WESTPHALIA AS A TRANSIT ZONE–THE ‘HELLWEG’

The main corridor for travellers running from east to west and connecting the Harz region to the lower Rhine comprised several roads that ran roughly between the Lippe and the Ruhr rivers (see Map 7). Although not the only road through this region, the most important road, called the Hellweg, bore the great majority of the traffic and was the preferred route of the Saxon and Salian kings. This road, which appears to have had a pre-Carolingian, but not a Roman origin, gained significantly in importance as a military road for Charlemagne during the Saxon wars and later, after Saxony became a part of the realm, as a connecting route from the Rhineland to Saxony. But its period of greatest use and highest importance by far came in the tenth and eleventh centuries under the Ottonian and Salian emperors, who traversed it again and again travelling from Saxony to Aachen and the lower Rhine. In fact, during the greater part of the Ottonian and early Salian period, from the reign of Otto I until approximately the Saxon uprising under Henry IV, these rulers made at least a yearly use of this east–west corridor when they were not in Italy or on a foreign campaign. Therefore, the Ottonians took over and completed a system of Carolingian fortresses in southern Westphalia and along the Hellweg itself, and in time established, in conjunction with the royal churches and with their loyal vassals in the region, a stable system of stopping places and provision centres along this road.