Hotzenwald

In a wider sense, other regions may be counted as part of the Hotzenwald that were linked to St. Blaise Abbey or the County of Hauenstein, both of which were historically important in the Southern Black Forest.

These additional areas include, for example, the parish of Gersbach (Schopfheim), which was first mentioned in 1166 by the gift of a church to St Blaise Abbey.

Whichever definition is used, the region mainly covers the central and high areas of the Southern Black Forest.

They follow the downslope of the Southern Black Forest from north to south before emptying into the Rhine as right-hand tributaries.

The extent of the Black Forest Glacier of the Riß glaciation is no longer precisely known today, but it appears to have extended from the north as well as far as Hottingen.

The finds from the Alpine gravels of the Riß ice age indicate that the glacier flowed from the Alps to a point north of Waldshut-Tiengen.

The raised bogs (Hochmoore) and transitional bogs (Übergangsmoore) especially in the Ibach/Dachsberg area, as a relic of the ice age, are home to a rich variety of species otherwise rare in the Black Forest such as bog-rosemary, mud sedge and fewflower sedge, rannoch-rush, alpine bulrush, white beak-sedge or purple coltsfoot.

The European Arctic starflower has a strong presence in the Hotzenwald, which is also the only place in the whole of South Germany where the cross-leaved heath occurs naturally.