Arnsburg Castle

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Arnsburg Castle
Foundation walls of Arnsburg Castle, view from the east, Munzenberg Castle in the background

Foundation walls of Arnsburg Castle, view from the east, Munzenberg Castle in the background

Creation time : around 1000
Castle type : Höhenburg, spur location
Conservation status: Ruin, foundation walls
Standing position : Ministeriale
Construction: Quarry stone
Place: Lich
Geographical location 50 ° 29 '24.1 "  N , 8 ° 47' 20.6"  E Coordinates: 50 ° 29 '24.1 "  N , 8 ° 47' 20.6"  E
Height: 170  m above sea level NHN
Arnsburg Castle (Hesse)
Arnsburg Castle
Arnsburg Castle excavation plan

The castle Arnsburg is the ruin of a Spur castle on 170  m above sea level. NN not far from Arnsburg Monastery , a district of Lich in the district of Gießen , Hesse . The castle, built around 1000, was the ancestral seat of the Reich ministers of Hagen and Arnsburg in the Wetterau , who called themselves von Münzenberg from 1151 . From 1984 to 1985 the foundation walls of the castle were excavated.

location

Arnsburg Castle can be reached from exit 36 ​​of the A 45 east of the Gambacher Kreuz in the direction of Lich via the B 488 . A visitor parking lot has been created within the walls of Arnsburg Monastery, the access to which is signposted on the B 488.

From here a footpath leads through the gate house and along the outside of the monastery wall, which you follow to just before the Berger Mühle and then an uphill footpath up the slope to the Hainfeld to the remains of Arnsburg Castle. The excavation field is located on a spur 800 meters southwest of the former Arnsburg monastery, 17 meters above the Wetter river , which describes an arc there.

Another 600 meters to the southwest was the Roman fort Arnsburg-Alteburg , which was abandoned around 260 and played an important role in the history of Arnsburg Castle. Except for visible remains of the foundations , the fort has only been preserved as a ground monument .

history

Two castles in the Middle Ages

Since the abandonment of the Limes 250/260, which also meant that the Arnsburg-Alteburg fort was abandoned to slow decline, the Wetterau had been Franconian settled. Numerous places had arisen along the old Roman military roads by 800, often with names ending in -burg at former fort sites. The Roman fiscal land was systematically recorded. This resulted in a concentration of Königsgut in the former Limes area.

On the northeastern edge of the former Limes area, near the abandoned fort on the steep slope of the Wetter River, two castles were built one after the other: A smaller one in the northwest part of the later Arnsburg monastery, which is dated to around 800 and the last remains of which were mentioned in 1834 which, however, can no longer be seen today, and a second one, the creation of which is expected around 1000. It developed into its final state in four construction phases until 1151, when it was abandoned only five years later.

There are different interpretations about the origin of the name Arnsburg. It was interpreted as the castle of Arn or as the castle of Arnold . However, since these personal names do not occur in the family of the later lords of the castle, a derivation from Castellum Hadrianum is assumed, since the former Altenburg fort existed in the time of the Roman emperor Hadrian . A connection to the Roman legionary eagle is more likely, as the first lord of the castle Kuno von Arnsburg kept the eagle as a heraldic animal for his services under two emperors.

The Arnsburg on the Hainfeld

Foundation walls of the tower

This Kuno von Arnsburg, the Emperor Heinrich III. was affectionate, married Countess Mathilde von Beilstein in 1064. Eberhard von Hagen from Dreieich married the daughter of both heirs, Gertrud von Arnsburg . Both chose the Arnsburg as their place of residence and from then on called themselves von Hagen and Arnsburg . Her grandson Konrad II and his wife Luitgart donated the Altenburg Benedictine monastery , which belonged to the Fulda Abbey, on the site of the former Roman fort near their castle in 1150 . As a compensation they received the uninhabited Munzenberg from Fulda in 1151 and after 1156 they moved their headquarters to the newly built Munzenberg Castle .

With the permission of the owners, the monks used material from the fort and, after 1156, from the abandoned Arnsburg Castle for the construction of their monastery church, which was badly damaged as a result. As early as 1174, however, the construction work on the Benedictine monastery ended and it was closed. It can be assumed that the Hagen-Arnsburg family did not receive any financial support during this period, as they themselves ran into financial difficulties and had to stop construction on their Munzenberg Castle. At the same time, they handed over their ancestral castle and all of its lands to the Eberbach monastery to re-establish a Cistercian monastery in the nearby river valley. The remains of Arnsburg Castle were used again as a quarry and then almost completely covered by the drifting sand .

The Holy Cross Chapel

Wall remains of the Holy Cross Chapel

More than 200 years later, the remains of Arnsburg Castle served for the last time as a supplier of building materials for a Holy Cross Chapel, which was consecrated in 1399. The little church used for regular pilgrimages was destroyed in 1623 during the Thirty Years War .

exploration

In search of the partly known predecessor camps of the Roman fort in Arnsburg, the castle was discovered in the early 1980s by aerial archeology by the then director of the Saalburg Museum Dietwulf Baatz . Excavations followed soon after by the State Office for the Preservation of Monuments in Hesse under the then regional archaeologist Fritz-Rudolf Herrmann , which showed an extensive underground wall system beyond the already well-known Holy Cross Chapel. On the initiative of Dr. Hans Rempel, the then chairman of the Friends of the Arnsburg Monastery , began archaeological excavations in 1984 which, in addition to the foundations of the Holy Cross Chapel, also uncovered the foundations of Arnsburg Castle. In 1985 they were secured and bricked up above ground level. The facility has been visible to visitors ever since.

investment

Fountain

Above the steep slope of the Wetter, a tower castle was built in the first construction phase around 1000 . It consisted of a square tower surrounded by a wall in the form of a narrow courtyard. Included in the southern corner of the courtyard was a in dry stone scale, 17 meters deep and up to the groundwater of weather reaching well . There was a small chapel east of this complex .

In the second phase of construction, the castle was given another wall with a neck ditch , which arched around the chapel in the east.

In the third construction phase, a pillar construction immediately east of the tower castle and an extension of the castle wall to the northeast can be proven, in which there is a fortified gate construction almost 40 meters northeast of the tower . At the same time the moat in front of the chapel was filled.

Reconstructed basement exit

In the fourth construction phase, the castle was protected by a new surrounding wall, which stood in the core area directly in front of the older wall and in the northeast reached up to the steep drop to the Wetter. As a result, the entire terrain spur was included in the castle area. At the same time, a round keep was built in the north-eastern part of the area . This was the last stage of expansion before 1151, as the Arnsburgs then gave up their castle and moved into their new Munzenberg Castle.

However, a few years later there was further demonstrable construction activity. More recent wall sections, which intersect the surrounding wall of the castle, bear witness to this. It can be assumed that the remains of the castle served the monks as a construction hut and quarry between the founding of the nearby Cistercian monastery in 1174 and the consecration of the new facility in 1197.

annotation

  1. ^ Intelligence Journal for the Province of Upper Hesse, Friedberg, 1st year, pp. 95f, 1834
  2. ↑ Bettina Jost: The Reichsministeriale von Münzenberg as builders in the Wetterau in the 12th century , Cologne 1995
  3. ^ Bettina Jost: Munzenberg Castle Ruins - Adelsburg of the Staufer Period , Edition of the Administration of the State Palaces and Gardens of Hesse, Brochure 9, Regensburg 2000
  4. ↑ Birley / Rupp 2005 p. 156f.

See also

literature

  • Otto Gärtner: Arnsburg Monastery in the Wetterau - its history - its buildings. Photos by Helmut Lindloff. Ed. from the Freundeskreis Arnsburg eV 3rd, revised edition. Königstein im Taunus 1998 (= The Blue Books ), ISBN 3-7845-4052-X .
  • Fritz-Rudolf Herrmann : Lich-Arnsburg, Gießen district - Roman fort - castles - monasteries. Leaflet to the monuments at the Arnsburg monastery and the Berger Mühle. (1979, 2nd supplementary edition 1989), ISBN 3-89822-006-0 ( Archaeological Monuments in Hessen 6 ).
  • Rudolf Knappe: Medieval castles in Hesse: 800 castles, castle ruins and castle sites. 3. Edition. Wartberg-Verlag, Gudensberg-Gleichen 2000, ISBN 3-86134-228-6 , p. 299.
  • Jörg Lindenthal: Cultural Discoveries. Archaeological monuments in Hessen. Jenior, Kassel 2004, p. 243f, ISBN 3-934377-73-4 .
  • Vera Rupp , Heide Birley: Hikes on the Wetteraulimes. Archaeological hikes on the Limes from the Köpperner Tal in Taunus to the Drususeiche near Limeshain . Theiss, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-8062-1551-0 (Guide to Hessian Pre- and Early History, 6).
  • Traces of time - aerial archeology in Hessen. Published by the State Office for Monument Preservation Hessen, Wiesbaden 1993, p. 81.

Web links

Commons : Arnsburg Castle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files