Castle Tower (Koenigsberg)

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Königsberg Castle with bell tower, before the First World War

The Königsberg Castle Tower was an old, repeatedly rebuilt part of the Königsberg Castle .

history

In 1260 as a dungeon built and completed in 1387, the tower was wearing a tent, but was bell tower for the castle church . In 1551 he received a four-sided clock from Master Merten Seigermacher. In 1584 it was increased considerably by a stepped Renaissance helmet. In 1594 a juggler drove a little boy on a rope from his helmet to the earth.

The tower was given a weather vane with the year 1686 and the initials of the Great Elector CFW . The letters were not changed even during the royal period.

In 1688 the tower got an octagonal lantern with a dome. He could only be reached from the battlements. It was not until 1815 that stair access with 284 steps was built from below.

When the top of the castle tower leaned south in 1864, it had to be changed. The significantly increased spire was after Stüler executed novelty design, octagonal with gallery and four corner towers. The weather vane from 1686 was put back on. From the pavement of the courtyard, the tower was 82 meters high and stood 12 meters above the Pregel.

In 1877 the tower was again clad in brick with diamond-shaped glaze inlays.

After the British air raids in 1944 , the tower burned down. When Königsberg was conquered by the Red Army in April 1945, it was severely damaged by artillery fire and blown up in 1955, before the entire ruin of the castle was removed in 1968 by order of the Soviet government under Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev .

Castle Tower Bubbles

As early as 1525, the tower keeper was obliged to blow from the tower at 11 a.m. and 9 p.m. in the evening and to report any fire.

In more recent times the chorales have been blown by five wind instruments in the four directions of the compass, oh stay with your grace in the mornings and now all forests rest in the evening. The tower blowing ended with the British incendiary bombs on August 30, 1944 and was no longer recorded afterwards.

  • Model with baroque tower
    (H. Dühring)

  • Weather vane
    (undated drawing)

Others

The castle tower was a periodical of the Academic-Literary Association at the Albertina Königsberg .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Herbert Meinhard Mühlpfordt : Königsberg from A to Z. A city dictionary. Aufstieg-Verlag, Munich 1972.
  2. ^ Robert Albinus: Königsberg Lexicon. City and surroundings. Special edition. Flechsig, Würzburg 2002, ISBN 3-88189-441-1 .
  3. ↑ DNB

Coordinates: 54 ° 42 ′ 34.6 "  N , 20 ° 30 ′ 41.7"  E