The Kleiner Odenwald (“Little Odenwald”) is the southern part of the central German hill range, the Odenwald, and is up to . It is also part of the natural region of Sandstein-Odenwald in the north of the state of Baden-Württemberg. Lying east-southeast of Heidelberg and south of the River Neckar, which separates the Kleiner Odenwald from the rest of the Odenwald, its landscape is shaped by the underlying sandstone that also dominates the northern Odenwald.
Geography
Location
The Kleiner Odenwald lies in the counties of Rhein-Neckar and Neckar-Odenwald and on the territory of the city of
Heidelberg. It is bounded in the north by the
Neckar and the settlements of Neckargemünd and Eberbach, in the east by the Neckar and e.g. by Obrigheim, in the south by
Reichartshausen,
Waibstadt and
Eschelbronn and in the west by
Wiesloch, Leimen and Heidelberg on the River Neckar. Municipalities in the area are:
Lobbach,
Bammental,
Gaiberg, Wiesenbach,
Aglasterhausen, Schwarzach, Neunkirchen and Schönbrunn. The most important streams are the Elsenz, Schwarzbach and Lobbach.
Somewhat east of the Kleiner Odenwaldes lies the Bauland, south of the Kraichgau and west of the Upper Rhine Plain. In the southeast is part of the Brunnen region.
Hills
The hills and high points of the Kleiner Odenwald include the following – sorted by height in metres (m) above Normalhöhennull (NHN):
-
Königstuhl (567.8 m),east of Heidelberg
-
Hebert (518.8 m), south of Eberbach-Neckarwimmersbach
-
Auerhahnenkopf (486.9 m), south of Heidelberg-Schlierbach
-
Hirschhornberg (461.6 m), northwest of Oberschönbrunn
-
Kolben (on the Oberen Neckarberg; 408.9 m), north-northeast of Schönbrunn-Moosbrunn
-
Gaisberg (375.6 m), east of Heidelberg
-
Neckarberge (367.5 m), south of Mückenloch-Neckarhäuserhof
-
Oberer Stadtwald (360.6 m), east of Neckargemünd
-
Unterer Stadtwald (325.5 m), southwest of Neckargemünd
-
Hirschberg (somewhat over 300 m), northeast of Nußloch
-
Neckarriedkopf (293.8 m), southwest of Neckargemünd in the Unteren Stadtwald
-
Hollmut (284.8 m), south of Neckargemünd
-
Salzberg (259.3 m), west-southwest of Lobbach-Lobenfeld
-
Bammertsberg (249.9 m), north of Bammental
