Bastberg, la colline des sorcières de Bouxwiller

Bouxwiller

A bare hill amid the orchards, close-cropped grassland, orchids in spring, praying mantises and swallowtails: the Bastberg looks like a piece of garrigue gone astray in Alsace. Its limestone is that of a tropical lake of the Lutetian, and it is full of shells. Goethe, a student at Strasbourg, passed through Bouxwiller in 1770 and wrote that 'this height where a heap of molluscs have piled up' made him understand 'for the first time, like documents, the origins of the world'. Around 1822, Georges Cuvier described, from the fossils of the lignites at the foot of the hill, a mammal akin to the tapir which he named Lophiodon buchsowillanum. But for the people of the Hanau country, the Bastberg is first of all the witches' hill. According to local traditions, this is where they went to the sabbath, changed into a duck or a horse, while ghosts roamed the streets of Bouxwiller and a dragon flew over Riedheim at night. These tales were collected by the poet and folklorist Auguste Stoeber, a master at the girls' school of Bouxwiller from 1838 to 1841, and published in his Sagen des Elsasses (1852); Claude Seignolle took them up in French. Marie Hart, in her childhood memories, still tells of the maid who brought the children back down at nightfall, 'the moment when the witches arrive'. No witch trial is linked to it by the sources consulted: it is a hill of tales, not of pyres. The summit has been protected since 1989, a regional nature reserve since 2012.

Wikipédia — Bastberg ↗

Getting there : From the centre of Bouxwiller, about fifteen minutes on foot; one can also park on the Imbsheim side (D 6). Three waymarked discovery trails start from the hill: the geological trail (6 km), the nature trail (4.2 km) and the heritage trail (2.5 km), devoted to the legends, to Goethe and to Marie Hart, with a leaflet to download from the websites of the commune and the tourist office. The summit area is a nature reserve: keep to the paths, no picking. The Musée du Pays de Hanau, in the former corn hall of Bouxwiller, displays the fossils.

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound