Propylaeum

Deserted sites – rural settlements abandoned in the Middle Ages – are an important but often neglected factor in the development of today's cultural landscape. The research of the author Rudolf Bergmann, which is supported by the European funding program LEADER, is dedicated to these deserted sites. For the first time all references to the abandoned places of the Middle Ages in the area of the modern Hochsauerland and Ostsauerland around the six towns of Brilon, Hallenberg, Medebach, Marsberg, Olsberg and Winterberg are brought together in one volume.
The main part of the work is a catalog of almost 400 pages. There, for each former settlement, historical evidence, cartographic information, geographic features and archaeological finds are reproduced in detail.
The data impressively prove that the Hochsauerland was already largely developed by settlers in the early Middle Ages and it was not until the beginning of the early modern period that a massive depopulation took place due to a variety of factors.