Landeck Castle (Palatinate)
| Landeck Castle | ||
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 Landeck Castle |
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| Creation time : | around 1200 | |
| Castle type : | Hilltop castle | |
| Conservation status: | restored ruin | |
| Construction: | Half-timbered, stone | |
| Place: | Klingenmünster | |
| Geographical location | 49 ° 8 '27.9 " N , 8 ° 0' 22.7" E | |
| Height: | 305 m above sea level NHN | |
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The Castle Landeck is the ruins of a hilltop castle southwest of Landau in Klingenmünster in South County Wine Route in Rhineland-Palatinate .
history
As with the overwhelming majority of the Palatinate castles , the exact year of foundation is also unknown for Burg Landeck. It is generally assumed that the castle was built as the successor to the nearby tower castle Walastede (now called "Schlössel"), which was probably destroyed in the second half of the 12th century . There is just as little direct evidence for this assumption as there is for the further thesis that both castles had a protective function for the nearby Klingen (-münster) monastery . The visible architectural features of Landeck refer to the time around 1200.
Landeck was actually mentioned and thus definitely documented only in 1237 on the occasion of the division of the Leiningen estates between Count Friedrich III. and Emich IV. von Leiningen . In this division, the castle and all accessories fell to Emich IV, who founded his own line from Leiningen-Landeck .
By the middle of the 13th century at the latest, the complex was an imperial fiefdom, which was jointly owned by the Counts of Zweibrücken and the Counts of Leiningen. In 1255 Emich IV. Intercepted messengers from Mainz and Worms who were moving to Alsace to a city conference at Hördt and deported them to Landeck. After the rapid extinction of the Leiningen-Landeck sideline in 1289/90, King Rudolf von Habsburg awarded the relapsed half of the imperial castle to his nephew, the Alsatian bailiff Otto III. von Ochsenstein , while the other half remained in the possession of the Counts of Zweibrücken-Bitsch.
Only since the beginning of the 14th century can more or less justified, but long-term successful attempts by Klingenmünster Abbey to pass Landeck and surrounding goods off as their property, which primarily had an impact on the Ochsenstein part. Also important were the ambitions of the Count Palatine near Rhine , recognizable since the middle of the century , to bring the castle into their hands, which began in 1358/66 with the acquisition of the opening rights . In a similar way due to disputes within the family, disputes among the commoners and not least due to financial difficulties, in 1405 a further share fell to the Prince Diocese of Speyer . The written sources obtained, including particularly important the truce , testify to the attempts of the now three owners parties - the counts of Zweibrücken-Bitche, the lords of Ochsenstein and the Bishopric of Speyer - to sustainably manage their castle community.
Although Landeck had been expanded at the end of the 15th century, the farmers of the Alsatian piston heap conquered the facility in the Palatinate Peasants' War in 1525 and burned it down. However, the damage that occurred at that time has apparently been repaired. After the Lords of Ochsenstein and the Counts of Zweibrücken-Bitsch-Lichtenberg died out in 1485, the Palatinate electors were initially able to increase their ownership share to three quarters, and in 1709 they were able to complete them by exchanging them with the Duchy of Speyer. Until the end of the 18th century, the Electoral Palatinate was to remain the sole owner of Landeck, which, however, had since been destroyed. When this destruction by French troops happened, contrary to popular opinion, which mentions the year 1689, cannot be clearly determined, but it is more likely to have happened in 1680. With the entire area on the left bank of the Rhine , the region was initially occupied by French revolutionary troops in the first coalition war and annexed to France after 1798 .
Due to the agreements reached at the Congress of Vienna (1815) and an exchange contract with Austria , the region and with it Landeck Castle became part of the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1816 . Today the impressive castle ruin is one of the objects managed by the “ Directorate for Castles, Palaces, Antiquities of Rhineland-Palatinate ”. The Landeckverein founded in 1881 has made special contributions to the maintenance and promotion of the facility.
Todays use
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The Landeck castle ruins are now a popular excursion destination. The castle tavern is open all year round except on Christmas Eve. The tower can be climbed via an internal, wooden spiral staircase and offers an impressive view from its battlements . On the first floor of the tower there is a small exhibition of finds from the castle grounds. On the grounds of the Landeck castle ruins, medieval markets are held annually under the name "Landeckfest".
investment
The remaining components go back to around 1200. Two building eras can be clearly recognized. The oldest parts of the castle are the keep and the casing wall . One side of the tower cuts into the wall, so it was built a little earlier. Up until the beginning of the 15th century, Landeck consisted only of the inner castle, which was marked by the inner ring wall . The far forward bridge tower was not built until the end of the 13th century or even later.
The curtain wall was changed several times over the centuries, probably as a result of the inserted buildings, which hit the inside of the wall and used it as an outer wall. The remnants of the western housing are part of a renovation by the von Ochsenstein family at the end of the 13th or beginning of the 14th century. The house opposite from the late 14th century, on the east side of the Bering, was at least partially built in half-timbered construction and later also in stone. These east and west buildings should almost certainly correspond to the "tree-lined (= wooden) house" and the "stone house" mentioned in a written source from 1407. The corridor between the two buildings, which reached from the castle gate to the southern end of the core castle, was built over by a transverse wing after 1421.
Probably in the first half of the 15th century, the core castle was surrounded by today's kennel complex and with half towers and thus adapted to the changed technical requirements. In 1456, further construction measures may have resulted in the barbican -style “Vorwerk” including the bridge tower.
Further construction measures are no longer recorded until the destruction at the end of the 17th century. Since 1881, at the instigation of the Landeckverein, the rubble has been cleared away, shrubbery damaging the walls has been removed and repair work has been carried out. The castle tavern was built from the large amount of found stones, thereby securing some art-historically significant building blocks . In the 1960s, extensive renovation and restoration work took place under the supervision of the State Office for Monument Preservation. In 1967, the original entrance situation - previously the castle was only accessible from the moat via an earth ramp on the east side - was restored over the renewed bridge on the still existing pillars.
The location of the castle
Top view
Access and bridge tower
Ring wall and keep
The courtyard
literature
- Marco Bollheimer: Rock castles in the Wasgau – Northern Vosges castle paradise . 3. Edition. Self-published, Karlsruhe 2011, ISBN 978-3-9814506-0-6 , p. 158 f .
- Alexander Thon, Hans Reither, Peter Pohlit: Landeck castle ruins . Schnell + Steiner, Regensburg 2005, ISBN 3-7954-1713-9 .
- Alexander Thon (Ed.): ... like a banned, inaccessible magic castle. Castles in the southern Palatinate . 2., verb. Aufl. Schnell + Steiner, Regensburg 2005, pp. 80–85, ISBN 3-7954-1570-5 .
- Alexander Thon, "We have not received any information as to which ruler of the German Empire built it ...". Comments on the determination and evaluation of the first mention of Palatinate castles , in: Mythos Staufer - in memoriam Dankwart Leistikow - files of the 5th Landau Staufer Conference 1st – 3rd July 2005, ed. v. Volker Herzner u. Jürgen Krüger, Speyer 2010, pp. 127–139, here pp. 129f. (on first mention and ownership). ISBN 3-932155-27-0
Web links
- Entry on Burg Landeck in the scientific database " EBIDAT " of the European Castle Institute
- Panoramic view from Landeck Castle to the Rhine valley and Klingenmünster
- Homepage of Landeck Castle
- Reconstruction drawing by Wolfgang Braun