Teufelsmauer

The Teufelsmauer (Devil's Wall) is a rock formation made of hard sandstones of the Upper Cretaceous in the northern part of the Harz Foreland in central Germany.

It was placed under protection as early as 1833 and, in 1852, by the head of the district authority in order to prevent quarrying of the much sought-after sandstone.

The band of rock that forms the Teufelsmauer outcrops at three places between Ballenstedt in the southeast and Blankenburg (Harz) in the northwest, over a distance of 20 km.

It begins with an outcrop known as the Gegensteine northwest of Ballenstedt and is continued in the shape of the Teufelsmauer which runs from south of Weddersleben to Warnstedt.

Here, the formations of the Königstein, the Mittelsteine and the Papensteine rear up from a line of rock about 2 km long running from southeast to northwest.

In addition, quartzitation caused by the ingress of silicic acid has produced extreme hardening of the sandstones, restricted to just a few metres of the formerly horizontally-oriented strata.

The jagged ridge of rock that forms the Teufelsmauer near Weddersleben, by contrast, consists of younger, and therefore undisturbed, deposits of higher-lying Senonian strata.

The grasses are in places rich in colourful herbs such as Breckland Thyme (Thymus serpyllum), Sheep's-bit (Jasione montana) and Carthusian Pink (Dianthus carthusianorum).

The vegetation is also characterised by numerous warmth-loving plants such as Viper's Bugloss (Echium vulgare), Flixweed (Descurainia sophia) and St. Lucie Cherry (Prunus mahaleb) as well as many common subcontinental species like Hoary Alison (Berteroa incana), Field Eryngo (Eryngium campestre), Field Mugwort (Artemisia campestris), Spotted Knapweed (Centaurea stoebe) and Asparagus (Asparagus officinalis).

In order to conserve protected plant species, it has become necessary to implement measures for visitor management in the Teufelsmauer nature reserve.

"On the Northern Harz, between Blankenburg and Quedlinburg, one sees an area of rocks south of the village of Thale that the people call the Devil's dance floor, and not far from there is the rubble pile of an old wall, opposite which, north of the village, stands a large ridge of rocks.

As he fell into a slumber, however, it seemed to him that he heard moaning and groaning, and he saw little female figures, gleaming like clouds of mist, in the branches, who wailed that they should now lose their lives like their sisters.

The second variant has a farmer's wife from Timmenrode appearing: "In a gray time the Devil came to an agreement with the Lord over a division of the estate.

These two variants of the North Harz Teufelsmauer legend involving wagers and a cockerel are similar to several versions from the Lower Bavarian Danube region.