There is evidence that the area around Lotterberg was populated at least from the Late Paleolithic onwards, as has been shown for the Felsberg area in general, e.g. by the existence of The Rhünda Skull. A single find of an asymmetrical, facetted, Neolithicaxe on Lotterberg collaborates this. In 1921 the hessische Landesamt für Bodendenkmal opened up a number of tumuli of Funnelbeaker culture age in the area around Amselholz. Above the normal soil layer was a very stony layer. The graves were filled with pure sand. Two spotted flintstones were found. An urnfield of possibly Bronze Age has been found on Lotterberg. In addition, there was probably an Iron Age settlement on Lotterberg from the 4th to the 1st centuries BC. Remains of the settlement cannot be found, but archeologists have found a large number of Iron Age pottery fragments. They are layered and contain grains of quartz. The pieces of ceramic are coloured either yellow or grey-brown. A Romanmortarium was also found on Lotterberg. In 1929, the American-British poet Wystan Hugh Auden traveled from Berlin to Marburg via Kassel. In his poem 1929 the hill-top he mentions is Lotterberg, as part of the Gudensberger Basaltkuppenlandschaft.
Amselhof
'The Amselhof', also known as 'Hof zur Amsel', is a free-standing farm, which was once a guesthouse, on the eastern side of Lotterberg, on the edge of the forest. A Middle Ageridgeway that passed by Amselhof on the way to Kassel does not exist anymore. In 1539 the term Amenschebnborg was first mentioned in a Kassel register, the Kasseler Salbuch, as part of Wolfenhausen's arable land. Amselburg is mentioned in 1558 to be on Lotterberg. The forest that belonged to Amselhof, Amselwald, is ascribed in 1579 as being used by villagers from Haldorf. In the archives of Marburg the 1694 cadastre for Wolfershausen and the related map of the village from 1688 does not show Amselhof, but it mentions that the oldest building of the guesthouse were built between 1694 and 1748. To begin with the guesthouse is mentioned, but not named in the cadastre from this time. At the end of the 17th century, the land lot is referred to as Amselburg. The present-day half-timbered house with sandstone foundations was constructed by master craftsmanJohann Hermann Alheit in 1776 from the wood of the previous house. Above the door, on the righthand oak beam, there is carving of a blackbird on a branch. In the first half of the 18th century Johannes Umbach ran a guesthouse at the Amselhof. In 1932 Konrad Dittmar took over the 27 morgen of arable and forestland at Amselhof and later passed it on to his son, Karl Dittmar. At the Amselhof, up until the 1970s, one felt one was back in the 19th century, because there was no electricity, running water, or telephone. Instead, the inhabitants of Amselhof used paraffin lamps in the evenings. The Amselhof was the setting for the book Das rote Haus - eine Erzählung aus Hessen, written in 1933 by Wilhelm Ide.
Horses' grave
In the area of Amselholz on Lotterberg, close to Amselhof, there is a horses' grave. The romantic grave made of red sandstone has a decoration of two horses' heads. Engraved in the stone are the words, Hier ruhen Bella und Rosa, den 15ten Juni 1868. The horses buried here, are not, as was thought for a long time, from the Isabellen - a harnessed team of six belonging to the last Hessian Prince-elector, Friedrich Wilhelm I. Nevertheless, there are still two different stories about how the graves came to be. In the first story, the two horses drew a carriage in which a hunter from Kassel often used to travel to his hunting ground in Amselwald on Lotterberg. One day, the old horses were not up to the effort anymore and the hunter, so that the horses wouldn't fall into other hands, shot them in Amselholz on 15 June 1856. In the second story, the horses were two gray horses that belonged to the widow Biermann from Kassel. When the animals were old and could not pull the carriage anymore, the widow tried to give the horses to a farmer, who should put them up for stud. Because her request was turned down, she gave a hunting guest, a Rittmeister, instructions to shoot the 12- and 13-year-old horses in Amselholz.
Legend
There was a giant who lived on Lotterberg called Lothar. Because the giant Kunibert had stole Lothar's beloved, the giantess Nagathe, and tried to take her back to Heiligenberg, Lothar threw a huge block of stone at him. The throw went wrong and the stone landed in the field next to the Eder river, where it can still be seen today as the Riesenstein, close to Wolfershausen.
