Girbaden Castle

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Girbaden Castle
Ruin of the upper castle

Ruin of the upper castle

Alternative name (s): Château de Guirbaden, Veltenschloss
Creation time : first mentioned in 1137
Castle type : Höhenburg, spur location
Conservation status: ruin
Construction: Humpback cuboid
Place: Mollkirch
Geographical location 48 ° 29 '36 "  N , 7 ° 22' 14"  E Coordinates: 48 ° 29 '36 "  N , 7 ° 22' 14"  E
Height: 565  m
Girbaden Castle (Alsace)
Girbaden Castle

The Château de Guirbaden (French Château de Guirbaden , alsatian also Velten Castle ), the ruins of a vast staufer time hilltop castle in Mollkirch in the Alsace ( Bas-Rhin department ), about 40 kilometers west of Strasbourg .

location

The castle ruins are located in the Vosges Mountains in the Forêt de Guirbaden forest on a 565 meter high mountain ledge above the Magel valley . It can be reached via hiking trails from Mollkirch in the east, Grendelbruch in the west, the Fischhütte in the south and the Floessplatz in the Breuschtal in the north.

history

The castle, first mentioned in 1137 as Girbadun , was built under Count Hugo VII von Dagsburg-Egisheim (1095–1137) to protect the nearby Benedictine Abbey of Altorf near Molsheim , the home monastery of the counts. Friedrich I. Barbarossa had the complex destroyed in 1162. His grandson Frederick II. Erected following a campaign against Duke Theobald I. of Lorraine from 1219 at great expense a palatine-like building with hall building and the second dungeon west of the old plant, which remained in dagsburgischem possession. In 1226 Friedrich II. And Heinrich (VII.) Left their part of the castle to the Strasbourg bishop Berthold I von Teck , who in 1241 also brought the part of Dagsburg into his possession.

In 1375 Girbaden was pledged to the Lords of Hohenstein by the Strasbourg bishopric . After they were forcibly evicted, Bishop Ruprecht enfeoffed the Lords of Rathsamhausen with the castle in 1477 . This survived the Peasant Wars undamaged and was only conquered and destroyed by the Swedes after two unsuccessful attempts in 1633 during the Thirty Years' War .

The ruins were listed as a historical monument in 1898 and are privately owned. Extensive restoration work accompanied by archaeological investigations took place between 1968 and 1973. Currently (2016) the main castle is closed to visitors due to the risk of collapse and falling rocks; conservation measures have been initiated by the association "Sauver le Guirbaden".

investment

With a length of 280 meters and a width of 60 meters, Girbaden is the largest ruined castle in Alsace. The core is a small, polygonal, round castle (23) with a circular wall made of humpback blocks and a keep (22) added later on a red sandstone rock base spanned by several arches at the eastern end of the complex (upper castle , citadel) .

Floor plan

West is twice as large, divided by a transverse wall (18) lower castle (16) adds, with a 33 by 11 meters wide Palas (13) in front of a deep moat terminates (10). The moat was once spanned by a bridge that led to a portal in the west wall. In the southern gable wall (12) there were originally four profiled, column-flanked window arches - in the style of the Palas of Burg Wildenberg in the Odenwald - with a rose window above , which has been handed down from a view from the beginning of the 19th century. After the collapse (before 1836) only one window opening remains. Two arched windows on the east wall facing the courtyard were installed between 1835 and 1843 in the ruins of the Niederungsburg in Ottrott (today in the Park Foyer de Charité ). A column-supported portico was placed in front of the hall building on the courtyard side . Two of its originally eight pillars are now in the depot of the Women's Refuge Museum in Strasbourg.

In the 14th and 15th centuries, the eastern part of the castle was reinforced by walls and towers and several arched windows in the west wall of the upper floor of the hall were bricked up. Since then, the main access has been from the west through a total of five gates (4, 3, 22, 21, 19). Another gate (1) with a drawbridge was at the east end of the castle.

Side of the ditch, the terms of area even more walled is Burgmann settlement (5) from the new phase under Frederick II with a square keep. ( Hungerturm ; 6) at the west end and the core Roman , original three-aisle Burgkapelle St. Valentine (25). This "outer bailey" was given up in the 14th century. Some of the humpback cubes were reused in the expansion of the kennels in the eastern part. The Valentine's Chapel still served as a hermitage in the 19th century ; it was rebuilt in 1850 after a fire.

  • Outer castle gate

  • Hall building 1815, south wall with window arcade

  • Romanesque window, south wall of the hall building

  • Western keep ("Hunger Tower")

  • Valentine's Chapel

literature

  • Thomas Biller: Castrum novum ante Girbaden noviter edificatum. A hall building by Emperor Frederick II in Alsace . In: Hartmut Hofrichter , Georg Ulrich Großmann (Ed.): Castle building in the late Middle Ages (= research on castles and palaces . Vol. 2). Wartburg Society for Research into Castles and Palaces, Munich, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-422-06187-8 , pp. 159–176 (revised French version in: Châteaux forts d'Alsace . Vol. 8, 2006, p. 5 -26).
  • Thomas Biller, Bernhard Metz: The late Romanesque castle building in Alsace (1200-1250) (= The castles of Alsace. Architecture and history. Vol. 2). Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-422-06635-9 , here: pp. 206-224.
  • Guy Bronner: Château de Guirbaden, son état actuel à la lumière de travaux récents (1968–1973) . In: Etudes médiévales . Vol. 3, 1985, pp. 95-118.
  • Armand Kieffer: Guirbaden ruins . Self-published, Strasbourg 1968 (German).
  • 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 , here: pp. 109–112.
  • Bernadette Schnitzler: Le château de Girbaden: entre sauvegarde et délabrement. In: Châteaux forts d'Alsace . Vol. 17, 2018, pp. 43-48.
  • Hans Zumstein: Sondage archéologique dans l′enceinte superieure du château de Girbaden . In: Etudes médiévales . Vol. 5, 1992, pp. 85-88.

Web links

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

Remarks

  1. ↑ Biller / Metz, Burgen des Elsaß 2 , p. 206.
  2. ↑ Biller / Metz, Burgen des Elsaß 2 , pp. 207–209.
  3. ↑ Mengus / Rudrauf, Châteaux forts , p. 109.
  4. ↑ Biller / Metz, Burgen des Elsaß 2 , p. 210.
  5. ↑ Bronner, Château de Guirbaden , passim; Zumstein, Sondage archéologique , passim.
  6. ↑ On Friedrich II's hall building, cf. in detail Biller, Castrum novum , passim; Biller / Metz, Burgen des Elsaß 2 , pp. 213–219.
  7. ↑ Bronner, Château de Guirbaden , S. 99th
  8. ↑ Biller / Metz, Burgen des Elsaß 2 , p. 220 f.
  9. ↑ Biller / Metz, Burgen des Elsaß 2 , p. 216 f., 221.
  10. ↑ On the Valentine's Chapel cf. Kieffer, Guirbaden Ruins , pp. 19–24.