Grünenfels Castle

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Grünenfels Castle
Grünenfels Castle - Wallspur in the southeast corner

Grünenfels Castle - Wallspur in the southeast corner

Creation time : around 1150 to 1200
Castle type : Hilltop castle
Conservation status: ruin
Standing position : Free nobles
Place: Waltensburg
Geographical location 46 ° 46 '46 "  N , 9 ° 7' 13"  E Coordinates: 46 ° 46 '46 "  N , 9 ° 7' 13"  E ; CH1903:  seven hundred twenty-eight thousand four hundred and sixteen  /  182295
Height: 1003  m above sea level M.
Grünenfels Castle (Canton of Graubünden)
Grünenfels Castle

The ruins of Grünenfels Castle are located north of Waltensburg (municipality of Breil / Brigels ) between the ravines of the Flem and Ladral streams.
Along with Jörgenberg , Kropfenstein and Vogelberg Castle , Grünenfels was one of the original four castles in Waltensburg.

location

The ruins of the hilltop castle are at 1003  m above sea level. M. at the eastern end of a range of hills, separated from this by a ditch . Since the ruin is completely overgrown, it is difficult to find in the forest if you do not know its location. It can be reached in ten minutes from Waltensburg Church via a dirt road.

Surname

The name appears in several spellings in the 13th century: for example in 1257 as Gruoninvels , 1278 as Gruenenvels and 1289 as Gruonvels . It refers to the green Graubünden slate that was used in construction. It has not been clarified whether the building material comes from the immediate vicinity of the castle. In this case, the main building would also have stood on green rock.

investment

Until 1960 only a few remains of the wall and the tooth of a corner of the wall could be seen from the castle. In 1961, a robbery excavation by young people forced the Rhaetian Museum to undertake an emergency excavation, during which the floor plan in the area of ​​the main castle was exposed and some small finds were secured. Because the excavation remained unfinished, the building history of the castle has not yet been fully clarified. The complex is now heavily overgrown with small trees and bushes and the masonry is accordingly in an extremely poor condition and close to complete decay.

A threshold has been preserved from the mighty gate in the south. The main part of the system was a square tower in the western part with a side length of almost 9 meters and 1.8 meters thick walls. In the eastern part were the residential and commercial buildings. The remains of the wall come from various construction phases. The preserved wall tooth on the southeast corner suggests a building with at least three floors. The elongated, by a section of trench separated artificially paved plateau of the bailey to the east has no wall tracks.

history

Unearthed objects such as stove tiles and various iron objects show that the castle was built in the late 12th century and was inhabited until the end of the 14th century. The curtain wall is likely to be assigned to the founding time. In the first half of the 13th century, the complex was supplemented by a strong main tower.

The Grünenfels Castle was the ancestral seat of the family of the same name, which probably belonged to the free nobility, but never managed to rise to the small class of the noble free of the Vorderrhein Valley. In 1257 a Conrad von Grünenfels was first mentioned in a document. The next generation, represented by the brothers Albert (1278–1321) and Heinrich (1278–1295) von Grünenfels, was already the last of the family.

Albert's daughter Margarethe married Heinrich von Montalt, who thus came into possession of Burg Grünenfels. Heinrich II von Montalt gave Grünenfels together with other property to his brother-in-law Ulrich Walter von Belmont in 1357 to settle a dispute with him. In 1358 he received it back as a fief.
After the death of Heinrich II. Von Montalt, his rights to Grünenfels passed to a cousin, who sold it to Ulrich Brun von Rhäzüns in 1378 with further ownership . The goods and rights of Grünenfels from then on belonged to the Rhaetian rule of Jörgenberg. After this handover, Grünenfels should have been left.

gallery

  • Plant plan

  • Foundation of the tower

  • Corner of the tower from the southeast

  • Loop in the east wall

literature

  • Otto P. Clavadetscher, Werner Meyer : The castle book of Graubünden . Orell Füssli, Zurich 1984, ISBN 3-280-01319-4 .
  • Heinrich Boxler: Castle naming in north-eastern Switzerland and in Graubünden . Verlag Huber, Frauenfeld et al. 1976, ISBN 3-7193-0538-4 , ( Studia linguistica Alemannica 6), (also: Zurich, Univ., Diss., 1976).
  • Castle map of Switzerland. With detailed maps and description of the property . = Carte des châtaux de la Suisse. Avec cartes de detail et description of the objet . = Carta dei castelli della Svizzera. Con carte dettagliate e descrizione degli oggetti . Federal Office for Topography swisstopo, Wabern 2007, (1: 200,000).
  • Anton von Castelmur: The castles and palaces of the Canton of Graubünden . Volume 2. Birkhäuser-Verlag, Basel 1940, ( The castles and palaces of Switzerland 15, 1, ZDB -ID 1000492-0 ).

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Heinrich Boxler, The naming of castles in northeastern Switzerland and in Graubünden ; P. 169