page_title: Rennsteig
section_title: Rennsteig stones
hierarchical_section_title: Rennsteig / History / Rennsteig stones
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Landesgrenzstein Nr. 93 mit Wappen des Fürstentums Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, Rennsteig bei Goldisthal in Thüringen
context_page_description: The Rennsteig is a ridge walk as well as an historical boundary path in the Thuringian Forest, Thuringian Highland and Franconian Forest in Central Germany. The long-distance trail runs for about 170 km from Eisenach and the Werra valley in the northwest to Blankenstein and the Selbitz river in the southeast.
  The Rennsteig is also the watershed between the river systems of the Weser, Elbe and Rhine. The catchment areas of all three river systems meet at the Dreistromstein near Siegmundsburg.
context_section_description: Along the Rennsteig there are about 1,300 historic boundary stones. Since the 16th century the Rennsteig, most of which was a border path, was marked with these political and national emblems. Of particular note are the 13 so-called Dreiherrensteine, of which only ten lie immediately on the Rennsteig. In local parlance these stones became known as Rennsteigstein or Rennsteig stones. The boundary stones surviving today stem mainly from the 18th century. In addition to boundary stones, there are also forest stones, stone crosses and monuments along the trail.
  In Oberhof during the GDR period, there was a hotel (later demolished) of the same name in the shape of a boundary stone.
  A German mountain path is she! It flees the towns and hides its bashful course amongst the thickets.
  — Am Anfang by Joseph Victor von Scheffel, 1863
  Around June time, when from the gorges of the wooded heights, which run through the Thuringian Basin, the heavy scent of jasmine wafted down from the alder buckthorn, those were delightful walking days, here through the balmy fertile land almost free of industry with its friendly clustered villages of timber framed houses; and then onward out of the tapestry of arable fields, dominated by cattle-breeding farms, and followed the legendary highland path onto the mountain ridge with its spruce and beech — the Rennsteig — which, with its downward sweeping views into the Werra valley, ran from the Franconian Forest to Eisenach, the Hörselstadt, and became more and more beautiful, meaningful, romantic...
  — Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann, 1947
caption: Historic Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt border stone
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