I don’t really care what the “official” document says, Langweid am Lech isn’t a medieval town. It’s a Roman one.
Don’t get me wrong, I love towns from the Middle Ages as much as anyone else, but archaeological finds show that the Romans were here long before Lords and Ladies of the Manor and peasants were.
Otherwise, Landweid wouldn’t be on the Via Claudia Augusta scenic route, would it? No, I didn’t believe so either.
In all fairness to our medieval friends, Langweid’s Eggelhof (with chapel) sits on Carolingian foundations. In case you didn’t know, the Carolingians were around from the 7th to 9th/10th centuries.
Whether the Middle Ages or the Romans peak your interest, you’re able to learn quite a bit more at the Lech Museum. It’s housed at the still working hydro-electric plant that was built in 1907. One caveat, it’s only open on the first Sunday of the month, but you got all day to see it as it’s open from 10am – 6pm.
As if the hydro-electric plant isn’t enough of a 20th century contribution to Langweid, you gotta see the Gersthofen-Gablingen Airfield that was used as a school to teach pilots of the Royal Bavarian Flying Corp from 1904 to 1918. During World War II the airfield was so well camouflaged (it was made to look like a lake), and was used as a subcamp of the Dachau Concentration Camp — housing 1000 prisoners.
After the war ended the United States used the airstrip, and it’s now where you’ll find the Wullenwever Antenna — some sort of triangulation antenna that was used as a listening device for espionage.
FYI, if there’s an engineer out there who can explain this to me, I would be forever grateful. ;-)
In the mean time, I will just enjoy the Swabian countryside (there are some 260km of hiking trails) and the nearby Nature Park Augsburg (the city of Augsburg is about 15km away) confident in my thought that Langweid am Lech is a true Roman town.
