Ettlingen Line
fortified line near Karlsruhe, Germany
The Ettlingen Line (German: Ettlinger Linie) or Lower Line (Untere Linie) was a defensive line built in 1707 during the War of the Spanish Succession from brushwood (Verhauen) and palisades, which replaced the 1701 Bühl-Stollhofen Line after that had been destroyed in May 1707 and levelled by French troops.
History
Several months after the loss of the Bühl-Stollhofen Line, work began on the Ettlingen Line on the orders of the commander of the Rhine Army, George Louis of Brunswick-Lüneburg. The line was reinforced during the War of the Polish Succession (1733–1738) by the introduction of watercourses that could be impounded, but in 1734 French troops broke through them and they were subsequently destroyed, but then rebuilt in 1735. Thereafter they lost their military significance.
Location
The line, which flanks from the Malscher Landgraben, lies between the Black Forest and the Rhine meadows south of where the city of Karlsruhe is today. Remains of the fortified line with their breastworks and a redoubt may still be seen southwest of Karlsruhe near a heath settlement, running for a distance of around 500 metres in the forest of Hardtwald. In the woods of Rheinstetten, an even longer section of the line is still visible. Since July 2010 the line in Karlsruhe has been marked by an information board; another one has been erected in Rheinstetten on Pirschweg. There are also visible remains in Schöllbronn; together with a further information board.
See also
Baroque fortifications in the Black Forest
Bühl-Stollhofen Line
Eppingen lines
Literature
Wolfgang Lorch: Die Ettlinger Linien (Ettlinger Heimatblätter, Vol.
The public source identifies “Ettlingen Line” as fortified line near Karlsruhe, Germany. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Ettlingen, Line and fortified.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ettlingen Line” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.