City fortifications Kronach
The city fortifications of Kronach consisted of several former fortifications , which were mainly built between the 13th and 18th centuries. A large part of these structures is still preserved today and surrounds the old town of the Upper Franconian town of Kronach in Bavaria .
history
The so-called Upper City, Kronach 's old town located on a mountain spur between the rivers Haßlach and Kronach , was already surrounded by a city wall and a moat in 1323/24 . As a result of several armed conflicts such as the attacks of the Hussites in 1430 or the repeated sieges by the Swedes and their German allies during the Thirty Years' War , the fortifications of the city were reinforced and expanded until the 18th century.
Almost the entire city wall and a large part of the integrated towers are still preserved. Of the original three city gates that led into the Upper City, only the outer passage of the Bamberg Gate, located between Melchior-Otto-Platz and Schwedenstraße, has been preserved. The former Upper Gate in Festungsstrasse, which leads to Rosenberg Fortress above the city, and the Lower or Strauer Gate in the Strauer Torweg in the east of the old town were demolished in the course of the 19th century. The four gates in the three former suburbs that are now merged with one another also no longer exist; the last was dropped in the early 1860s.
The main trigger for the partial demolition of the gate and defenses in the course of the 19th century was the attachment of the city of Kronach to the Electorate of Bavaria in 1802/03 , which went hand in hand with the secularization of the bishopric of Bamberg : Due to the changed political and administrative situation, the former Fortifications no longer considered necessary and demolished as optical disruptions or obstacles for urban development.
City gates
Bamberg Gate
The Bamberg Gate ⊙ in the southwest of the old town is the only remaining city gate in Kronach. The originally two-part gate system, which was initially called Haßlacher Tor, was built from sandstone blocks in the 14th or 15th century and was first mentioned in a mayor's bill from 1444. A square tower with a crenellated crown that was probably added at the beginning of the 15th century , which was first mentioned in a document in 1578, was demolished in 1650. When the gate was renewed in 1654, a new tower was built, which, however, no longer rose directly above the gate, but was offset to the west. Remnants of this tower, which was demolished between June 30 and July 5, 1817, have been preserved as the substructure of the Melchior-Otto-Platz 13 building.
Only the two-storey front gate with the wooden gate wing from 1650 is preserved from the former gate system. The pedestrian gate next to the Fahrtor was only set up in 1927 during renovation work on the city wall in the area of the Bamberg Gate. The upper floor of the inner side of the gate facing Melchior-Otto-Platz is timber-framed ; on the outside facing Schwedenstraße the coats of arms of the city and the bishopric of Bamberg are attached.
Upper gate
The Obere Tor ⊙ , first mentioned in 1398, was located in Festungsstrasse in the north of Kronach's old town. The lower part of the three-part gate system, which was also known as the castle or fortress gate, stood at the level of the city wall at the city tower , the other two gates to the north of it; however, the city tower itself was not part of the Upper Gate. The three gates, to which a guard's house was attached, were connected by a longitudinal wall. The gate system was demolished in 1807; Traces of the lower gate can still be seen on the building at Festungsstrasse 2 opposite the city tower.
Lower or Mourning Gate
The Lower or Strauer Tor ⊙ was at the lower end of the Strauer Torweg in the east of the old town. The three-part gate system, formerly also known as the Cronacher Tor, was built in the first half of the 15th century and was equipped with a portcullis . On the gate tower, which was subsequently added and mentioned for the first time in 1431, was the coat of arms of Frederick III. von Aufseß , Prince-Bishop of the Bamberg Monastery.
The Strauer Tor has been the target of attacks on several occasions during various sieges of the city. During the Thirty Years War in 1633, troops of Wilhelm von Sachsen-Weimar stormed the building and penetrated to the inner gate, but not into the city itself. During the Seven Years' War , Prussian troops under Major General Karl Gottfried von Knobloch attacked the gate in May 1759 , but were also unable to enter the city.
After efforts to demolish the gate system had already been made in 1827, the Strauer Gate was finally closed in June 1864. The coat of arms stone, which shows the official coat of arms of the prince-bishop and the Bamberg lion surrounded by three roses , is now built into the outer wall of the building at Strauer Torweg 14 next to the former location of the gate.
Coat of arms of Prince-Bishop Friedrich III. from Aufseß
Suburban gates
In addition to the aforementioned gate systems, which were integrated directly into the city wall around today's Kronach old town, there were four other gates in the three former suburbs. Since these suburbs, which are now merged with one another, only played a subordinate role in comparison to the Upper City, the gates erected there were only of secondary importance for the Kronach city fortifications. The information on these structures is correspondingly limited.
The Outer Haßlacher Tor or Klostertor was located in today's Klosterstrasse in the western suburb. His resignation took place in the first quarter of the 19th century.
There used to be two gates in the eastern suburb. The Outer Strauer Tor was located approximately at the level of the Kaulanger Bridge over the Kronach in today's Andreas-Limmer-Straße. The building no longer existed in the middle of 1763.
The Friesener Tor ⊙ stood on Friesener Strasse at the level of the confluence with the Friesener Torweg. It is not known when this gate was originally built; the oldest evidence of its existence is from 1632. The gate was demolished in 1663 and rebuilt in a different form. It was finally demolished in June 1861. Parts of the former gatehouse were preserved in the Friesener Straße 20 building.
The fourth gate, the hospital gate, was in the southern suburb around the hospital . It stood at today's Spitalbrücke over the Kronach and was probably built around 1444. It was demolished at the beginning of the 19th century.
Towers
Hämel or stork tower
The Hämel or Storchenturm ⊙ is a three-storey sandstone square tower on Judengasse in the north-west of Kronach's old town. The building with a rectangular floor plan was erected between 1431 and 1467 and has remained structurally almost unchanged since then. The name stork tower originated around 1700 when a wagon wheel was installed on the roof of the tower as a nesting aid for storks . After the storks were absent from the first half of the 19th century, the wagon wheel, which had become dilapidated over time, was removed at the beginning of the 21st century for safety reasons. During renovation work in 2014, a new nesting aid with a metal substructure was installed on the roof of the tower.
Lehlauben- or witch tower
The four-story Lehlaubenturm ⊙ on the east side of the market square dates back to 1444. The two upper floors of the tower with an almost square floor plan were added in the course of 1614. From 1811, Mayor Johann Georg Heim owned the building, who ceded it to the city again in 1830, after disputes between Heim and the Kronach city council had arisen the previous year as to who had to pay for the renovation of the dilapidated tower. A dungeon in the basement of the building was used as a prison until the 17th century. Among other things, people accused of witchcraft were imprisoned there during the witch hunt in Kronach , which is why the tower is popularly known as the witch's tower .
Parish or rose tower
The parish or rose tower ⊙ is a four-storey round tower on Marienplatz at the southern tip of Kronach's old town. As early as 1430 there was a tower at this point, which played an important role during the siege of the city by the Hussites. The current tower was built between 1515 and probably 1533 and an additional storey was added in 1579/80 according to plans by master builder Daniel Engelhardt . The coat of arms of Prince-Bishop Johann Georg I Zobel von Giebelstadt is attached to this third floor . At its rear, the rose tower is connected to the wall behind it by a stone arch ; this arch had to be rebuilt in 1634 because it was destroyed by the townspeople during a siege of the town by the Swedes during the Thirty Years War. This was intended to prevent the attackers who had managed to climb the Zwinger during a storm on the city wall from advancing further into the Upper City.
Coat of arms of Prince-Bishop Johann Georg I. Zobel von Giebelstadt, including a building inscription from 1580
Connection arch to the kennel wall
Slate or mouse tower
The slate or mouse tower ⊙ on the east side of the old town was built in 1509. After repair work had been carried out on the structure in 1795, the round tower made of sandstone blocks went into private ownership in 1811. The new owner had one floor of the tower demolished in 1825 with the approval of the city, but did not comply with other provisions of the sales contract that obliged him to erect a new roof. The next two owners did not meet this obligation either. In 1862, the tower was finally removed up to the level of the parapet of the enclosure wall adjacent to the tower , so that only a two-storey tower stump remains.
The name slate tower is based on the fact that at the time of its construction the building was the only slate- covered tower in the city.
City tower
The city tower ⊙ , which stands outside the city wall in Festungsstrasse in the north of the old town and whose core dates back to the 13th century, is probably the oldest building in the city. The tower, which has been structurally modified several times over the years and is now around 30 meters high, served for centuries as a guard tower and for the fire station. On the top floor was the apartment of the city tower man , who fulfilled his duty there until the 20th century.
Other structures
Anna Chapel
The St. Anna chapel ⊙ on the east side of Melchior-Otto-Platz was built in 1512/13; it initially served as an ossuary , as the cemetery, which then surrounded the neighboring parish church, could not be expanded due to lack of space. The three-storey, defense tower-like sandstone block building was also integrated into the defensive system of the city, as the two T-shaped loopholes on the east side show. After secularization in 1805, the chapel served as an armory from 1833 ; today it is used for sacred acts and as an exhibition space.
Cellar vault
Practically the entire mountain spur below the old town of Kronach is criss-crossed by numerous cellars, which were probably built between the 14th and the first half of the 17th century. While the lower levels of the systems, some of which reach up to three stories underground, were carved directly out of the rock, the top level mostly consists of vaults made of sandstone blocks. This artificially created basement level was probably intended to raise the level of the Upper City and thus the surrounding city wall. Most of the cellars are not connected to each other; Each building is assigned at least one cellar; larger buildings often have two or three of these systems. In some cases, the entrances to the cellars are not in the houses above, but in neighboring buildings, which indicates a different division of the plots at the time the vaults were built.
In the past, the cellars were probably used to store food. However, since the capacity of the facilities far exceeded the needs of the associated houses at the time, the cellars were probably also used to store food in the event of a siege of the city. It is very likely that some of the passages in the cellar were built as blasting passages in order to be able to inflict losses on attackers who had to storm the kennel wall by blowing up the vaults below. During the Second World War , the cellars, which are now largely empty, were used as shelters during air raids. In general, the vaults are not open to the public, but the cellar under the Lucas-Cranach-Straße 25 building can be viewed freely.
New shackles or festivals
The building at Am Pförtchen 5 ⊙ , which was built by master builder Andreas Lohnmüller in 1722–25 , is known as the Neue Büttelei or Fronfeste . The cuboid sandstone building in front of the Zwingermauer originally housed the Kronach city prison and the living quarters of the clerks of the Kronach regional court. Several loopholes in the outer walls made it possible, in the event of an attack, to swipe the area outside the city wall, which ran in a north-south direction in this section. Most of these openings were closed in the early 19th century when the building was converted into a residential building or replaced by built-in windows.
New work
The new factory ⊙ in Schwedenstrasse, not far from the Bamberg Gate, was built around 1730. The trapezoidal drawn before the moat wall bastionäre expansion was originally provided with a roof. On the side facing the street is the coat of arms of the Bamberg prince-bishop Friedrich Karl von Schönborn-Buchheim , during whose reign the building was erected. The relief that is no longer well preserved is marked “1736”.
Coat of arms of Prince-Bishop Friedrich Karl von Schönborn-Buchheim
Moat
The city moat was dug around 1323 and further expanded towards the end of the 14th century. After the city of Kronach became part of the Electorate of Bavaria, the ditch, which was originally filled with water, was filled in and gardens were laid out on it. Today only a few remains of the former city moat have been preserved along a street named after him east of the Upper City, some of the gardens have given way to public spaces.
city wall
The oldest parts of the city wall, built from sandstone ashlars, which still surrounds practically the entire old town of Kronach, probably date from around the year 1300; it was first mentioned in a document in 1323/24. Until the 18th century, the wall was repeatedly renewed and expanded and reinforced.
During the Thirty Years War, the troops of Bernhard von Sachsen-Weimar, who was fighting on the Swedish side, managed to break a breach in the wall next to the Bamberg Gate in an attack on March 21, 1634 . Due to the resolute resistance of the residents, this did not lead to the city being taken. The extent of the destruction at that time can be recognized by the deviating reddish color of the sandstone used to close the gap.
On the afternoon of March 3, 1906, part of the city wall in Schwedenstrasse collapsed and buried a residential building below the wall. A 57-year-old resident of the house was killed in the accident.
literature
- Bernd Wollner, Hermann Wich (Hrsg.): Historisches Stadtlesebuch: Kronach - 1000 years of history of a city and its inhabitants . 1000 Years of Kronach Association, Kronach 2003, ISBN 3-00-011351-7 .
- Denis André Chevalley: Upper Franconia . Ed .: Michael Petzet , Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments (= Monuments in Bavaria . Volume IV ). Oldenbourg, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-486-52395-3 .
- House of Bavarian History (Ed.): Kronach (= Edition Bavaria. People - History - Cultural Space . Volume 6 ). Verlag Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7917-2403-4 .
- Stefan Wicklein: Kronach: 1920 to 1950 . Sutton-Verlag, Erfurt 2005, ISBN 3-89702-898-0 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ City history. City of Kronach, accessed on March 14, 2012 .
- ↑ a b c d e f g h Denis André Chevalley: Upper Franconia. 1986, p. 235 ff.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Information board of the Lions Club Kronach on or near the respective object.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Christian Axt: Kronacher Türme und Tore . In: Bernd Wollner, Hermann Wich (Hrsg.): Historisches Stadtlesebuch . Kronach 2003, p. 143-160 .
- ^ House of Bavarian History (ed.): Kronach. 2011, p. 11
- ^ Stefan Wicklein: Kronach: 1920 to 1950. 2005, p. 20
- ↑ a b c House of Bavarian History (Ed.): Kronach. 2011, p. 84 f.
- ↑ Bernd Wollner: The Rosenberg Fortress: A guide and companion through Kronach's famous fortification . Ed .: Tourism and event management of the city of Kronach. Helmut Angles Druck & Verlag, Kronach 2002, ISBN 3-00-009879-8 .
- ↑ a b Hans Kremer, Helmut Wenig: coat of arms stones and stone inscriptions in Kronach and on the Rosenberg fortress . Ed .: Working group for home care (= Heimatkundliches Jahrbuch des Landkreis Kronach . Volume 4 ). 1976.
- ↑ The new cradle of the young storks has been installed in Kronach. inFranken.de, November 13, 2014, accessed December 8, 2014 .
- ↑ Our association. Frankenwaldverein Kronach, accessed on July 9, 2014 .
- ↑ Corinna Igler: He looks over the whole of Kronach. inFranken.de, February 26, 2011, accessed on July 25, 2017 .
- ^ House of Bavarian History (ed.): Kronach. 2011, p. 27
- ↑ Heike Schülein: Excursion into the "Underworld". inFranken.de, September 7, 2010, accessed on July 10, 2017 .
- ↑ Information board at the Lucas-Cranach-Straße 25 building
- ^ A gem on Schwedenstrasse. Neue Presse Coburg, September 10, 2011, accessed on March 1, 2012 .
- ^ Klaus Rupprecht: When Kronach became Bavarian ... - Process and consequences of secularization in the city and office of Kronach 1802/03 . In: Bernd Wollner, Hermann Wich (Hrsg.): Historisches Stadtlesebuch . Kronach 2003, p. 226-248 .
- ^ Stefan Wicklein: Collapse of the city wall in 1906. Kronach volunteer fire brigade, accessed on February 25, 2012 .
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