The Hebel Hiking Trail

6 June 2022

The Hebel hiking trail (Hebel-Wanderweg) is about 60 km long and runs between Basel and the spring on the Feldberg (Baden-Württemberg). The trail is based on Hebel’s Alemannic poem “Die Wiese” and runs from the spring to the Schifflände in Basel. Numerous information boards provide information about Hebel and his work.

Johann Peter Hebel (1760-1826) wrote the “Alemannische Gedichten” in 1803. He wrote these poems out of homesickness (from heimweh. a word of Swiss origin) of his homeland/Heimat (the city of Basel and the Wiesental). He is the pioneer of the Alemannic dialect literature.

Memorial for Hermann Daur (1870-1925) and Johann Peter Hebel. Ötlingen, near the St. Gallus-Kirche. 

Johann Peter Hebel (1760-1826) schrieb aus Sehnsucht nach der Heimat (Basel) die

Homesickness (Heimweh) was already in the seventeenth century, a diagnosis of an illness among Swiss mercenaries derived from thinking of the Heimat.

Hebel often walked along the Wiese near Riehen and Basel on the path along a brook that flows into the Wiese. The Wiese flows into the Rhine at Kleinhüningen (a former municipality merged with Basel).

In addition to his work as a writer, he was active as a pastor and teacher in Lörrach and Karlsruhe. In 1819 he was appointed the first prelate of the Protestant regional church of the Grand Duchy of Baden.

Except for the two Swiss communities of Riehen and Basel (canton of Basel-Landschaft) at the mouth of the Wiese, the Wiesental belongs to the district of Lörrach.

The valley stretches along the nearly 60-kilometre-long course of the Wiese in a south-westerly direction from the Feldberg at an altitude of around 1,200 metres to the Rhine near Basel.

The route begins at the source and runs through the picturesque villages of Todtnau, Utzenfeld, Schönau, Wembach, Fröhnd, Zell, Hausen, Schopfheim, Maulburg, Steinen, Hauingen, Brombach, Lörrach and Riehen to Basel.

(Source and further information: www.riehen-tourismus.ch).