Battery tower

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Battery tower of the Kufstein Fortress
Former late Gothic citadel of Cyriaksburg with both gun towers in 1670

An artillery bastion , or gun turret is one in some castles later, mostly in the 16th century advent of firearms erected defensive tower in the outside, often only later established line of defense. The term “battery tower” is derived from the battery , a group of several guns.

Sometimes these towers were also placed "alone" in front of a defense line. Examples of this are the castles Breuberg , Berwartstein , Frankenstein and the castle Schloss Burgk .

Upstream battery towers should enable the side of kennels or moats to be completely painted . Sometimes they were also located on one of the (mostly higher) mountain peaks adjacent to the castle in order to secure it (example tower in Little France ). Some of the upstream towers are open to the castle complex (e.g. near Breuberg Castle ), i.e. shell towers , so that attackers could not entrench themselves in them.

Fortified new palace buildings from the late Gothic and Renaissance periods, so-called castle palaces , were often fortified with gun turrets. An example of this is Langenburg Castle .

History and construction

Early turrets were designed for the use of large-caliber handguns, so-called hook rifles , which is why their loopholes are correspondingly small (see pictures "Red Tower", "Schlickturm", "Dicker Turm"). The "Big Tower" of the Friedewald moated castle is unusual in Germany , and it also contains sinkholes (not visible from the outside!) That open out into the open just above the water surface of the moat. This tower already contains a central smoke vent for all gun levels. Olavinlinna Castle in Finland was built from 1475 with three huge gun turrets. Here the guns were originally only on one level, directly under the tower roof. Findings similar to those on the towers of Olavinlinna can be found on the preserved fortress tower (after 1557) of the razed citadel Peitz . It is a rectangular brick building, the lower two floors of which served as storage rooms, the top floor was probably used for residential purposes or as a tower house. It ends with a crenellated platform on which cannons were once placed as a battery on one level. This fortress tower thus represents the creation of the gun tower in Germany.

The mostly round towers were later able to accommodate numerous stationary guns in different directions and on several levels and were therefore clearly superior in terms of firepower to possible attackers who could, at best, bring their cannons into gun readiness on the main attack side.

The individual levels of the battery towers are sometimes connected by a ramp, so that the guns could be set up variably at the numerous loopholes.

The term battery tower is controversial in fortress research. The “dictionary of castles, palaces and fortresses” refers to it and recommends the term “gun turret”. It is generally said, however, that a turret / battery turret towers over the adjacent ramparts, that the height is greater than the width and that it must be suitable for the installation of several guns. The examples below do not necessarily seem to meet all of this. It should be added that it often covers endangered areas of the fortification system through its own firepower and resistance. The Maschikuliturm at the fortress in Würzburg is worth discussing.


Buildings that are no higher than the ramparts and wider than they are tall should be classified under the term bastion or roundabout (e.g. the Munot in Schaffhausen).

The caponier is a further development of the battery tower in the sense of a trench .

  • Battery tower "Red Tower", standing in front of a newly built shield wall / outer bailey, mid-16th century, Burgk Castle , Thuringia

  • Battery tower "Schlickturm" (1517–1520) of the loosened castle castle Freudenstein , Czech Republic

  • Moated castle Friedewald , large gun turret "Dicker Turm" (from 1476), partly with (only visible inside) sinkholes and inside with central smoke outlet, Hesse

  • angular gun turrets (from 1553) at Lichtenau Fortress , Bavaria

  • one of two gun turrets (1530) of the former late Gothic citadel Cyriaksburg , Thuringia

  • Heidelberg Castle , "Krautturm" gun tower blown up, Baden-Württemberg

  • Breuberg Castle , eastern advanced and open battery tower "Michaelsturm" (1480 to 1507 at the latest) in the Zwinger, Hesse

  • Olavinlinna Castle , main gun level under the tower roof, Finland

The tower fort

Haake tower fort in the Prussian fortress town of Poznan in the 19th century.
former Swedish island fort whale with a gun turret in the 18th century, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania

From the 17th century at the latest, more and more small fortifications - often on islands - with a single gun tower in the center - as the only main defense structure - were built in Europe . These are tower forts. In France, the construction of many tower forts in the 17th century goes back to the idea of ​​the royal fortress builder Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban (1633–1707). One preserved example is the island fort with the "Golden Tower" (1693–1697), also known as the Vauban Tower . Tower forts in the New Prussian manner , the so-called Montalembert Towers , were used in Prussia from 1802 (in Fortress Cosel , built by Major General Karl Christian Reinhold von Lindener ) and until the middle of the 19th century. a. erected by General Ernst Ludwig von Aster (1778–1855):

These forts protected estuaries or were part of the fortifications of fortified cities. Just like the gun turret of the Friedewald moated castle (late Gothic / Renaissance, from 1476), the historic tower fort "Engelsburg" in Swinoujscie also has a central smoke vent.

Similar structures, apparently derived from the gun turret, are also turret-like reduits in fortifications of the 19th century. The central gun turret with its own moat and drawbridge, formerly with four galleries for cannons and / or rifles, built on the Swedish fortress Fredriksborg from 1724, represents the Transition from the gun turret to the turret reduit.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ "The castle as a fortification, fortified castle buildings of the early modern era", Ulrich Schütte, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt, 1994, page 136, ISBN 3-534-11692-5