Frankenstein Castle (Pfalz)
| Frankenstein Castle | ||
|---|---|---|
 View from the east of the castle ruins |
||
| Creation time : | around 1100 to 1150 | |
| Castle type : | Höhenburg in spur location | |
| Conservation status: | ruin | |
| Standing position : | Noble Free | |
| Construction: | red sandstone | |
| Place: | Frankenstein (Palatinate) | |
| Geographical location | 49 ° 26 '19.5 " N , 7 ° 58' 29.6" E | |
| Height: | 300 m above sea level NHN | |
|
||
Frankenstein Castle is the ruin of a spur castle in the Palatinate Forest in Rhineland-Palatinate . It got its name after the noble family of the Frankenstein family.
The castle is a listed building. It can be viewed at any time free of charge.
geography
The hilltop castle above the local community Frankenstein is 300 m above sea level. NHN on the northeastern mountain spur of the Schlossberg ( 423 m ) on the right above the Hochspeyerbach , a left tributary of the Speyerbach . The federal highway 37 ( Kaiserslautern - Bad Dürkheim ) runs parallel to the Hochspeyerbach . Under the spur through the well 200 m long leads lock mountain tunnel of the railway line Saarbrücken-Mannheim , which in 1849 perfected east portal of red sandstone because of its stepped battlements gable under conservation is.
investment
The ruins largely consist of the remains of the three-part palace from the 13th century, which once belonged to the lower castle and which mostly dates from the late Staufer or early Gothic period. Its lancet windows and the preserved multi-storey chimney system in its central section are of particular architectural historical value .
The remains of the upper castle can be reached via a rock staircase. They mainly consist of the ruins of the 12th century watchtower from the original fortification .
At the end of the 20th century, the remains of the foundations of a shield wall were uncovered during excavations .
history
The name Frankenstein is first mentioned in a document with the noble Helenger von Frankenstein in 1146. Historians assume, however, that the castle was founded earlier, as individual writings report the construction of a tower around 1100.
The owner of this keep was the Limburg monastery , which had to ensure the safety of the roads to Speyer , Dürkheim and Worms . In 1205, the monastery commissioned the Counts of Leiningen , who had already been entrusted with protecting the monastery, to carry out this task . They had the complex expanded at the beginning of the 13th century, whereby the narrow rocky terrain meant that the castle complex had to be built in stages. During this time - from 1204 to 1231 - the knights Marquard, Friedrich and Helenger von Frankenstein are mentioned in documents as administrative and castle men of the Leiningen counts.
Around 1390 Frankenstein Castle became a Ganerbeburg when the monastery pledged half of the castle to the Lords of Einselthum . Parts of this pledge were taken over in 1414 (other sources report from 1404) and in 1416 the Counts of Nassau- Saarbrücken and Leiningen-Hardenburg. The three parties agreed by drawing lots on how the individual parts of the castle should be divided exactly and which buildings should remain in joint ownership.
In the second half of the 15th century, the castle complex was affected by disputes between Elector Friedrich I of the Palatinate and Count Ludwig I of Pfalz-Zweibrücken , but in 1504 it was at least partially habitable. Further destruction followed probably in 1512, when Emperor Maximilian I on Count Emich VIII. Von Leiningen-Hardenburg the imperial ban imposed and the Count of Nassau on behalf of the Emperor occupied the castle.
During the German Peasants' War in 1525, the castle was destroyed again and was considered uninhabitable from 1560. Five years earlier, after the von Einselthum family had died out, their share had passed to the von Wallbrunn family. Although the facility was no longer used for residential purposes, it was still used for military purposes because of its advantageous location.
During the Thirty Years' War , the Spanish military leader Ambrosio Spinola captured the castle. The surviving leaflets document the course of the war in the Electoral Palatinate region testify to this . The descriptions suggest that the site was conquered at a relatively early stage in the war, around September or October 1620. The cartouche of the castle, reproduced a total of 20 times, is its oldest known depiction. The buildings, which were initially undamaged, were probably handed over without a fight. The Spaniards may have stationed a small crew in the complex to emphasize their demands for tribute. In the further course of the war, the facility was then badly damaged.
During the War of the Spanish Succession , French troops used Frankenstein Castle as accommodation. There is evidence that a service was held for the French soldiers in the castle chapel in 1703 ; this suggests that the chapel was still in a usable condition at that time. 1706 came the Nassau-Saarbrück ownership share to the Electoral Palatinate.
The territories of the Electoral Palatinate on the left bank of the Rhine that were occupied during the French Revolutionary Wars - and with it Frankenstein Castle - came back into the possession of the Kingdom of Bavaria as a result of the Congress of Vienna . This had the ruins renovated and structurally secured in 1883/84 and 1938/39 .
After the ruins became the property of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, its state castle and palace administration (today: castles, palaces, antiquities of Rhineland-Palatinate ) carried out archaeological investigations, restoration and conservation measures from 1971 to 1974 and 1988/89 , whereby the Foundations of a previously unknown shield wall were exposed. In the course of the work, the two upper floors of the hall building were bricked up again and the bay window of the chapel building was reconstructed.
literature
- Jochen Goetze, Werner Richner: Castles in the Palatinate . 1st edition. Edition Braus, Heidelberg 1992, ISBN 3-921524-94-6 .
- Walter Herrmann: On red rock . Braun, Karlsruhe 2004, ISBN 3-7650-8286-4 .
- Jürgen Keddigkeit : Frankenstein . In: Jürgen Keddigkeit, Alexander Thon, Rolf Übel (eds.): Palatinate Castle Lexicon (= contributions to Palatinate history ). tape 12 .2 F – H, 2002, ISBN 3-927754-48-X , ISSN 0936-7640 , p. 115-129 .
- State Office for Monument Preservation, Castles, Palaces, Antiquities Rhineland-Palatinate (Ed.): Burg Frankenstein (= State Castles, Palaces and Antiquities in Rhineland-Palatinate, Issue 7 ). Koblenz 2003.
- Wolfgang Reininger: True illustration of those cities, castles and spots, which Ambrosius Spinola took in the Churpfalz on the Rhine in 1620 and 1621 .
- Alexander Thon (Ed.): "Like swallows' nests glued to the rocks ..." Castles in the North Palatinate. Verlag Schnell and Steiner, Regensburg 2005, ISBN 3-7954-1674-4 , p. 54-59 .
Web links
- Entry on Castle Frankenstein in the scientific database " EBIDAT " of the European Castle Institute
- Frankenstein Castle on heimat-pfalz.de
- Reconstruction drawing by Wolfgang Braun
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b General Directorate for Cultural Heritage Rhineland-Palatinate (ed.): Informational directory of cultural monuments - District of Kaiserslautern. Mainz 2019, p. 7 (PDF; 5.4 MB).
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i Frankenstein (VG Hochspeyer). heimat-pfalz.de, accessed on February 19, 2015 .
- ^ Jürgen Keddigkeit : Frankenstein . In: Palatinate Castle Lexicon . 2002, p. 115-129 .