Hofzumberge Castle

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2010 09 04 7Tervete37.JPG

The Ordensburg Hofzumberge ( Latvian Kalnamuiža ) was a castle of the Livonian Komtur Dobeln, later a castle of the Duchy of Courland and Semgallia . The castle was built in the 14th century on the border between Zemgale and Lithuania to protect against Lithuanian incursions. To date, the remains of the south-east, south-west and north-west walls of the castle can be found in Tērvete at a height of 7 to 8 meters .

history

Hofzumberge 1830 based on the so-called Paulucci album

At today's Tērvete, the Livonian Order built three castles close together: the wooden castle Heiligenberg, the castle Hofzumberge and the castle Terweten. Because at Tērvete there had been several fights between the Semgallians and the knights of the order. An older Curonian castle Terweten is said to have been closer to Hofzumberge, at the northwest end of the ridge on which the Hofzumberge ruins stand. A long earth wall, the so-called Sugar Loaf, has been preserved there.

On April 10, 1560, Master of the Order Gotthard Kettler prescribed “the Doblen House or Castle, the Hof zum Berge and the Hof zur Autze” to Thies von der Recke, who later appointed a bailiff in the Hof zum Berge. In 1576 Hofzumberge Castle came back into the possession of Duke Gotthard, who had it converted into a palace. On May 21, 1596, the contract on the division of the duchy between the brothers Friedrich Kettler and Wilhelm Kettler , Gotthard's sons, was signed at Hofzumberge .

The castle is said to have been in use at the end of the 17th century, although it was referred to as a "ruin" in the 16th century. During the Great Northern War, Swedish troops under King Charles XII besieged . in August 1701 the castle. Shortly after the duchy was annexed by the Russian Empire in 1795, Tsar Paul I handed Hofzumberge over to General Peter von Pallen in 1798, whose family owned the property until the agrarian reform in the 1920s.

description

Hofzumberge Castle was built on a dolomite rock on the ten meter high bank of the Tērvete near the mouth of the Loxtenbach . The castle was guarded from the north by a moat 16 meters wide and three meters deep.

It is unclear whether the remaining wall remains are Terweten Castle or Hofzumberge Castle.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b KALNAMUIŽAS ORDEŅPILS / ORDENSBURG HOFZUMBERGE. Retrieved September 16, 2019 .
  2. ^ Karl Woldemar von Löwis of Menar: Burgenlexikon für Alt-Livland . Walters and Rapa, Riga 1922, p. 63 ( digitized version ).
  3. ↑ August Robert Seraphim : The history of the Duchy of Courland (1561-1795) . Franz Kluge, Reval, 2nd, expanded edition 1904, p. 44.

Coordinates: 56 ° 28 '55 "  N , 23 ° 23' 4.9"  E