Freienfels Castle

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Freienfels Castle
The keep, 2006

The keep, 2006

Creation time : around 1300
Castle type : Höhenburg, spur location
Conservation status: ruin
Standing position : Count
Construction: Quarry stone, cuboid
Place: Weinbach- Freifels
Geographical location 50 ° 27 '24.5 "  N , 8 ° 18' 1.8"  E Coordinates: 50 ° 27 '24.5 "  N , 8 ° 18' 1.8"  E
Height: 200  m above sea level NHN
Freienfels Castle (Hesse)
Freienfels Castle
Freienfels Castle around 1900
View to the north on the Palas and the Weiltal

The castle Freienfels is the ruin of a Spur castle in the village of Freienfels the community Weinbach in Limburg-Weilburg in Hesse .

location

The castle is at 200  m above sea level. NN on the left bank of the Weil , about three kilometers upstream from the confluence of the river in the Lahn and about five kilometers southwest of the former Nassau residence town of Weilburg . The fortification was built on a rock spur . The south-west adjoining village of Freienfels is slightly higher than the castle. To the north the rock falls steeply to the Weil and to the southeast to the Bornbach.

history

Only guesses can be made about the year of construction and the owner of Castle Freienfels. Today it is assumed that it was built around 1300 by Counts Heinrich and Reinhard von Diez-Weilnau . Presumably, they tried to counter the expansionist efforts of Count Adolf von Nassau , who expanded his territory to include all of the neighboring Worms' possessions in order to secure his domestic power as German king (since 1292). In addition, Hessenstrasse and Handelsstrasse between Frankfurt and Cologne crossed nearby .

The first documented mention of Castle Freienfels took place in 1327 in the will of Siegfried von Runkel, provost of the St. Severus monastery in Gemünden and descendant of the Weilnau family, who bequeathed the castle and its accessories to his nephews in precisely defined parts. In 1331 Siegfried's heirs sold the castle to Count Gerlach von Nassau . This achieved the goal of the Nassau counts to turn off the castle. In the same year Gerlach had to open Castle Freienfels and the Weilburg as part of the settlement of a feud to the Lords of Elkerhausen , but also received the right to open their ancestral castle. After clarification of ownership in the Nassau area and the fall to the emerging Weilburg line of Nassau in 1355, Freienfels Castle seems to have been deprived of its military importance at the end of the 14th century. A pledge to the Waldmannshausen house is guaranteed for 1450 .

In 1466 the then dilapidated castle and the village of Freienfels came into the possession of the knight Johann von Schönborn and his son as a Nassau fief. The von Schönborn family came from the town of the same name in the County of Katzenelnbogen . The descendants of Johann von Schönborn owned and lived in Freienfels Castle for around 220 years. Johann's grandson Valentin von Schönborn tried to transfer Freienfels from its legal status as a Nassau fiefdom to independent ownership from 1571 onwards, but remained unsuccessful in the associated legal disputes.

When the Schönborn family experienced a significant increase in power in the 17th and 18th centuries and appointed bishops , archbishops , imperial vice and imperial chancellors, they shifted their focus of ownership to Middle Franconia . Therefore, the family sold the fiefdom, estimated at 20,000 guilders, to the Danish colonel Johann Ernst Freiherr von Friesensee, who was enfeoffed by the Nassauers on September 30, 1687. His widow Sabina Lamberta sold the castle back to the Counts of Nassau after his death in 1724. At the end of the 18th century, the castle, which had never been destroyed by war or feud, gradually fell into disrepair and was used by the villagers as a quarry for building their houses.

After Nassau was annexed by Prussia in 1866 , the castle became a Prussian state domain . There are plans by the Berlin architect Bodo Ebhardt (founder of the German Castle Association), dated 1907/1908, to expand the castle into an upper-class villa in the Wilhelmine style, which, however, was never realized. Also noteworthy are the pencil drawings by the painter Otto Ubbelohde , which were made around the same time and show Freienfels Castle from different perspectives. Today they are in the Marburg University Museum . The responsible Prussian Ministry of Culture began around 1910 with repair work, during which the tower was accessible and the entire ruins were made accessible to the public.

Building description

Freienfels Castle can be characterized as a high medieval fortification, which is still strongly adapted to the mountain shape, but in its compactness also shows a late medieval element. The courtyard is divided into two levels by an artificially piled-up step in a north-south direction. Whether there was a previous structure that only included the upper level is discussed in research, but has not been proven.

Their attack side towards the village and thus towards the south is protected by a deep, around 20 meter wide neck ditch and additionally by a shield wall with an inserted keep . Today there is a dam over the neck ditch, over which the new access road leads directly to the gate. The earlier access was via a steep path from the Bornbach valley and through the bottom of the trench.

The keep - like the entire castle made of quarry stones - has an almost square floor plan (6 × 7 m) with walls up to 3.5 m thick, is 19 m high and can be considered the main defense facility. In addition to the ground floor, which is accessible from the courtyard and which is probably used as a storage room, it has four additional floors, some of which are closed off with barrel vaults. While the first floor provides access to the battlements of the shield wall, the second of these floors is equipped as a residential floor through a window with benches on the courtyard side, with a fireplace and clay plaster on the walls. The two top floors, the last is just get even rudimentary, again served defensive purposes and leave in different directions loopholes recognize. The floors were not accessible by stairs, but by ladders.

The shield wall adjoining the keep in a south and east direction is occupied by battlements - sometimes even two-story - with loopholes on the courtyard and on the side of the field and a lavatory bay. On the courtyard side of the southern part of the tower you can still see the entrance hole at the height of the second floor, which can be reached via a ladder. To the east, the mantle wall adjoins the shield wall , the inside of which is characterized by four high successive niches with inlaid so-called fishtail notches, which crossbowmen could use with appropriate wooden fittings .

In the northeast follows a three-quarter- round shell tower , which originally had the task of monitoring the path leading up from the valley to the southeast and the flanking of the residential tower , but was later integrated into it, as a broken window equipped with benches suggests. The renovation was probably carried out during the repair of the "quite dilapidated castle" before the von Schönborn moved in. From this shell tower you can reach the kennel in front of the mantle wall , which could also be used as a herb garden and children's playground, via a small gate, which was originally conceived as an escape route.

On the north side of the castle you come across the three-story residential building, the Palas . On the transverse wall adjacent to the original shell tower, it still shows chimney shafts, which may indicate a kitchen building. The remains of a chimney can also be found on its western gable wall, as well as those of another toilet dungeon on the third floor. On the side of the courtyard, the longitudinal wall of the residential building still clearly shows the so-called rows of scaffolding holes resulting from the attachment of scaffolding.

Below the residential building there is a large cellar (approx. 14 × 5 m) accessible via a steep staircase with a barrel vault and openings that have not yet been clarified, as well as two other smaller, albeit buried, cellars to the left and right above with barrel vaults lying across . To the west, the courtyard is closed off by a now only low, 1.5-meter-wide wall with deep loopholes, which meets the square gate flank tower in the south. This two-story (formerly three-story) tower, open on the courtyard side, is equipped with loopholes on the field side and a chimney and could have been the room for guards. Together with the mighty keep, this much smaller tower frames the approximately seven-meter-long wall on the attack side, into which the pointed, approximately 4.5-meter-high gate is set.

The farmyard at the end of the former village, the Remerstheger mill in the valley , which is still preserved today, as well as meadows, forests, tree and vineyards belonged to the castle .

In addition to the monument protection , the castle has the protection status in case of war according to the Hague Convention .

Association for the preservation of the castle ruin Freienfels e. V.

View from the castle to the tent camp of the 2011 Festival

After the state of Hesse was no longer willing to take over the costs for the castle ruins in its possession, it was offered for sale. As a result, in 1994 the citizens of Freienfels founded the “Friends of Castle Freienfels”, which currently has 120 members. The ruin became the property of the association on July 1, 1996.

The aim of the association is to preserve the castle ruins in their current appearance. The main source of income for the association is the surplus from the entrance fees to the annual Freienfelser Ritterspiele . The event is one of the largest non-commercial events of its kind. It attracts several thousand visitors annually.

The development association received well-founded professional support, particularly from Michael Losse (formerly University of Marburg), who prepared an expert report. In it he went into the necessary conservation measures and discussed proposals for the presentation of Freienfels Castle to the public.

So far, the association has had an overall report with photo documentation of the condition of the ruin after the takeover prepared, drawn up a renovation plan, obtained mortar analysis and mortar recommendations for the grouting of the walls, had a damage map and a geophysical soil investigation carried out for underground wall remains and wells.

In 1997 the association started installing a lighting system and renovating the bridge. In the following year the stairs in the keep was renewed, the floor of the middle keep level was renovated and the castle cellar was roofed over. In 1999, the remaining clay plaster was renovated, the mantle wall and the eastern shield wall were sealed and partially renovated, as was the inside of the third and fourth floors in the keep. In 2000, the wall renovation continued with the southern shield wall, the stairs and the floor there and the outer wall. The keep was given a viewing platform and the top of the wall was renovated at the same time. After minor and preparatory work in 2001, the outer wall renovations of the eastern gable wall, the half-shell tower, the north side of the palace and the inner sides of the eastern gable wall and the upper shell tower followed. The rest of the palace walls and an intermediate ceiling of the building were the main focus of work in 2003. In the following year, the ceiling in the palace was extended over the so-called butter cellar according to historical specifications. The west gable, the western curtain wall and parts of the gate flank tower were also repaired. In 2005, the main focus of work was the butter cellar, which was cleared of rubble and renovated.

literature

  • Rudolf Knappe: Medieval castles in Hessen. 800 castles, castle ruins and fortifications. 3. Edition. Wartberg-Verlag, Gudensberg-Gleichen 2000, ISBN 3-86134-228-6 , p. 428.
  • Michael Losse: The Lahn - castles and palaces. From Biedenkopf and Marburg via Gießen, Wetzlar and Weilburg to Limburg, Nassau and Lahnstein . Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2007, ISBN 978-3-86568-070-9 , pp. 99-102.
  • Alexander Thon, Stefan Ulrich, Jens Friedhoff : "Decided with strong iron chains and bolts ...". Castles on the Lahn . Schnell & Steiner, Regensburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-7954-2000-0 , pp. 50-55.

Web links

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