Hirsau is a district of the town of Calw

Calw

Calw is a municipality in the middle of Baden-Württemberg in the south of Germany, capital of the district Calw. It is located in the northern Black Forest.-History:...

 in the German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 state of Baden-Württemberg

Baden-Württemberg

Baden-Württemberg is one of the 16 states of Germany. Baden-Württemberg is in the southwestern part of the country to the east of the Upper Rhine, and is the third largest in both area and population of Germany's sixteen states, with an area of and 10.7 million inhabitants...

, located in the south-west portion of the country, about two miles north of Calw

Calw

Calw is a municipality in the middle of Baden-Württemberg in the south of Germany, capital of the district Calw. It is located in the northern Black Forest.-History:...

 and about twenty four miles west of Stuttgart

Stuttgart

Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....

.

Town

Hirsau's economy includes small retail establishments, tourism, and light industry. There is a saw mill on the Ernstmuhlerweg, the road that runs along the railroad in the post card pasted above. The saw mill is a long building at the upper edge (in the picture) of town.

The town has been called a "Luftkurort" ("air spa") for the purity of its air. The town's bridge over the Nagold River dates to the Carolingian

Carolingian

The Carolingian dynasty was a Frankish noble family with origins in the Arnulfing and Pippinid clans of the 7th century AD. The name "Carolingian", Medieval Latin karolingi, an altered form of an unattested Old High German *karling, kerling The Carolingian dynasty (known variously as the...

 period.

Hirsau Abbey

The town grew round the Benedictine monastery that is its main historical significance and was once among the most famous in Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

. It was founded in about 830 by Count Erlafried of Calw and re-founded, after a period of collapse, in 1059. William of Hirsau

William of Hirsau

William of Hirsau was a Benedictine abbot and monastic reformer. He was abbot of Hirsau Abbey, for whom he created the Constitutiones Hirsaugienses, based on the uses of Cluny, and was the father of the Hirsau Reforms, which influenced many Benedictine monasteries in Germany...

, abbot from 1069 to 1091, brought it to international prominence as the origin of the Hirsau Reforms. It was secularised in 1558, and the buildings destroyed by the French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

in 1692.

External links

Hirsau im Nagoldtal