The geese that put an entire army to flight
The town of Wiesloch in northern Baden-Württemberg was the scene of numerous battles during the Thirty Years’ War. One place that almost became a battlefield and nevertheless went down in history is the Gänsberg, a 158.2-meter-high hill near Frauenweiler, a district of Wiesloch. According to legend, a goose herder from Wiesloch sought refuge there with his geese from the approaching French soldiers. They wanted to set up camp there because Gänseberg offered a view of both the Rhine valley and Wiesloch and was difficult to attack due to its elevated position. But the geese thwarted the goose herder’s plans, not only cackling wildly, but also running up and down the mountain in single file. It was precisely this behavior of the startled geese that saved the goose herder and his geese. From a distance, the soldiers thought that the white plumage of the geese and their red beaks were the uniforms of the imperial troops, who were already waiting for them up there in overwhelming numbers. In a panic, they retreated as quickly as possible and are said to have only stopped once they had crossed the Rhine. Whether this story is true or just a legend has not yet been clarified. The fact is that the mountain owes its name to the inhabitants of the settlement of Frauenweiler, who drove their geese up the wooded hill. This is where the name Gänsberg (Goose Mountain) comes from, which was first mentioned in a document in September 1437.
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