Таунус: Горный массив в Германии

Mountain range in Germany

The Taunus is a mountain range in Hesse, Germany, located north west of Frankfurt and north of Wiesbaden. The tallest peak in the range is Großer Feldberg at 878 m; other notable peaks are Kleiner Feldberg (825 m) and Altkönig (798 m). The Taunus range spans the districts of Hochtaunuskreis, Main Taunus Kreis, Rheingau Taunus, Limburg Weilburg, and Rhein Lahn. The range is known for its geothermal springs and mineral waters that formerly attracted members of the European aristocracy to its spa towns. The car line Ford Taunus is named after it.

The Taunus is the southeastern part of the Rhenish Slate Mountains. The low mountain range is about 75 km long from southwest to northeast and about 35 km wide across it from northwest to southeast,it covers an area of about 2700 km2. In the west, the Upper Middle Rhine Valley borders the Taunus and separates it from the western Hunsrück. In the north, the valley of the Lahn (Giessen Koblenzer Lahntal) with the Limburg Basin forms a very sharp scenic border to the northern Westerwald. In the east, the Giessen Basin (southernmost part of the West Hessian Uplands) with Dießenbach and Kleebach border to the north, the Wetterau with Wetter and Nidda to the south of the slate mountains; in the south, the Rheingau and the Main Taunus foothills form natural borders. The last three landscapes are part of the Rhine Main lowlands. On the southern edge are the towns of Rüdesheim am Rhein, Wiesbaden, Hofheim am Taunus and Bad Homburg vor der Höhe at the junctions with the valleys of the Upper Rhine and Main; the towns of Bad Nauheim and Butzbach are on the eastern edge at the junction with the Wetterau; in the north on the Lahn the towns of Wetzlar, Weilburg, Bad Ems and Lahnstein border on the Hintertaunus; in the west in the Middle Rhine is, among other things, Lorch at the seam (each in an anti clockwise direction).

The Taunus is geologically divided from south to north into the units Vordertaunus unit (also northern phyllite zone or metamorphic southern edge zone), Taunus ridge unit and Hintertaunus unit. Finally, south of the Lahn, the Taunus natural region has a share in the Lahn trough and the Giessen nappe.

The Vordertaunus Unit is a narrow zone of weakly metamorphic rocks such as phyllites, greenschists and sericite gneisses. [5] They are appear greenish through chlorite and epidote. The starting products of these rocks were mudstones and volcanic rocks. The rock strata occurring in the Vordertaunus are divided from north to south into the metavolcanic sequence, the Eppstein slate and the Lorsbach slate. The oldest sedimentary rocks of the Taunus are the phyllites of Bierstadt from the lower Ordovician era, known only from a borehole in Wiesbaden, with an age of about 480 million years determined by the evidence of spores. The volcanic rocks of the metavulcanite unit are younger, they could be dated to the Upper Ordovician and Silurian using uranium lead dating. They are overlaid by the Eppstein slates of the Silurian and the Lower Devonian Lorsbach slates. At the very southern edge and in a small deposit near Mühlbach in the east of the Vordertaunus unit, limestones are exposed that are attributed to the Middle Devonian.

To the north of the Vordertaunus is the Taunuscrest, also known as the High Taunus, which mainly consists of Lower Devonian clastic rocks. It is composed of the stratigraphic sequences Graue Phyllite, Bunte Schiefer, Hermeskeilschichten and Taunusquarzit. The Lower Devonian sub layer only appears in two small outcrops, metavolcanites of the type found in the Anterior Taunus rocks. The Graue Phyllite consist of slates and sandstones. They contain impressions of Upper Silurian brachiopods and corals and were deposited in shallow water. The clay slates of the Bunte Schiefer are greenish grey or strikingly violet in color due to finely distributed hematite. Agnaths (jawless fish) found in the Bunte Schist are from the Gedinne (Lochkovian); just like the formation of the rock, they show a deposit of the colorful slate in rivers or lakes. The rocks of the colorful slate are found on the Großer Feldberg, where they were mined in tunnels to extract roofing slate (slate tunnel below the Red Cross). Quartzite sandstones are embedded in them, from which the Brunhildis rock on the summit of the Großer Feldberg consists. The Hermeskeil layers are exposed below the Großer Feldberg and consist of mudstones, weakly consolidated micaceous sandstones and quartzites of the Lower Siegen (Lower Pragian). They are covered by several 100 m thick layers of Taunus quartzite (Middle Siegen, Pragian/Emsian). The very weather resistant rock forms many summits of the Taunus ridge (Altkönig, Kleiner Feldberg, Glaskopf), but also individual rock elevations (such as the Hohle Stein). The Celtic ring walls and the rubble heap on the "White Wall" on the Altkönig consist of Taunus quartzite. The fractured groundwater of the Taunus quartzite is of local interest for water extraction. They are dammed by the underlying Hermeskeilschichten and pumped through groundwater tunnels. Four such groundwater tunnels make a significant contribution to Wiesbaden's water supply.