Lürken Castle

Lürken Castle
South side of Lürken Castle
Alternative name (s):	Lurich Castle, Lürken Castle
Creation time :	First mentioned in 1188
Castle type :	Niederungsburg
Conservation status:	tore off
Place:	Eschweiler
Geographical location	50 ° 51 '18 .6 "  N , 6 ° 14' 30.6"  E Coordinates: 50 ° 51  '18.6 " N , 6 ° 14' 30.6"  E

The castle Lürken even castle Lurich or Lürkener Burg called, was a moated castle in the valley of Merz Bach , in the center of the village today abgebaggerten Lürken , a district of Eschweiler , stood.

history

As early as 1188, Lürken Castle was first mentioned in a document as "castrum Lureke" . The reason for this was their purchase for the Cologne bishopric by Archbishop Philipp von Heinsberg . In the period that followed, the facility was lent to the Jülich Grafenhaus . Lürken later belonged to the Laurenzberg lordship , with whose bailiwick the lords of Randerath were enfeoffed. In the 14th and 15th centuries, the lordship over Lürken and its castle was apparently in the hands of the von Kinzweiler family .

Before 1598 the castle was bought by the Mangelmann family. Johann von Mangelmann and his wife Katharina von Olmissen, called Mülstroe, built a new house in 1607. At the end of the 17th century, Lürken Castle was owned by the von Lawick family, from whom it passed to their relative, the von Portmann family. A picture of the system, which was included in the Codex Welser in 1723, comes from the time when the Portmanns were owners . In 1808 the castle came to the Vossen family from Aachen. Since 1896, the Vinken family had leased 150 acres of arable and meadow land together with the associated land  .

In the last decades before its demolition in 1963/64, Lürken Castle was in civil ownership and was used for agricultural purposes.

Digs

Before the village was excavated in 1965 because of the open- cast lignite mine Zukunft -West, the Rhenish State Office for Monument Preservation excavated the remains of the bathing wing ( hypocaust ) of a Roman villa rustica in the hilly orchard of Lürken Castle from August 1961 to late autumn 1963 . It turned out that there had actually been a moth on the site known as the “Old Castle” .

description

Illustration of Lürken Castle in the Welser Codex

The castle complex consisted of a three-storey manor house made of quarry stone and a horseshoe-shaped outer bailey to the west of it . The building ensemble was surrounded all around by a moat that was fed by the Merzbach.

The mansion with its 1.2 meters thick outer walls arose on a rectangular, approximately 16 x 10.5 meter measured plan and had on its side facing the Vorburg West side is a round arch Renaissance - Portal with Blaustein jamb , on which the arms of alliance of the families Mangelmann and Olmissen as well as an inscription with the year 1607. It can be found today in the residential building of Konradsheim Castle in Erftstadt . The manor house was separated from the outer bailey by a moat, which was spanned by a brick arched bridge. It was the replacement for a previous drawbridge . At the southwest corner of the building was a five-meter-thick round tower , the outer walls of which were only one meter thick. The brick building was built on a foundation of Blaustein quadern and had loopholes . Its four storeys were closed off by an octagonal zinc helmet with a weather vane , which had replaced a previously existing conical roof.

The three-winged outer bailey was about 36 × 54 meters long. It consisted of simple farm buildings from 1776, of which the courtyard-side wall anchors in the form of the year announced. The upper floors were partly built in half-timbered construction. In the middle of the south wing it had a late Gothic gate with a round arched gate , in which the blind niche to accommodate the medieval drawbridge was still clearly visible.

In the 15th century, the castle had a Lürken St. Pancras consecrated chapel , which was first documented in 1481, but in the 19th century no longer existed. From 1573 reformed church services were held at the castle , because their owners had adopted the Protestant faith.

literature

• Karl Franck-Oberaspach: The art monuments of the Jülich district . L. Schwann, Düsseldorf 1902, pp. 157–158 ( Die Kunstdenkmäler der Rheinprovinz . Volume 8, Section 1).
• Christian Lenz: Haus Lürken in history and legends. In: Rur flowers. Leaves for entertainment, edification and instruction, supplement to the Jülich Kreisblatt. Vol. 7, No. 35, 1927, no p.
• Walther Zimmermann, Hugo Borger (ed.): Handbook of the historical sites of Germany . Volume 3: North Rhine-Westphalia (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 273). Kröner, Stuttgart 1963, DNB 456882847 , pp. 425-426.

Footnotes

1. ↑ K. Franck-Oberaspach: Die Kunstdenkmäler des Kreis Jülich , p. 157.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Walther Zimmermann, Hugo Borger (ed.): Handbook of the historical sites of Germany. Volume 3: North Rhine-Westphalia (= Kröner's pocket edition. Volume 273). Kröner, Stuttgart 1963, DNB 456882847 , p. 425.
3. ↑ Wilhelm Piepers: Excavations at the old Lürken Castle . Rheinland-Verlag, Cologne 1981, ISBN 3-7927-0546-X , p. 19.
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e} C. Lenz: House Lürken in history and legends. 1927, no p.
5. ^ Albert Neumann: Lürken . (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original ; Retrieved January 30, 2011 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  
6. ↑ ^{a b c} Dimensions according to the floor plan on Plate 49 in Wilhelm Piepers: Excavations at the old Lürken Castle .
7. ↑ Claudia Euskirchen, Olaf Gisbertz, Ulrich Schäfer (arrangement): Handbook of German Art Monuments . North Rhine-Westphalia I. Rhineland . 2nd Edition. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 2005; ISBN 978-3-422-03093-0 ; P. 894.