Hohenfreyberg Castle

Hohenfreyberg Castle
Hohenfreyberg Castle - general view
Creation time :	1418
Castle type :	Höhenburg, summit location
Conservation status:	ruin
Place:	Eisenberg
Geographical location	47 ° 36 '49 .7 "  N , 10 ° 35' 15.7"  E Coordinates: 47 ° 36 '49  .7 " N , 10 ° 35' 15.7"  E
Height:	1040.8  m above sea level NN

The courtyard

The main tower

The Hohenfreyberg Castle , together with the directly opposite Eisenberg Castle a highly visible group castle in the southern Allgäu , about four kilometers north of Pfronten in Ostallgäu . The late medieval hilltop castle was abandoned and set on fire during the Thirty Years War . From 1995 to 2006, the former aristocratic residence was carefully secured and conserved as part of a much-noticed sample renovation.

Geographical location

The castle ruins are located 1040.8  m above sea level. NN height on a two-peaked, rocky ridge in front of the Tannheimer mountains . In the vicinity there are numerous other castles , ruins , castle stables and fortresses on both sides of the German-Austrian border , including the famous Neuschwanstein Castle .

history

The castle is considered to be one of the last major new castle buildings of the German Middle Ages . The client consciously resorted to the - actually anachronistic - building type of the high medieval hilltop castle , while in other places the first castles were already abandoned or were expanded to look like a castle.

The fortress was built from 1418 by Friedrich von Freyberg zu Eisenberg, the eldest son of the man of the same name of Eisenberg Castle. The construction dragged on until 1432, the funds for this came from the income of the small surrounding lordship, which the client had transferred prematurely as an inheritance.

The masonry of the inner castle with the keep-like main tower and large wall sections of the outer castle go back to this first construction phase . This first castle offered the image of a two hundred years her senior, high medieval hilltop castle with an impressive keep and two Palassen . In times of knightly decline and the rise of the bourgeoisie, Friedrich von Freyberg apparently wanted to create a symbol, a manifesto of unbroken aristocratic claim to power. In terms of size and demands, he was certainly based on his father's ancestral castle, which was only a five-minute walk away.

The construction and immense maintenance costs forced the sons Georg and Friedrich von Freyberg-Eisenberg zu Hohenfreyberg as well as their cousin Georg von Freyberg-Eisenberg zu Eisenberg, who also owned goods of the Hohenfreyberg rule, to sell the castle to the ore duke Sigmund von 1484 Austria , there was also no male inheritance. The Archduke's successor, later Emperor Maximilian I , pledged Hohenfreyberg in 1499 to the Augsburg merchant Georg Gossembrot , the caretaker of the nearby Tyrolean Ehrenberg Castle . He invested large sums in the fortress, and the system was strengthened and modernized in terms of defense technology. Gossembrot married his daughter Sibylle to Lutz von Freyberg zu Öpfingen-Justingen, a relative of the Freyberg family in the neighboring Eisenberg castle.

The Augsburg resident died in 1502 and his widow Radegunda Eggenberger returned the Hohenfreyberg pledge to Austria with a contract dated May 9, 1513. She asserted that her deceased husband had spent 17,000 to 18,000 guilders on purchases and construction.

The modernization of the fortifications by the pawnbrokers already paid off in 1525 in the Peasants' War . The Austrian nurse was able to repel the rebels successfully after he had requested reinforcements and soldiers in Innsbruck .

Towards the end of the Thirty Years' War, on September 15, 1646, the Austrian outposts of Hohenfreyberg, Eisenberg and Falkenstein were set on fire on the orders of the Tyrolean provincial government. The castle complexes should not fall intact into the hands of the approaching Protestants . However, the attackers changed their route, so giving up the castles was pointless. All three complexes have been uninhabited ruins since then.

After the Battle of Austerlitz , Austria had to cede its Allgäu possessions to Bavaria. The Kingdom of Bavaria sold Hohenfreyberg back to the Barons of Freyberg in 1841, who still own the castle today.

In 1995, an extensive renovation of the castle complex, which had been decaying almost unhindered, began. Under the patronage of Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, the Alp Action Foundation made it possible to start the safety work, which could not be completed until 2006 for financial reasons. The aim of the measures was to preserve the condition of the building at the start of the renovation in accordance with the requirements of a historical monument. No additions or major archaeological interventions were made. The internationally acclaimed sample renovation is a model for numerous similar monument conservation projects across Europe.

In the course of the expansion of the Allgäu castle region from 2004, two didactic installations and some information boards were then set up inside the castle. The planning concept for the Allgäu castle region is an extension of the cross-border Ostallgäu-Ausserfern castle region , which also includes the spectacular ensemble of fortresses around Ehrenberg Castle near Reutte in Ausserfern in Tyrol .

Construction phases

Construction age plan on the information board at the entrance

View into the north-east kennel with the flanking tower

The large artillery tower in the southwest (outer bailey)

Didactic installation hook rifle gunner in the northwest of the outer bailey

The castle was essentially built in three major construction phases. The original complex (1418–32) was slightly smaller than the remaining ruins. It consisted of two angled residential buildings in the courtyard, a keep-like main tower in the east and a chapel tower . This inner castle was surrounded by a short curtain wall. The crenellated outer bailey wall was much lower than it is today. There were probably some wooden farm and residential buildings on the outer bailey. The original gate of the outer bailey was slightly wider, but was in the same place as the entrance that was preserved. Originally the Burgweg led around the north and east sides of the castle and met the Vorburgtor when coming from the north. At that time the gate of the core castle was still in the south wall. The outer bailey wall protected the main gate here in the manner of a gate kennel .

In 1456 the two gates were strengthened. A low artillery house was built on the western front of the main castle , from which an invading enemy could be fired at with light firearms . The main gate was built over with a massive gate.

Between 1486 and 1502 the castle was fundamentally rebuilt and strengthened. The massive artillery gondola was built on the southwest corner of the outer bailey. The circular wall was raised and equipped with key slots for hook boxes . The large turret covered the new access route, which was now on the south side. The gate of the main castle was also moved to the west side and received a new gate tower. This required the demolition of the northern half of the large western residential building (Palas), the rubble of which was distributed meters high in the inner courtyard. As a result, the smaller hall also had to be rebuilt. The mighty kennels were built in the north and east with a semicircular jutting flanking tower in the northeast.

description

The main castle with the inner gate

You enter the castle complex through the gate of the outer bailey on the west side. The gate and the ring walls are still part of the first construction phase (1418–32). On the right rises a mighty artillery gondola (1501, later raised), which was added under Gossembrot. After about 30 meters you come to the main gate of the main castle, next to which there are further building wings (approx. 1460). The original entrance to the main castle, however, was in the middle of the south side. There is a gate here, which was later converted into a cistern tower; Nessler wrongly interprets this as the stump of the keep. The southern gate tower lost its function after the castle access route under Gossembrot was relocated from the north to the south side and secured by the aforementioned artillery roundabout.

The impressive kennels were laid around the castle from 1486 under the pledgee Gossembrot.

Around 1540, the western front of the main castle was reinforced with an artillery platform. The conception of this part of the castle can be traced back to Albrecht Dürer's treatise Etliche underricht , published in 1527, on the fortification of Stett, Schloß and Flecken . The gun platform was made accessible again during the general renovation. The neighboring Eisenberg Castle was also strengthened in the 16th century following Dürer's recommendations.

There were two residential buildings in the courtyard, which joined at an angle. The four walls of the smaller one have been partially preserved, the outer walls of the larger one were also the ring walls of the original castle, the east wall has disappeared. The round, vaulted chapel tower at the south-west corner should also be mentioned.

The keep with its upstream arbor forms the eastern end of the core castle . The Zwingermauer runs at an acute angle around the east end of the core castle. In the northeast of the Zwinger a round defense tower jumps out of the wall.

The entire castle complex was built up from the existing limestone . The building material comes from a few small quarries in the immediate and nearer castle area.

Together with the surrounding castles and fortifications, the facilities offer those interested an overview of the history of Central European fortifications over the past thousand years (castle region Ostallgäu-Ausserfern). Numerous finds from Hohenfreyberg Castle are exhibited in the castle museum in Eisenberg-Zell.

useful information

• Eleven so-called maleficent stones were set around Hohenfreyberg Castle in 1582 to delimit the judicial district .
• In 2007 filming for the telenovela Sturm der Liebe ( ARD ) took place in this castle .

literature

• Klaus Leidorf , Peter Ettel : Castles in Bavaria. 7000 years of castle history in the air. Theiss, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-8062-1364-X , pp. 154-155.
• Toni Nessler: Castles in the Allgäu. Volume 2: Castle ruins in the West Allgäu and bordering Vorarlberg, in the Württemberg Allgäu, in the northern Allgäu around Memmingen, in the northeast Allgäu around Kaufbeuren and Obergünzburg as well as in the eastern Allgäu and in the adjacent Tyrol. Allgäuer Zeitungsverlag, Kempten 1985, ISBN 3-88006-115-7 , pp. 232-242.
• Joachim Zeune : Castle Guide Ostallgäu and Ausserfern, Tyrol. Mountain forests and dams in the Ostallgäu-Ausserfern castle region. Ostallgäu tourist association, Marktoberdorf 1998.
• Joachim Zeune: Allgäu Castle Region. A castle guide. Zeune et al. Koop, Eisenberg-Zell 2008.

Web links

Commons : Hohenfreyberg Castle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Hohenfreyberg castle ruins on the homepage of the House of Bavarian History (plans, history, building history, existing buildings)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Tiroler Landesarchiv Innsbruck, copy books 20–22 TTT, fol. 40-42.
2. ^ Tiroler Landesarchiv Innsbruck, documents I 915.