Eselshalden

🇬🇧 This is the only English page on this site. The rest of the website is in German.

The Village

Eselshalden is a small hamlet (Weiler) belonging to the town of Welzheim in the Rems-Murr district of Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It lies about 4 km southwest of Welzheim town centre along the L 1150 road towards Schorndorf, sitting at about 500 metres above sea level on a forested ridge. Its elevated position offers wide views southward over the Rems valley — on clear days reaching as far as the Swabian Alb.

Around 130 people live here in about three dozen houses. The village square with its fountain, laid out in 1985, forms the social centre. A Roman road from the Rems valley to the Limes border wall and the Welzheim fortresses crossed the area during the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, long before the hamlet itself was settled.

300 Years of History

In 1726, the crown forest land was granted for settlement with exemption from serfdom and taxes. The first settlers — H.J. Baumgartner and C. Bez from Miedelsbach and Steinenberg — were soon joined by farmers, craftsmen, day labourers, a haulage business, a sandstone quarry and four inns. Church, school and cemetery remained in nearby Steinenberg; the hamlet was administered under Stab Urbach, Oberamt Schorndorf.

By around 1845, the district survey (Oberamtsbeschreibung) counted 92 Protestant inhabitants. When Württemberg was reorganised as a kingdom in 1806, Eselshalden moved to Stab Rienharz under Oberamt Lorch. In 1854, after local lawyer F. Oesterle became mayor of Pfahlbronn, the hamlet was formally incorporated into the municipality of Pfahlbronn, eventually under Oberamt Welzheim.

The Oberamt Welzheim was dissolved in 1938, placing Eselshalden in Landkreis Schwäbisch Gmünd. A 1969 local government reform transferred it to Welzheim (Landkreis Waiblingen), and with the 1973 district reform it became part of the newly created Rems-Murr-Kreis. 2026 marks 300 years since the hamlet's founding.

Nature & Surroundings

Eselshalden lies within the Swabian-Franconian Forest Nature Park (Naturpark Schwäbisch-Fränkischer Wald), one of the largest nature parks in Baden-Württemberg at 1,270 km². The ridge is built on Upper Keuper strata: Knollenmergel (Trossingen Formation) and the warm-brown Stubensandstein (Löwenstein Formation), the sandstone that gives the region's buildings their characteristic colour. Nearby streams — Tannbach, Edenbach, Bärenbach and Urbach — drain into the Wieslauf and eventually the Rems.

Getting Here