The Harly Forest (german: Harly-Wald, also ''Harlywald'' or just ''Harly'') is a hill range up to above NN in the district of Goslar in southeastern Lower Saxony, Germany.

Geography

The low ridge is situated in the northern foothills of the Harz mountain range, stretching southeast of the

Innerste Uplands The Innerste Uplands (german: Innerstebergland) is a landscape region up to 359 m high and covering an area of over 900 km² in the northern part of the German Central Uplands. It lies within the eastern part of the Weser-Leine Uplands ...

from the Salzgitter Hills to the Oker river. It is located about — as the crow flies—northeast of Goslar and immediately north-northwest of the municipality of Vienenburg, surrounded by the villages of Weddingen, Lengde and Beuchte (all part of the Schladen-Werla municipality). The range is about long by wide and its eastern edge overlooks the Oker valley. It may be reached via the A 395 motorway from Brunswick, the B 241 and B 82 highways, as well as by several side roads and tracks branching off those roads. The highest hill in the Harly Forest is the

Harlyberg The Harlyberg, at {{Höhe, 255.9, DE-NN, link=true, is the highest hill of the Harly Forest, and rises in the district of Goslar in southeastern Lower Saxony, central Germany. Sometimes the term Harlyberg is used as a synonym for the entire Harl ...

, roughly 256 metres high, atop which an observation tower, the Harly Tower (''Harlyturm''), stands.

Geology and Ecology

The Harly is a tectonic salt formation. In the technical language of geologists the Harly Forest is classed as a "Geological Anticline" (''Geologischer Schmalsattel''). Ecologically the Harly Forest is a near-natural hillside forest (''naturnaher Hangwald'') on warm-dry chalk and

silicate In chemistry, a silicate is any member of a family of polyatomic anions consisting of silicon and oxygen, usually with the general formula , where . The family includes orthosilicate (), metasilicate (), and pyrosilicate (, ). The name is al ...

habitats.

Harly Castle

The southeastern edge of the ridge lies immediately above the Oker Valley and from 1203 was the construction site of an Imperial castle, built during the German throne quarrel between the Welf and Hohenstaufen dynasties. It was erected at the behest of by the Welf king Otto of Brunswick to control the trade route to the Imperial City of Goslar, whose citizens had allied with his rival

Philip of Swabia Philip of Swabia (February/March 1177 – 21 June 1208) was a member of the House of Hohenstaufen and King of Germany from 1198 until his assassination. The death of his older brother Emperor Henry VI in 1197 meant that the Hohenstaufen rule (whi ...

. After Philip's assassination, Otto, crowned

Holy Roman Emperor The Holy Roman Emperor, originally and officially the Emperor of the Romans ( la, Imperator Romanorum, german: Kaiser der Römer) during the Middle Ages, and also known as the Roman-German Emperor since the early modern period ( la, Imperat ...

in 1209, stayed at the fortress several times. Upon Otto's death at the nearby ''

Harzburg The Harzburg, also called Große Harzburg ("Great Harz Castle"), is a former imperial castle, situated on the northwestern edge of the Harz mountain range overlooking the spa resort of Bad Harzburg in Goslar District in the state of Lower Saxony ...

'' in 1218, Harly Castle passed to his Welf heirs. At the 1290 Imperial diet in

Erfurt Erfurt () is the capital and largest city in the Central German state of Thuringia. It is located in the wide valley of the Gera river (progression: ), in the southern part of the Thuringian Basin, north of the Thuringian Forest. It sits in ...

, the Hildesheim prince-bishop Siegfried II of Querfurt accused Duke Henry I of Brunswick of using its favourable location for ambushes and highway robberies of bypassing merchants. He had the castle besieged for several months and eventually completely slighted.

Potash works

A vestige of former mining activity in the area is the historic Vienenburg potash works and fertilizer plant with its old shafts: numbers I, II and III. In operation from the 1880s, the mine was closed after a massive brine inrush in 1930. The former

Cistercian The Cistercians, () officially the Order of Cistercians ( la, (Sacer) Ordo Cisterciensis, abbreviated as OCist or SOCist), are a Catholic religious order of monks and nuns that branched off from the Benedictines and follow the Rule of Saint ...

monastery of Wöltingerode, located on the southern perimeter of the ridge west of Vienenburg, and its abbey distillery are also worth seeing.

External links

Ecological and geological information

The Harly as part of the Harz-Brunswick Land- Eastphalia Geopark
{{DEFAULTSORT:Harlywald Vienenburg Forests and woodlands of Lower Saxony