Bilstein Castle (Bas-Rhin)

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Bilstein Castle (Alsace)
Bilstein Castle, northwest view of the residential ruins

Bilstein Castle, northwest view of the residential ruins

Castle type : Hilltop castle
Conservation status: ruin
Standing position : Knighthood
Geographical location 48 ° 19 '49.6 "  N , 7 ° 13' 18.2"  E Coordinates: 48 ° 19 '49.6 "  N , 7 ° 13' 18.2"  E
Bilstein Castle (Bas-Rhin department)
Bilstein Castle

The castle Bilstein ( French Château de Bilstein ) is at Urbeis in Lower Rhine located ruins of a hilltop castle . To distinguish it from the nearby castle of the same name, Bilstein bei Riquewihr ( Bilstein alsacien ), the former Lorraine complex is also called Bilstein Lorrain .

Presumably founded in the late 12th century, a residential building was added to the complex in the 13th century. At that time it belonged to the House of Habsburg , which gave the castle as a fief . In 1314 it was bought by the Strasbourg bishop, who also lent it. After a siege in 1477, the von Oberkirch family replaced the previous feudal recipients, but Bilstein was mentioned as abandoned as early as 1543. In 1886 the French state bought the facility, which had meanwhile become a ruin. It is still the owner today - together with the Office national des forêts (ONF).

The castle stands since December 6 1898 as monument historique under monument protection .

history

Bilstein Castle was first mentioned in 1256 when a Knight von Bilstein was named, who was also mentioned again in a document in 1273. There is a document dated to the year 1095 in which the ban of "Bilesteen" is mentioned, but this document is a forgery from the period between 1205 and 1232. So far it is not clear whether Bilstein was a sovereign or whether it was belonged to the reign of Ortenberg . Likewise, it is unclear whether that was a knight of Bilstein Dubbed the castle owner or has an inserted Burg vogt . In 1262 Rudolf von Habsburg was probably the owner of the complex. At the latest in 1293 it was guaranteed property of the Habsburgs. In that year King Adolf von Nassau returned the castle to Albrecht von Hohenberg , a representative of the House of Habsburg, after having had it confiscated .

A Burgmann Bilstein's Johann von Amoltern is documented for 1303 . After his death, the Burglehn came to Heinrich Waffler von Eckerich in 1310 and to his son-in-law Werner von Hattstatt in 1329 . The "Bilsteiner Niederhaus" (" nider huse ze Bilstein ") remained in their possession until the family died out in 1585. Already at the end of 1314 Albrecht von Habsburg had sold the facility to the Strasbourg bishop Johann I for 3,000  silver marks . He and his successors relocated and loaned the complex several times during the 14th and 15th centuries. At the same time, the Dukes of Lorraine also seem to have owned a stake in the castle, because in 1422 Charles II of Lorraine gave the Baillage of the Vosges - and thus also Bilstein - to his daughter Catherine as a dowry in her marriage to the later Margrave Jacob I. from Baden . Karl I , the couple's son, enfeoffed Marx von Eckweckersheim with the castle in 1459. When Hans Marx von Eckweckersheim was sitting at the castle, it was besieged by Strasbourg troops in 1477, because the lord of the castle had captured Engelbert II of Nassau in the battle of Nancy and brought him to Bilstein Castle, because he hadn't paid the high ransom with anyone wanted to share for the Count of Nassau . But since Strasbourg claimed part of the expected sum for itself, its soldiers took up positions in front of Bilstein. After a week of bombardment with artillery , the castle garrison surrendered , and from 1478 the von Oberkirch family became tenants of the so-called "Ritterhaus". They replaced the Lords of Rathsamhausen zum Stein, who have been handed down as tenants for this part of Bilstein Castle since 1463. They had demolished part of the castle during the siege in order to be able to defend themselves better. At the same time as that of Oberkirch, the de Montjoie family was enfeoffed with the "Niederhaus".

Bilstein Castle on a lithograph by Jacques Rothmüller , 1863

It is said that the castle was still inhabited in 1479, but it was mentioned as abandoned as early as 1543. After the end of the Thirty Years' War , the complex came to the de Choiseul-Meuse family , as did the entire Weilertal ( Val de Villé in French ). In 1789 the castle was razed and then served as a quarry. Its stones were used, among other things, to build the church in Urbeis. The Choiseul-Meuse sold the ruins to a private person in 1815. In 1885 it was owned by a certain Humbert, from whom the French state acquired it in 1886.

In the mid-1960s, excavations by the Taupe Operation took place on the castle area, during which a previously unknown filter cistern was discovered. In the winter of 1995, the ruins were structurally secured.

description

The gable wall of the residential building

The castle ruin stands north of Urbeis in the Vosges on a spur of a granite rock around 580 meters high and measuring around 20 × 60 meters and thus belongs to the spur castle type . Since part of the complex was carved directly out of the granite rock, it is also a rock castle . In the past it was also called Bildstein, Beilstein, Belchstein and Belchenstein.

The main castle of Bilstein used to consist of a 8.4 × 9 meter square tower and a Gothic residential building, which together with a curtain wall surrounded a castle courtyard. In the middle of it was a cistern . Parts of the west and north walls of the tower made of reddish sandstone are still preserved. The former 2.4 meter thick west wall is still up to five meters high and has an external cladding made of humpback blocks . So far it is unclear whether it is in this tower to a dungeon or a residential tower has acted with wooden construction. The humpback cubes can also be found on the outside of a short, two-meter-thick remnant of the ring wall on the south side of the complex. The stone shape suggests that the wall and tower probably date from the late 12th century.

Residential construction, on the other hand, is more recent and can be dated to the third quarter of the 13th century due to its window shapes. Presumably it is identical to the "Ritterhaus" mentioned in 1463. There are only small remains of its east and west walls. The southern gable wall made of smooth granite blocks, however, is better preserved. On the ground floor it has two narrow windows that look like slits of light. On the upper floor, the remains of the wall have two large pointed arch windows , between which traces of a chimney can be seen on the inside. The entrance to the castle was on the southeast corner of the residential building, but only part of the vestments remain. The ground floor behind it led visitors to the paved courtyard. A circular filter cistern carved into the rock was found there during excavations in 1964.

To the east below the main castle there are wall remains made of quarry stone , which probably belong to the "Niederhaus" first mentioned in 1310. It stood near the lower castle gate . Behind this a rock staircase led up to the castle entrance in the residential building. Halfway up the stairs there is a semicircular niche in the rock, which Charles-Laurent Salch interprets as the remainder of a round stair tower .

literature

  • Thomas Biller, Bernhard Metz: The early Gothic castle building in Alsace (1250-1300) (= The castles of Alsace. Architecture and history. Volume III). Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-422-06132-0 , pp. 121-124.
  • Fritz Bouchholtz: Castles and palaces in Alsace. Based on old templates (= castles, palaces, mansions. Volume 24). Weidlich, Frankfurt a. M. 1962, pp. 104-105.
  • Nicolas Mengus, Jean-Michel Rudrauf: Châteaux forts et fortifications médiévales d′Alsace. Dictionnaire d′histoire et d′architecture . La Nuée Bleue, Strasbourg 2013, ISBN 978-2-7165-0828-5 , pp. 38-39.
  • Francis Rapp : Le siège de Bilstein en 1477. In: Annuaire de la Société dʼHistoire du Val de Villé. Vol. 3, No. 1, 1978, ISSN  0399-2330 , pp. 71-86.
  • Charles-Laurent Salch: Nouveau Dictionnaire des Châteaux Forts dʼAlsace. Alsatia, Strasbourg 1991, ISBN 2-7032-0193-1 , pp. 44-46.
  • Bernadette Schnitzler: Château de Bilstein. In: Roland Recht (Ed.): Le Guide des châteaux de France. Bas-Rhin. Hermé, Paris 1986, ISBN 2-86665-024-7 , pp. 166-168.
  • Felix Wolff: Alsatian Castle Lexicon. Directory of castles and chateaus in Alsace. Unchanged reprint of the 1908 edition. Weidlich, Frankfurt a. M. 1979, ISBN 3-8035-1008-2 , pp. 19-21.

Web links

Commons : Burg Bilstein  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ^ First entry of the castle in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Thomas Biller, Bernhard Metz: The early Gothic castle building in Alsace (1250-1300). 1995, p. 121.
  3. ^ Franz Josef Mone (ed.): Imperial documents. In: Landesarchiv Karlsruhe (Hrsg.): Journal for the history of the Upper Rhine (ZGO). Volume 1. Braunʼsche Hofbuchhandlung, Karlsruhe 1860, p. 433 ( digitized version ).
  4. ^ History of the Ortenberg Castle and Lordship , accessed on January 5, 2020.
  5. ↑ Baden Historical Commission (ed.): Regest of the Margraves of Baden and Hachberg. Volume 4. Wagner, Innsbruck 1915, certificate no.8293.
  6. ↑ a b c d Bernadette Schnitzler: Château de Bilstein. 1986, p. 168.
  7. ↑ a b c d Second entry of the castle in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
  8. ↑ Information according to Thomas Biller, Bernhard Metz: The early Gothic castle building in Alsace (1250-1300). 1995, p. 121. In various publications there is an older but incorrect statement of 599 meters height.
  9. ^ Felix Wolff: Elsässisches Burgen-Lexikon. 1908, p. 19.
  10. ^ Friedrich-Wilhelm Krahe: Castles of the German Middle Ages. Floor plan lexicon. Flechsig, Würzburg 2000, ISBN 3-88189-360-1 , p. 105.
  11. ^ A b Charles-Laurent Salch: Nouveau Dictionnaire des Châteaux Forts dʼAlsace. 1991, p. 44.
  12. ↑ a b c d Thomas Biller, Bernhard Metz: The early Gothic castle building in Alsace (1250-1300). 1995, p. 123.