settlement by people from Bad Honnefer, implied by the first recorded placename in the area, Hunferode, can only refer to the villages of Himberg, Hövel and Siefenhoven, at the bottom of the Schmelz Valley. In view of the marginal agricultural value of the loamy soil, the origins of the inhabited areas in the remainder of today's Aegidienberg, particularly in the East, probably lie in settlement via the valley of the Pleisbach or the roads through the hills.
Until the extinction of the line around 970, the Counts of the exercised secular overlordship in the area. They were succeeded by the Counts Palatine of the Rhine. After the construction of castle in the second half of the 12th century, the area came under its control and from 1484 to 1808 formed part of the Amt Löwenburg, a fief of the County of Berg.Winfried Biesing, Vom Amt Wolkenburg zum Canton Königswinter zwischen dem Breitenbacher Graben und der Siegmündung, Königswinter: Heimatverein Siebengebirge, 1984, pp. 16–
The first recorded mention, which may refer only to the village of Aegidienberg, later known as an der Kirche (at the church), is dated 6 January 1345 and is of Hunferode.Wilhelm W. Hamacher, Von "Hunferode" bis "Aegidienberg": eine Wanderung durch 1500 Jahre Geschichte, Studien zur Heimatgeschichte der Stadt Bad Honnef am Rhein 11, Bad Honnef: Heimat- und Geschichtsverein Herrschaft Löwenburg, 1995, , p. 11 This is followed by a mention of Hunferoyde dated 5 January 1349.Theodor Joseph Lacomblet, Urkundenbuch für die Geschichte des Niederrheins, Volume 3 (1301–1400), Düsseldorf: 1853, Wilhelm Janssen, Die Regesten der Erzbischöfe von Köln, Volume 5 1332–1349 (Walram von Jülich), Publikationen der Gesellschaft für Rheinische Geschichtskunde 21.5, Düsseldorf: Droste, 1973, The name Aegidienberg is presumed to have displaced this name since the 16th century. St. Giles, known in Germany as Aegidius, was venerated beginning at the end of the Middle Ages as one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers and as a patron saint of livestock.Hanns Bächtold-Stäubli, ed., Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, Volume 1 Aal – Butzemann, Handwörterbücher zur deutschen Volkskunde 1.1, Berlin: de Gruyter, 1927,
A 1506 charter, von wegen der bergischen Pastoreyen, mentions a priest called "Hermannus" whose church was located where the Chapel of St. Servatius now stands, near Himberg. According to the Erkundigungsbuch des Fürstentums Berg, "Gilienberg" had the status of a separate parish since the introduction of the new Jülich-Berg court system in 1555. Under this new arrangement, Aegidienberg lost the independent court with seven lay judges which it had previously had, instead sending two judges to the newly formed court at Honnef (from 1745 on, only one). By the mid-18th century at the latest, eight local jurisdictions (known in the Rhineland as Honschaften) had developed, which lasted until the dissolution of the Duchy of Berg in 1806: Brüngsberg, Himberg, Höhe, Hövel, Orscheid, Retscheid, Siefenhoven and Wülscheid.Otmar Falkner, "Die Quirrenbacher Mühle", Heimatblätter des Rhein-Sieg-Kreises 75 (2007) 137–40
The inhabitants worked the poor clayey soil of Aegidienberg either as smallholders or as tenant farmers. Before the invention of artificial fertilisers, the fields were good for almost nothing except the cultivation of barley and oats, which were the staple foods of the local people in the Middle Ages. Livestock cultivation was later added, and at the beginning of the modern age, the local diet was enriched with potatoes, which gave the community their speciality, Rievkooche (Reibekuchen - potato pancakes), which to this day are an indispensable part of any public event.
The inhabitants shared rights to the woodland of the "Honnefer Mark" between Aegidienberg and Bad Honnef, now called the Honnef urban forest, including among other things the rights to let their pigs forage for mast, to gather wood for fuel and fencing, and to use fallen twigs for animal bedding. Woodland farmers had sticks available to them for their animals, but only the nobility had the right to cut timber.Zeitschrift des Bergischen Geschichtsvereins 70 (1949) p. 189 Furthermore, Aegidienberg had fixed obligations under the tithe system of the Amt Löwenburg: 120, later 200, malters of oats had to be paid to various officials. The residents also had to cut the wood for the Löwenburg gallows, which stood in the area of what is now Lohfelder Straße in Honnef, maintain it, and mow the grass at the castle farm.Karl Gast, Aegidienberg im Wandel der Zeiten, Aegidienberg: Gemeinde Aegidienberg, 1964, , p. 72 By the end of the 15th century at the latest, the people of Aegidienberg were required to grind all their corn at the Quirrenbach mill, which was located within the parish.
Ores of various base metals were being mined in the Siebengebirge area as early as the Middle Ages, primarily for the production of copper, zinc and lead. In addition to the work in the mines themselves, their constant need for charcoal led to there being many charcoal producers in the region. A copper mine called Gotteshilfe was located in Neichen, and in Brüngsberg there were mines called Flora, Anrep-Zachäus and Emma-Sofie, where zinc and copper ores were mined until early in 1906. The heaps of tailings from the mines can still be seen on the slope of the Logebach valley. With declining prices for the metals, the mines in the Siebengebirge area gradually closed down.
Basalt is still quarried in the immediate area of Aegidienberg. The basalt quarries on the Dachsberg and the Himberg had railway connections to the Bröl Valley Railway (Bröltalbahn), which had a wide-ranging network extending as far as Asbach, Beuel, Siegburg and Waldbröl. The quarry operators underwrote the branch lines they used for transporting the basalt. Connecting to a passenger line was discussed a number of times but never carried out. Both of the quarries in Aegidienberg ceased operation around the 1960s and today the water-filled pits are used for swimming and other recreation, like many other quarries in the region.
Prussia and German Empire Beginning in 1806, as part of the Amt Löwenburg, Aegidienberg belonged to the Napoleonic Grand Duchy of Berg. At the end of 1808, new administrative structures modelled on those of France were introduced: cantons and mairies (town halls). The parish of Aegidienberg was assigned to the Mairie and Canton of Königswinter together with Honnef, Königswinter and Ittenbach; however, this only became fully functional early in 1809. Beginning in December 1813, the mairie became a Bürgermeisterei, the equivalent German term, in the provisional under the Kingdom of Prussia. The Congress of Vienna in 1815 assigned the Rhineland to Prussia, and the Bürgermeisterei of Königswinter then became a conventional Prussian local government entity within the newly formed District (Kreis) of Siegburg (renamed in 1825). From 1822 on, this was part of the Prussian Rhine Province.
On 1 July 1846, Aegidienberg acquired a local council, replacing the district administration made up of lay judges.Otmar Falkner, "Ein Beitrag zur Aegidienberger Ortsgeschichte", Heimatblätter des Rhein-Sieg-Kreises 72 (2004) p. 116 Honnef (in 1862) and Königswinter (in 1889) subsequently acquired their own town councils, leaving Aegidienberg and Ittenbach in the Bürgermeisterei of Königswinter-Land, which existed until 1969, being renamed Amt Königswinter-Land in 1927.