Blankenstein Castle (Hattingen)

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Blankenstein Castle from the direction of freedom (2004)

The Blankenstein Castle is the ruin of a high medieval hilltop castle in Hattinger district Blankenstein . Built in the 13th century by Count Adolf I von der Mark , it was, together with Burg Altena , Burg Wetter and Burg Volmarstein, one of the four main castles of the Counts von der Mark , who let Droste administer parts of their territory from there .

After gradual decline in the 16th and 17th centuries, the complex was rebuilt in the historicist style at the end of the 18th century . The inauthentic additions were removed in the late 1950s.

In the ruin, which has been a listed building since 1909, there is now a castle restaurant, among other things.

location

Exposed location of the castle

Blankenstein Castle stands on the left-hand hills of the Ruhr around 70 meters above the river on a rock spur that is one of the foothills of the Rhenish Slate Mountains . The castle area is at a height of about 139 to 146  m above sea level. NHN . One kilometer north - on the other side of the Ruhr - is the old village of Stiepel . To the east is home Kemnade approximately 1.3 kilometers northeast of the Kemnade about 2 kilometers away.

A hiking trail begins directly below the castle ruins through the nearby Alte Ruhr-Katzenstein nature reserve , which stretches to Steinenhaus near Kemnade Castle. Other sights include the Hattingen City Museum and the Gethmann Garden .

architecture

Floor plan of the castle complex

The castle complex made of Ruhr sandstone rises on a horseshoe-shaped floor plan of around 90 × 70 meters, surrounded by the remains of a circular wall . Together with the lower floors of a 26-meter-high, almost square tower, this is the oldest surviving structure. The approximately 9 × 9 meter wide tower will often keep called walled his day, but around 2.80 meters wide gate entrance has him as a gate tower from. The walls on the first floor, which dates from the 13th century, are between 2.50 and 3.40 meters thick. The higher floors are assigned to later building eras. Today's entrance is about nine meters high. From there, a 0.65 meter wide corridor in the thick wall leads to the top tower level.

Remnants of a kennel wall with round towers probably date from the 14th century.

The high square tower is adjoined to the south by a round arched gate, which is also flanked by a round tower with a conical roof . A rectangular building adjoins this gate tower on the courtyard side. To the north of the keep is a two-storey building made of quarry stone and now used as a restaurant.

At the eastern corner of the area there is another tower, which is equipped with a tent roof and dates from the 19th century. Otherwise, only the foundations and remains of the wall remain of the castle, such as the ruins of a restaurant building also built in the 19th century on the eastern circular wall. This former building is often referred to as a chapel , but it was never a sacred structure .

  • Access to the castle

  • Former location of the main building

  • Southeast building

  • View from the former main building towards the south-east building

history

The beginnings

Blankenstein Castle owes its existence to a murder. After Friedrich von Isenberg was called to account for the killing of Cologne Archbishop Engelbert von Berg , the Isenberg possessions were confiscated and divided among the Archdiocese of Cologne and Adolf I von der Mark. To protect the newly acquired territories, the Brandenburg count issued the order on the feast day of St. Pancratius , May 12, 1226, to build a first permanent house on an unforested rocky ridge above the Ruhr - a "blancken Steyn" - only a few kilometers east of the recently destroyed Isenburg . The Burgplatz was strategically chosen. From there, not only could the borders of the county be well guarded, but it was also above the Ruhr ford of an old trade route, so that the facility could also serve as a checkpoint for traders and travelers.

Reports that the Burgdroste Ludolf von Boenen laid the foundation stone for Blankenstein Castle are still unproven, because Ludolf von Boenen was first mentioned in a document together with a Burgmannskollegium in 1243. That document also mentions the "castrum Blankensteene", which was probably built in a hurry. The thesis that the complex was built from the stones of the Isenburg is unlikely, because it was grinded using the so-called incendiary method , which meant that its stones were badly damaged. In addition, there was the fact that this rather inferior building material could only have been transported to Blankenstein with great difficulty, because the only possible transport route would have been the Ruhr, which, however, should have been used against its current direction.

The Counts of the Mark

Count Engelbert I von der Mark , who ruled from 1249 to 1277, had the castle expanded by his drosten Bernd Bitter. He had the so-called Graf Engelbert Tower built and a semicircular ring with a guarded gate to the west of it to protect the complex. A small castle freedom developed within this area ; the nucleus of today's Blankenstein. The tower built by Engelbert I was put down in the 16th century.

According to tradition, Engelbert II is said to have presented Bochum's ambassador to the Mark at Blankenstein Castle at Pentecost in 1321 with a certificate conferring Bochum city ​​rights .

From 1350 the Blankensteiner Drostenamt was connected to the position of a bailiff who acted as the count's deputy and as a judge in Essen , Bochum and Volmarstein.

Due to constant inheritance and territorial disputes and the related feuds of the Counts von der Mark, the structural completion of the castle was repeatedly delayed. The construction work under Duke Adolf II of Kleve (1398 to 1448) was not completed until the first half of the 15th century with the construction of a representative residential building on the east side of the complex. By archaeological findings there is evidence that the plant had three powerful towers at that time: the still preserved square tower, the rounds (ronde) Tower and the Graf-Engelbert Tower . However, it is still not clear which of the towers the function of the keep filled.

The dukes of Cleves

After numerous family disputes, Adolf's son Johann I von Kleve received the right of disposal over the county of Mark and thus over the Blankenstein Castle in 1461. He pledged it to Drosten Kracht Stecke, whose son Johann succeeded his father in office as Drost Blankensteins. During his time the castle gradually fell into disrepair, because due to the ostentatiousness of his master, Johann II of Kleve , the duchy's coffers were empty and necessary repairs and maintenance were not carried out. In 1494 Johann Stecke accepted the burgrave office in Dortmund and left Blankenstein. The castle was therefore initially uninhabited.

Brandenburg time

In 1614, Spanish troops occupied the castle for many years during the Eighty Years War . The Spanish castle team undertook small raids as far as Bochum. During the Thirty Years' War , conquests and the associated changing occupations led to the building deteriorating further.

In 1637 Johann Georg von Syberg took over the Drostenamt and lived at Blankenstein Castle for ten years before moving to his estate, Haus Kemnade at the foot of the mountain, in 1647 . He was no longer present when the Palatinate-Neuburg troops conquered and occupied the site in 1651 during the Jülich-Klevian controversy of succession .

As the disintegration of the complex continued to progress and it had become militarily useless, the Syberg family applied to Elector Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg in 1662 to demolish the former fortification. Approval has been granted. Only the square tower - damaged on one flank - and some remains of the wall were left of the complex. House Kemnade, which was badly damaged in a fire in 1589, was rebuilt and enlarged with the stones of the castle.

The castle ruins served as a French magazine during the Seven Years' War in 1757 . In 1768 the remains of the wall were auctioned off before the complex was leased to the Wolfshagen and Kortwich families from 1771. The ruins of the tower served them as an apartment. Wolfshagen built a new house from old stones from the upper part of the tower in the courtyard.

Prussian time

Blankenstein Castle around 1909

The Kortwich share was bought by the merchant Forstmann in 1842, who ran his first small tavern in the castle.

In 1860, the hardware dealer Gustav vom Stein acquired the castle grounds and had a factory for yarn processing built in the former stables , which began operations in 1863. In 1865 the road from Hattingen via Blankenstein to the forester's house Steinenhaus was completed and brought many day-trippers to Blankenstein. As early as 1864, Gustav vom Stein had a restaurant built on the foundations of the old building in the eastern area of ​​the castle courtyard. Just like the factory building, it was equipped with many decorative elements in the style of castle romanticism , for example with numerous towers and turrets, which, however, had no function.

Gustav vom Stein jr. continued his father's construction work, so that by 1900 all the old castle foundations were rebuilt. The buildings were surrounded by a semicircular courtyard that served as a beer garden and accommodated up to 3000 guests a day on Sundays and public holidays.

20th century

On September 23, 1922, the city of Bochum bought the castle for one mark . Initial plans to set up a youth hostel there were dropped and the catering business was leased.

Today's castle restaurant

During the Second World War , the high tower was used as a flak position and damaged by shell impacts. In 1949, the couple Werner and Leni Rauterkus leased the castle keep and the ruins of the former factory. They carried out reconstruction and repair work on them in order to then use the building for living and working purposes and as exhibition rooms for Leni Rauterkus' “Workshops for Applied Art”. During the construction work they were supported by the Society of Friends of Blankenstein Castle, which had been based at the castle since 1950.

After the castle restaurant closed its doors in September 1957, the city of Bochum had all buildings of the 19th and 20th centuries abandoned with the exception of the workshop buildings and the so-called chapel . However, their plans to set up a modern restaurant there failed due to a lack of financial means, so that from 1962 a small restaurant was set up again in the former rooms of the “workshops of applied arts”.

In the period from 1968 to 1972, renovation measures were carried out again on the remaining building fabric. As a result, visitors have been able to climb the gate tower again since spring 1971. The measures also included the removal of debris and undergrowth in the area of ​​the castle courtyard and the clearing of the surrounding forest.

literature

  • Klaus Gorzny: Ruhr castles. Castles, palaces and aristocratic residences along the Ruhr. Piccolo, Marl 2002, ISBN 3-9801776-7-X , pp. 120-121.
  • Hans H. Hanke: Something on here, something off there. The Blankenstein Castle monument. In: Bochum time points . No. 2, 1993, ISSN  0940-5453 , pp. 3-5 ( online ).
  • Stefan Leenen, Stefan Pätzold: Blankenstein Castle in Hattingen, Ennepe-Ruhr district. Antiquities Commission for Westphalia, Münster 2009, ISSN  0939-4745 .
  • Stefan Leenen, Stefan Pätzold: Blankenstein Castle. In: Kai Niederhöfer (Red.): Burgen AufRuhr. On the way to 100 castles, palaces and mansions in the Ruhr region . Klartext Verlag , Essen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8375-0234-3 , pp. 120–123.
  • Albert Ludorff (arrangement): The architectural and art monuments of the district of Hattingen (= The architectural and art monuments of Westphalia . Volume 29). Reprint of the 1909 edition. Klartext-Verlag, Essen 1994, ISBN 3-922032-69-9 , pp. 17-23 ( digitized version ).
  • Heinrich Wefelscheid, August Weiß: Alt-Blankenstein. A home and festival book for the 700th anniversary. Blankenstein 1926/1927.
  • Fritz Wengeler (Ed.): 750 years of Blankenstein Castle. A home and festival book. Self-published by the Heimatverein Alt-Blankenstein, Hattingen 1977.

Web links

Commons : Burg Blankenstein  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ↑ a b Topographical Information Management, Cologne District Government, Department GEObasis NRW ( Notes )
  2. ↑ The height information ignores the modern parapet.
  3. ^ Georg Dehio : Handbook of German Art Monuments . North Rhine-Westphalia. Volume 2: Westphalia . Deutscher Kunstverlag , Munich 1969, p. 56.
  4. ↑ Stefan Leenen, Stefan Pätzold: Blankenstein Castle. , P. 120.
  5. ↑ Klaus Gorzny: Ruhrschlösser , p. 120.
  6. ↑ Stefan Leenen, Stefan Pätzold: Blankenstein Castle. , P. 121.
  7. ↑ Stefan Leenen, Stefan Pätzold: Blankenstein Castle. , P. 122.
  8. ↑ See Harald Polenz: From Counts, Bishops and cowardly murders. Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2004, ISBN 3-89861-260-0 , pp. 89-90.
  9. ↑ Blankenstein Castle - Chronicle ( Memento from February 10, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
  10. ^ The story of Blankenstein , accessed on January 5, 2020.
  11. ↑ The County of Mark was merged in 1521 together with the Duchy of Kleve and the Duchies of Jülich and Berg to form the United Duchies of Jülich-Kleve-Berg .
  12. ↑ a b c Hans H. Hanke: Something on here, something off there. The Blankenstein Castle monument. 1993.
  13. ^ Weekly Duisburg advertisements. July 19, 1768, pcs. 29, p. 340 ( digitized version ).
  14. ↑ Ellen Breitenbach: From the history of Blankenstein , accessed on January 5, 2020.

Coordinates: 51 ° 24 ′ 25 ″  N , 7 ° 13 ′ 49 ″  E