Kröllwitz

As evidenced by a Neolithic burial mound at the University Clinic, people lived here very long ago – long before 1291, when the Sorbian fishing village Crolewiz was first mentioned.

The name transformed from Crolewitz to Crullewitz, then to Cröllwitz and finally to Kröllwitz with a K. For a long time, only the riverbank was settled, which one can see in an image from 1800 by Carl Alberti, the court painter of the Grand Duke of Hesse. The landscape is set apart by pervasive Porphyry bluffs, such as the one on which the Petrus Church stands today. Kröllwitz is bordered on the north by the 119-meter-high Ochsenberg (Oxen Hill). Eichendorff also took walks to the “Ochsenhaupte” (Oxen Head), where he saw the distant Brocken on a clear evening on 19 May 1806. When the Saale was unpolluted, people fished for eel, pike, salmon and also smaller fish here. Later the water was heavily polluted by the paper mill, built in 1714, and then by the chemical industry. Nowadays these species can once again be fished in the Saale.