Schlossberg (Werder)

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Schlossberg
The Schlossberg at the Forsthaus Werder: View of the northeast-facing gate (southern section) from the northeast, 2015

The Schlossberg at the Forsthaus Werder: View of the northeast-facing gate (southern section) from the northeast, 2015

Alternative name (s): Castle wall, de Schlottbarg
Creation time : Bronze age
Castle type : Hilltop castle
Conservation status: Wall remains
Geographical location 54 ° 31 '48.1 "  N , 13 ° 38' 57.8"  E Coordinates: 54 ° 31 '48.1 "  N , 13 ° 38' 57.8"  E
Schlossberg (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania)
Schlossberg

The Schlossberg , also Schlosswall or de Schlott Barg , the forester's house Werder in the Stubnitz is a hill fort on the peninsula Jasmund in the northeast of the island of Ruegen .

Location and description

Castle wall at the forester's house in Werder, 1868

The area is located not far from the former forester's house in Werder, about 200 m to the south. The wall forms an elongated square with rounded corners. The area measures around 180 × 100 meters in length and has an area of ​​around 1.8 hectares. At around 2 meters, the height of the ramparts is significantly lower compared to other Rügen ramparts such as Arkona or Karenz . In the north and north-east the wall is interrupted by three entrances which, according to Rudolf Baier, seem to be original. However, the reduced functionality of the military system due to the three openings contradicts this assumption. At the beginning of the 19th century, the historian Johann Jacob Grümbke described that one of these openings was covered by a stone dam and assumes that this is the main entrance or gate. He does not describe which of the three openings it is. The two western entrances are between 2.50 meters and 2.80 meters wide, while the northeast-facing gate is around 18 meters wide. In the western third of the north-eastern rampart opening, a weak, approximately 1 meter high elevation can be seen, which could be traced back to an inner structure of the gate system or was later created to expand the gate area. It can be assumed that the northeast opening is the original and only entrance. A fourth passage is located in the southeast of the wall and leads into a deep gorge, which was a safe protection and in which the Steinbach flows to Saßnitz. There is another opening in the northwest. Baier suspects that this opening led into a swamp that once existed there. In the north and east of the complex, where the terrain offers no natural protection, there was a ditch in front of the wall, which in the 19th century could only be seen in individual traces of depressions. In the south-eastern section of the wall there are shallow pits that could have served as extraction points for the wall material. In the 1950s, larger areas in the south of the wall were destroyed by gravel mining . At the edge of the gravel pit, the removed cover layer was deposited like a wall.

history

Due to the sparse and unspecific excavation finds in the area, no exact dating could be carried out so far. The size of the complex and the height of the ramparts have a different appearance than the other Slavic ramparts on Rügen. During excavations in 1868, no remains of houses could be found in the area of ​​the castle wall. Therefore, according to a theory that seems unlikely from today's knowledge, the function of the wall, also due to the proximity to the Herthaburg , was assumed as a Danish camp site. According to Baier and Lisch , it could therefore be the campsite described by Saxo Grammaticus , to which the Danish army withdrew in 1168 after taking parental leave. Shards of Slavic type were repeatedly found in the Schlossberg. Grümbke suspects a former hunting lodge of the first Rügen princes on the area. Also Boll said in a Slavic rampart fixing how the Ravensburg at Neubrandenburg of the type of Feldberger to recognize castle dating from the 8th century. At two of the entrance gates, he mentions small conical graves (barrows) in the moat itself, which makes a more recent origin of the complex almost impossible.

View of the two granite blocks on the Schlossberg near the forester's house in Werder: in the foreground the little cup / bowl stone, view to the northwest towards the forester's house in Werder, 2015.

As a result of an excavation across the wall in the summer of 1939, a 4.5 meter wide, flat berm was discovered between the wall and the ditch. The approximately 2 meter wide excavation cut can still be seen today between the two western openings in the north of the wall. Similar to the Schlossberg near Ralswiek, there were pits with Neolithic fragments behind the wall . Kunkel and Hackbarth emphasize that the ramparts were built after the Stone Age. The construction shows similarities to the Schlossberg near Ralswiek. A late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age flint sickle , indeterminable prehistoric pottery and a friction ball are reported from surface finds since 1989 .

In the Neolithic there was a relatively high density of settlements on Jasmund , which was followed by Bronze Age settlement without any gaps in settlement. In the area of ​​the Stubnitz , as well as between the Schlossberg and the Hengst , there are numerous barrows , of which those up to 5 meters in size almost certainly belong to the Bronze Age . The smaller, flat ones that always occur in groups are more likely to belong to the Slavic settlement phase of this area. Barrows from the Bronze Age are often isolated or in groups on plateaus or knolls and were probably visible from afar in the open landscape of the epoch. The distribution of the barrows suggests that their location played a role in demarcating territories, on the edge of settlement chambers or as waypoints. One of the Bronze Age graves in the immediate vicinity of the Schlossberg was excavated in 1939 by the prehistorian Carl Engel .

3 tombstones of the Pavelt family northeast of the Schlossberg ramparts (Werder), 2015.

To the north of the Schlossberg, about 100 meters away, there are two granite blocks, one of which is a cup stone . Stones with cup-like depressions have been found in later Germanic cultural areas since the Stone Age and make a cultic meaning likely. Both features of the barrows and the granite blocks seem to indicate that the complex was laid out for religious purposes much earlier and that it is probably a Bronze Age refuge .

In strategically well-suited positions, the Schlossberg (Werder) on the Steinbach , like the stallion on the Lenzer Bach, cordoned off two entrances to the northwestern settlement chamber, the 1.5 km² Colzow and Broiken plateau. Both positions can thus give an indication of the seaborne dangers of that time coming across the Baltic Sea. Similar to the castle wall near Ralswiek , a strong settlement concentration recurring over epochs can be seen in the said area.

North-east of the Schlossberg are three gravestones (from right to left) of the head forester (of the forester's house in Werder) Pavelt, the lawyer and notary Kurt Oliver Pavelt and Katharina Pavelt.

and display information about the image
Schlossberg at the forester's lodge Werder and saddle on the stallion in the Stubnitz; Schlossberg (I), Hengst (II), table sheet 1920 - 1: 25000

Popular tradition

According to a legend, there was a castle on the area, after which the wall is called "Schlossberg bei Werder". According to another legend, the Schlossberg once served as a place of residence for Klaus Störtebeker . The wall was connected to the Baltic Sea via a watercourse to the pirate gorge near Sassnitz . On the edge of the wall, numerous stones were piled up, which would be rolled down in the event of an enemy attack. Two stones were probably connected by a chain, and when they were then rolled down they tore away everything that was caught by the chain. It is also said that one day the castle or palace and its inhabitants sank into the ground. Some people claim to have heard the dull ringing of bells below the ground on the Schlossberg.

literature

  • Nils Petzholdt: Rügen's pre-Slavic castle complexes In: Pomerania. Journal of Culture and History. Issue 1/2016, ISSN  0032-4167 , pp. 4–13. or Nils Petzholdt: Rügen's vorwendische Wehranlagen In: Stralsund booklets for history, culture and everyday life, Stralsund 2016, ISBN 978-3-95872-039-8 , pp. 97-107.

Web links

Commons : Schlossberg (Werder)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c { Rudolf Baier : The ramparts of the island of Rügen according to the investigations undertaken on the orders of His Majesty the King in the summer of 1868, in Baltic Studies AF 24, Stettin 1872, pp. 286–287, 289
  2. ↑ a b c Wilhelm Petzsch : Rügen's castle walls and the Slavic culture of the island, Bergen auf Rügen 1927, pp. 84–85
  3. ↑ a b c d Johann Jacob Grümbke : New and precise geographical-statistical-historical representations of the island and the principality, Rügen 1819, Volume 2, p. 217
  4. ↑ a b c d Markus Sommer-Scheffler: The oldest castles on Rügen - "The Castle Mountain" and "The Stallion" near Sassnitz, district of Rügen, in: Archäologische Entdeckungen in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Schwerin 2009, p. 85 (abbreviated) or The Schlossberg near Sassnitz: The oldest castle on Rügen ( https://bodendenkmal.wordpress.com/2012/06/19/220/ ), ed. by Markus Sommer-Scheffler, written 19 Jun 2012, accessed on 01 Jun 2015
  5. ^ A b Alfred Hass : Contributions to the knowledge of the Rügen castle walls, in: Baltic Studies NF 14, Stettin 1910, pp. 44, 46
  6. ^ Saxonis Grammatici : Historia Danica Recensuit et commentariis illustravit Petrus Erasmus Müller, Havniae, 1839, pp. 844-845
  7. ↑ Ulrich Schoknecht : Problems of Ravensburg near Neubrandenburg, in: Bodendenkmalpflege in Mecklenburg, Yearbook 1970, Schwerin 1971, pp. 263-272
  8. ↑ Ernst Boll : The island of Rügen, Schwerin 1858, p. 95
  9. ↑ Otto Kunkel and Hans-Günther Hackbarth: Files in the Institute and Museum for Pre- and Early History of the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University of Greifswald, see: Joachim Herrmann : Ralswiek on Rügen, The Slavic-Viking settlements and their hinterland. Part II - Kultplatz, Boot 4, Hof, Propstei, Mühlenberg, Schloßberg and Rugard - Contributions to the prehistory and early history of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Volume 33, Lübstorf 1998, p. 156
  10. ↑ Elsbeth Lange , Lebrecht Jeschke and Hans Dieter Knapp: Ralswiek and Rügen, Landscape Development and Settlement History of the Baltic Sea Island, Part I - The Landscape History of the Island of Rügen since the Late Glacial, in Writings on Prehistory and Early History, Volume 38, Berlin 1986, p. 139 -140
  11. ↑ Willi lamp: The aboveground ground monuments of the Stubnitz, Kr. Rügen, in: Archaeological reports and information - excavations and finds, Volume 19, Issue 4, Berlin 1974, pp. 179-186
  12. ↑ 11.2 North Germany , in: Association of State Archaeologists, Digging Technician Handbook, Chapter 11: Geländedenkmale, 2011, p. 14 http://www.landesarchaeologen.de/verband/kommissions/grabungstechnik/grabungstechnikerhandbuch/ , ed. by Ulrich Schoknecht , Jutta Möller, Daniel Nösler, Jens-Peter Schmidt, accessed on June 9, 2015
  13. ↑ Carl Engel : An ancient bronze age burial mound near the Werder forest ranger in the Stubnitz on Rügen, in: Communications from the prehistoric seminar of the University of Greifswald, issue 11/12, Greifswald 1940, pp. 86-99
  14. ↑ Gustav Braun : XI. Annual report of the Geographical Society of Greifswald, Greifswald 1908, p. 3, 24
  15. ↑ Rudolf Virchow : Meeting of October 16, 1886, in: Zeitschrift für Ethnologie Volume 18, Berlin 1886, p. 620
  16. ↑ Hans Dieter Knapp: Rügen's story from its beginnings to the present in five parts, part 1: Rügen's early history, Putbus 2008, p. 119
  17. ↑ Alfred Hass : Rügensche Sagen und Märchen, 3rd edition, Stettin 1903, No. 205, p. 184
  18. ^ Alfred Hass : Castle walls and barrows on the island of Rügen in the folk tale, Stettin 1925, p. 20