Ascheraden Castle

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Ascheraden Castle
Ascheraden Castle

Ascheraden Castle

Castle type : Niederungsburg
Conservation status: ruin
Geographical location 56 ° 36 '52 "  N , 25 ° 9' 12"  E Coordinates: 56 ° 36 '52 "  N , 25 ° 9' 12"  E
Ascheraden Castle (Latvia)
Ascheraden Castle

The Ordensburg Ascheraden ( Latvian Aizkraukles viduslaiku pils ) is the ruin of a low castle west of today's city Aizkraukle on the right bank of the Daugava in Latvia . The castle was built by the Livonian Order in the second half of the 14th century .

history

Two kilometers above the pagan hill fort Alt-Ascheraden, the Livonian Sword Brothers probably built the Ordensburg Ascheraden on a low headland from 1213. The castle was on the right bank of the Daugava, but most of the castle area was also on the left, Curonian bank. The castle was part of a strategic chain of episcopal and religious castles along the Daugava River, which began with Daugavpils and reached via Riga , Holme , Uexküll and Lennewarden to Kokenhusen Castle .

Around 1229 the battle of Ascheraden took place between Semgallia under King Vesters ( called Westhardus in Heinrich's Livonian Chronicle ) and the Knights of the Order under Ernst von Ratzeburg, possibly not at Ascheraden but at Dünabürg. Ascheraden Castle was the seat of the Land Marshal from 1480 until the state was dissolved in 1562.

Ascheraden Castle was badly damaged in the wars of the 16th and 17th centuries. During the Livonian War in 1559, Polish troops took the castle, and in 1577, Russian troops occupied and destroyed it. The former Livonian landmaster Jasper von Münster was thrown out of the castle blindfolded. After the end of the war in 1582, Ascheraden Castle was incorporated with the Wenden district after the Peace Treaty of Jam Zapolski Poland-Lithuania .

In 1630, after the Polish-Swedish War , King Gustav Adolf of Sweden awarded Ascheraden to Lieutenant Colonel Simon von Schultz, whose descendants, as Baron Schoultz von Ascheraden, owned the estate for the next 250 years. According to a letter from Axel Oxenstierna dated October 8th from Frankfurt a. M. still defensible, but already a ruin in 1680. The castle, which had lost its military importance, fell into disrepair.

Building

Ascheraden Castle was a square section castle in the old Livonian style with four building wings. The main building of the castle was probably 40 × 50 m in size. Rubble walls suggest the places of the former wings of the main building and the courtyard in an approximately 25 × 30 m depression in the middle. Of the walls of the main castle, the wall in the northern corner, the former dividing wall between the northeast and northwest wings, is 15 m long and 10 m high. The foundations of the square south tower can be seen on the surface of the earth, and the remains of the wall of the collapsed south-western ground floor can be assumed on the bank of the Daugava. To the northeast of the main castle, the foundations of a parcham, a double curtain wall, can be seen, which was typical for order castles. The main castle was separated by a 10 m wide ditch from the first, about 130 × 100 m large outer bailey, in front of which there was a 50 × 125 m large second outer bailey. Foundations about 1 m thick can be seen in the terrain of the second outer bailey.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Ernst Murbach: The castles in Estonia and Latvia . In: Erich Böckler (Ed.): Contributions to the history of Baltic art . W. Schmitz, Gießen 1988, ISBN 3-87711-157-2 , pp. 57-91, here p. 61.
  2. ^ A b Karl Woldemar von Löwis of Menar: Burgenlexikon für Alt-Livland . Walters and Rapa, Riga 1922, p. 62-63 ( digitized version ).
  3. ^ Friedrich Benninghoven: The castles as the cornerstone of the late medieval defense system in the Prussian-Livonian Teutonic Order. In: Konstanzer Arbeitskreis für Medieval Geschichte (Ed.): The castles in the German-speaking area, Part 1 (= lectures and research. Volume 19, No. 1). Thorbecke, Ostfildern 1976, ISSN  2363-8664 , p. 567, doi: 10.11588 / vuf.1976.1.16221 .
  4. ^ First Hagemeister materials on Livonia's property history . tape 2 . R. Kymmel, Riga 1843 ( online ). Andreas Johan Sjögren: Collected writings . Commissioners of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1861, p. XLII ( [1] ).
  5. ↑ a b EBIDAT - The Castle Database - Aizkraukle / Ascheraden. Retrieved May 7, 2019 .
  6. ↑ А. И. Филюшкин: " Лифлянская хроника " Соломона Геннинга . In: Studia Slavica et Balcanica Petropolitana . tape 1 , 2013 (Russian, online [PDF]).

Web links

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