Klempenow Castle
| Klempenow Castle | ||
|---|---|---|
 Klempenow Castle seen from the southeast |
||
| Creation time : | 1231 | |
| Castle type : | Niederungsburg | |
| Conservation status: | Received or received substantial parts | |
| Construction: | Brick | |
| Place: | Breest | |
| Geographical location | 53 ° 47 '26 " N , 13 ° 18' 40" E | |
|
||
The Klempenow Castle is a medieval castle in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern , the right on the Tollense near Breest , about 15 kilometers north of Altentreptow , Mecklenburg County Lakeland is located.
location
The castle is located near the original border between Mecklenburg and Western Pomerania , which ran a few kilometers south and east at the Kleiner and Großer Landgraben. It was one of a series of fortifications that protected the crossings over the Tollense between Altentreptow and Demmin ( Broock , Burg Osten , Haus Demmin ).
history
origin
It was built together with other castles since 1231 by the Pomeranian dukes , whose power was confirmed by the Hohenstaufen emperor Friedrich II. After long disputes with Danes , Slavs and Christian Poles over political influence in the region that was then economically and militarily important. Around 1240, the Pomeranian Duke Wartislaw III. in appearance, and the Klempenow Castle probably goes back to him. However, Klempenow was first mentioned in a document as a sovereign castle in 1331.
History of construction and ownership
For the construction of the Niederungsburg colonizers were brought in from Westphalia , Flanders and Friesland, who were to promote the Christianization and colonization of the local Slavic tribes by building churches . Many Slavic possessions were taken over by these immigrants. Due to their experience with massive buildings in damp lowlands, they were predestined for the construction, because the castle was built on the alluvial soil of the Tollensee valley. The bricks for building were obtained from so-called field fire ovens. The material in the form of field stones needed to fill the brick wall shells has been there since the Ice Ages . The castle was repeatedly expanded, partially destroyed and rebuilt. The oldest parts of the castle today are the tower and the defensive wall , which can be identified from the middle to the end of the 13th century. Around 1433 the facility was expanded to include a granary and a gatehouse . The three-storey half-timbered gatehouse was one of the first North German half-timbered houses with a height of around nine meters. Due to poorly calculated statics , this undersized wooden frame building with heavy brick infill was soon dilapidated due to sagging. At the end of the 15th century it had to be rebuilt, this time with Renaissance elements . Shortly before the Thirty Years' War , the whole complex was fundamentally reinforced. It was last repaired in 1697. In the middle of the 18th century, the granary was rebuilt and in 1820 it was given its present form. In 1890, some gable roofs were renewed in a flatter shape than originally, and in 1904 the then domain tenant Carl Bruhn had the Renaissance house demolished in order to build a typical modern Prussian administrator's house. The castle was no longer of strategic importance for a long time, it served only as a domain for the purpose of agriculture. This epoch lasted until 1945. After the Second World War , initially refugees from the German eastern areas and later resettlers found an apartment here, especially the south wing was fundamentally rebuilt, including the remains of the tower in the south-west corner demolished to create living space. Until the 1990s, Klempenow Castle served as a residence for agricultural workers. In 1991 a citizens' initiative called Kultur-Transit-96 eV was founded, whose task it is to stop the castle from decaying and to carry out repair work. The castle has been open to the public since 1998. It is now used culturally - various events and markets take place in the castle, artists use some rooms as a gallery. There is a café in the courtyard.
Klempenow had been owned by the noble von Heydebreck family since the middle of the 14th century . First, Joachim von Heydebreck, who has appeared in the documents since 1386, was expressly mentioned in 1401 as the owner of Klempenow. The last owner from this family was Hinrik von Heydebreck, who died around 1520, after whose death the Pomeranian dukes moved in the castle and the property belonging to it as a settled fief and made it a ducal office. This was combined with the old ducal properties around Altentreptow and expanded in 1566 to include the properties on the Tollense, which previously belonged to the Reinfeld monastery in Holstein.
During the Thirty Years' War the office of Klempenow was pledged first to the imperial colonel Heinrich Ludwig von Hatzfeld , then to the Swedish general Dodo zu Innhausen and Knyphausen because of outstanding contributions, but later redeemed by the Swedish crown as successor to the Pomeranian dukes. Klempenow was actually Swedish until 1713 and constitutionally until 1721 , but in 1675 the castle was conquered by the Brandenburgers for a short time . In Prussian times it was - as before - the seat of an office, now a royal Prussian one, which was not only a domain, but also exercised jurisdiction over the official residents.
investment
Outer bailey
Klempenow originally had a bailey in the north of the main castle, which was surrounded by a moat and the Tollense. A chapel , first mentioned in 1494, belonged to the outer bailey , the foundations of which were exposed in 1997. The current church in Klempenow , built in 1692 in half-timbered style, was in a desolate state at the turn of the century , until it was thoroughly renovated between 1997 and 2000 through the work of the Friends' Association with the help of the German Foundation for Monument Protection . Today it is used as a church.
The entire chapel is no longer in the Lot , because the ground the northwest side apparently still yields. Since 2007 there has been a small organ / chest organ by the master organ builder Matthias Beckmann from Friesack in Havelland in the simple church . The pulpit altar and the baroque gallery parapet are also particularly worth seeing.
In addition, the gatekeeper's house is still there, the dating of which is unknown. It was already in ruins at the end of the 17th century and has only recently been rebuilt with a hipped roof .
Main castle
The main castle also had a ring-shaped moat. It can still be easily recognized in its outline. As a so-called Niederungsburg , it has an irregular rectangular shape with an edge length of approx. 57 × 36 m. An approximately 8.80 m high and up to three meters thick defensive wall surrounds the main castle. It and a keep of originally three towers are the oldest verifiable structural members of the castle. They are built in a special brick format with a height of 10 cm, which was used in various buildings in northeastern Germany until the end of the 13th century and has been very well preserved. The defensive wall is made of a double-shell brick construction, the filling between the shells consists of broken bricks and field stones in a bed of lime mortar . On the defensive wall there are still fragmentary battlements and shield walls . To the Tollense to the east, however, there is only a short section of the defensive wall. The tower has a cylindrical cross-section and is covered with a so-called sugar loaf. This is a bricked, pointed cone without a roof structure or roof tiles . In the 17th century it was converted for residential purposes. At the lowest point there is a dungeon , the only access to which is a hole in the vaulted ceiling . On the floors above, from various construction phases, there are some rooms, some of which still look homely today, such as a room with a fireplace and a toilet bay . The north side of the castle consists of a large granary floor in the attic and an intact oven on the ground floor, to the east is today's café in vaulted rooms. The west wing still houses the foundation walls of a south-west tower in the basement. These rooms, like the Kornboden, are used today for exhibition purposes. A former brewery and baking house in the south wing, which houses an event room, is still preserved. In the middle of the courtyard, a brick of boulders is well in the early stages of the castle. A little off the beaten track, in the northwest corner of the castle, is the domain tenant house from 1904, which, however, looks like a foreign body in its modern architectural style.
Literature and Sources
- Roland Lange: Klempenow Castle. Friends of Palaces and Gardens in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Berlin 2004.
- Neidhardt Krauss, Egon Fischer: Castles, manor houses and parks in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, from Darß to the Stettiner Haff. Hinstorff Verlag, Rostock 2002, ISBN 3-356-00949-4 .
- Uwe Schwarz: The lower aristocratic fortifications in the Neubrandenburg district. In: Contributions to the prehistory and early history of the districts of Rostock, Schwerin and Neubrandenburg. Berlin 1987.
- Pomeranian document book . Szczecin 1868 to 1962.
