Lauenstein Castle (Franconian Forest)

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Lauenstein Castle
Lauenstein Castle seen from the southwest

Lauenstein Castle seen from the southwest

Creation time : 12th Century
Castle type : Hilltop castle
Conservation status: Received or received substantial parts
Place: Ludwigsstadt - Lauenstein
Geographical location 50 ° 30 '47.9 "  N , 11 ° 22' 11"  E Coordinates: 50 ° 30 '47.9 "  N , 11 ° 22' 11"  E
Height: 550  m above sea level NN
Lauenstein Castle (Bavaria)
Lauenstein Castle

The Burg Lauenstein is a medieval hilltop castle on 550  m above sea level. NN above the Upper Franconian town of Lauenstein , a district of the town of Ludwigsstadt southeast of it . With its location in the north of the Kronach district , the castle, the oldest parts of which can be dated to the 12th century, is the northernmost castle in Bavaria .

history

The oldest parts of the castle go back to the middle of the 12th century, it was first mentioned in a document on March 31, 1138. At that time, the newly elected King Konrad III. the monastery Kitzingen his protection and confirmed its possessions. The document was authenticated by Count Palatine Wilhelm, the father and brothers of the abbess, Bertha II von Ebenhausen / von Hohenlohe, and among others by “Adelbert von Lewenstein”. The aforementioned Count Palatine Wilhelm was Wilhelm IV , who died in 1140. Adelbert von Lewenstein could be his cousin Albrecht the Bear , who in 1140 took over the Orlamünde inheritance.

In 1222 a Heinrich von Lauenstein ("Henricus Comes Leostenus") was named. As the founder of the Lauenstein sideline of the Orlamünde, Hermann III. viewed.

The castle was of great strategic importance due to its advanced location in the northern border area of Franconia . It was owned by the Counts of Dießen-Andechs and the Counts of Orlamünde , among others .

In 1259/60 the Bishop of Bamberg, Berthold von Leiningen , took to the field against the Counts of Orlamünde in the dispute over the inheritance of the last Duke of Meran, who died in 1248, and Lauenstein Castle was most likely affected. In a comparison between the bishop and the counts of Orlamünde (Hermann and Otto) it is mentioned that the forest borders between Lauenstein and Sonneberg should be established according to the Lauerstein castle people. In 1279 Lauenstein Castle was mentioned in a letter from Hermann to Abbot Gunther zu Saalfeld.

On March 14, 1427, the indebted castle came under Count Wilhelm into the feudal lordship of Margrave Friedrich I of Brandenburg from the noble family of Hohenzollern . From 1427 to 1429 there were disputes with Count Günther von Schwarzburg , who wanted to take the castle with 100 twigs in one stroke. Count Wilhelm had been careful, however, and had the village tavern in which the enemy had quartered himself shot on fire, killing five attackers and sending the attackers to flight.

In 1430 Count Wilhelm von Orlamünde sold the castle to Count Ernst and Ludwig von Gleichen, Lords of Blankenhain. Friedrich I von Hohenzollern, the feudal lord, confirmed the sale on May 2, 1430.

Other owners of the castle were:

Count Otto X. von Orlamünde , epitaph in the church of Ludwigsstadt

In 1506, knight Heinrich von Thüna († 1513) was enfeoffed with rule and Lauenstein Castle. Christoph von Thüna owned the Lauenstein rule between 1535 and 1585, including the forests around Ludwigsstadt, Ebersdorf, Lauenstein, Tettau and Langenau. From 1551 to 1554, Christoph von Thüna the Elder had today's main wing built in the Renaissance style with its four corner towers placed diagonally. The von Thüna family owned the castle until 1622. In 1622, Margrave Christian von Brandenburg-Bayreuth acquired it "for 40,000 gold gold". The margrave established an office in Lauenstein at the castle. During the Thirty Years' War the city of Kronach, loyal to the emperor - it was attacked by the Swedes with the help of the Lauensteiners - tried to conquer the castle in 1634/35. The margravial governor of Lauenstein, Christoph von Wallenstein, had, however, brought the belongings of the Lauernstein farmers to safety in the castle and, with their help, was able to repel the attack with vigorous resistance.

The stone bridge in front of the gate in the west and the former office building, in which the hotel is today, in the southwest of the outer castle area, which was built in place of a brewery, date from the time of the margravial official residence.

In 1791 the castle fell to Prussia as part of the secret treaty of Margrave Carl Alexander and then to the Electorate of Bavaria on June 30, 1803 as part of a border and country exchange agreement . From 1815 it came into private hands and fell into disrepair. The keep, which still stood in 1800, was demolished and the superstructures of the other towers removed. The owner got into debt, so that in 1860 the castle was put under compulsory management by 41 creditors and rented to various people.

Rebuilding

Lauenstein in a historical view from 1899 after the fundamental rebuilding

The private citizen Dr. jur. Ehrhard Meßmer from Halle an der Saale (1861–1942) bought the run-down building in 1896, which was last inhabited by 25 poor families, including slate quarry workers, day laborers and craftsmen. The new owner planned to convert it initially as a private residence and then refurbished it for use as a guesthouse and for day guests. This fundamental restoration took place under the impression of a later, less strict historicism in the style of the Wartburg with the first echoes of Art Nouveau, the builders tried to restore the presumed original condition. The architects for this fundamental renovation were the architects Gustav Wolff and Theodor Lehmann , who came from Meßmer's place of work in Halle Saale. With attention to detail, attention was also paid to furnishing the interior with paintings and matching furniture. Messmer compiled legends about the castle and published them in the extensive Jungbrunnen series , a fairy tale book edition of the Fischer und Franke publishing house in Berlin, which was renowned at the time. The cover mirror of this fairy tale book series was often adorned with a Brandenburg eagle, which is also at the gate of the castle Lauenstein found. Prominent guests were Willi Wirk , a tenor buffo , the Nuremberg painter Georg Kellner , the "poet pastor" Hugo Greiner , Ernst von Wolhaben (poet), Joachim Ringelnatz and others. a.

Max Weber (center) in a group discussion at the first Lauensteiner conference, among others with Ernst Toller (3rd from right), photograph May 1917

During the First World War , from May 29 to 31 and from September 29 to October 3, 1917, the castle was twice the venue for the so-called Lauensteiner Meetings , which were convened on the initiative of the publisher Eugen Diederichs , and at which important scholars, Writers and other intellectuals of the time met for an open exchange on the future of Germany after the war. Participants in these conferences, which brought people from the most varied of political camps together, included, for example, the sociologist Max Weber , who later became the commandant of the Red Guard at the Battle of Dachau (1919) and the expressionist playwright Ernst Toller , the poet and women's rights activist Berta Lask , who Economist Edgar Jaffé and the later first Federal President of the Federal Republic, Theodor Heuss .

During the Second World War, the castle was home to a military secret service ( Foreign Office / Defense ) in the Wehrmacht High Command . The office was a research center for forging passports, manufacturing secret inks, micro cameras, etc. From March to June 1944, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris , chief of the Abwehr, was under house arrest at Lauenstein Castle .

In 1962 the Free State of Bavaria acquired the castle and renovated the entire complex between 1966 and 1976 at a high cost. Among other things, parts of the masonry had to be removed and renewed, the rooms completely restored, and the roof structure and ceilings of the individual floors restored.

The Bavarian administration of the state palaces, gardens and lakes designed an extensive museum in numerous rooms of the main castle with furnished showrooms and special collections, for example for weapons, wrought iron, lamps, folk art and instruments.

Castle hotel

Orlamündesaal

For the first time, parts of Lauenstein Castle were used as a hotel from 1898 , after Ehrhard Messmer had acquired and renovated the facility two years earlier, which had been abandoned for years. The guests who lived in the main castle at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries included the writers Ernst von Wolhaben and Joachim Ringelnatz , Tsar Ferdinand I of Bulgaria and the later Federal President Theodor Heuss .

After the castle complex became the property of the Free State of Bavaria, a castle tavern with a hotel was set up in the former home of the bailiff in the outer bailey . The guests included the English rock band Deep Purple and the pianist, conductor and television presenter Justus Frantz . In 2007 the facility was closed and only the main castle was used as a museum.

In April 2011 it became known that an entrepreneur from Kronach wanted to extensively renovate and reopen the hotel. The negotiations with the Free State of Bavaria, which had been going on since 2009, stalled and threatened to fail, as the entrepreneur sought to purchase the entire facility, while the Free State, as the owner, favored a long lease solution . It was only at the beginning of November 2012 that the two parties were able to agree on a redevelopment concept in which the Free State of Bavaria would have remained the owner and leased the castle to the entrepreneur. The corresponding contract should have been signed by the end of 2013. In the middle of 2013, however, the project stalled again because the Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments expressed fundamental concerns about several planned extensions to the protected castle complex . Since no agreement could be reached between the parties involved, the Kronach entrepreneur announced his withdrawal from the project at the end of November 2013. In September 2012, the Free State of Bavaria had already announced its intention to renovate the castle itself in this case.

In February 2014, a feasibility study was commissioned in which four architectural offices worked out options for expanding the castle complex. As of April 2014, the Free State was initially looking for a private investor who would take over the renovation and expansion of the hotel on the basis of this study. Since this search was unsuccessful, a tenant for the future castle hotel was sought from December 2014 to the beginning of February 2015 with a public tender . The talks with interested parties ended in August 2016 without any results. At the end of 2017, the Free State of Bavaria decided, through the Bavarian Palace Administration, to set up several holiday apartments in the rooms of the former hotel and the gate building and to convert the Orlamündesaal in the main castle into an event room.

  • Core castle

  • Forecourt

  • patio

  • Gallery in the courtyard

  • Fresco in the prayer room

  • Castle and upper village, in the foreground a family memorial stone

Legends

Place of the legendary cook's grave with "gravestones" hidden in the tall grass

Mantelburg

Lauenstein Castle is popularly referred to as "Mantelburg". This name is based on the founding legend of the castle, which is said to have been built by King Conrad I around the year 915 in order to secure the borders of his empire to the north. Originally, the building was to be built on the Black Mountain, southeast of Lauenstein, but this failed due to the intervention of dark forces: every night the walls erected the day before were destroyed again. The construction only succeeded when Konrad followed the advice of a wise hermit, relocated the building site to the current location of the castle and surrounded it with his royal cloak cut into strips to protect it from the dark forces .

Cook's grave

The cook's grave is located near the castle, on the Lauenstein fairy tale trail marked. An information board informs the hiker that according to tradition, at the end of the 16th century, under the rule of the Knights of Thüna, a cook from Lauenstein Castle was buried alive for child murder and then impaled . The conviction was made according to the laws of the Sachsenspiegel . Today only a few small boulders remind of this, which are said to be the gravestones of the cook and her child. While the legend itself is based on a real story, the two gravestones are probably just fragments of former boundary stones.

literature

Web links

Commons : Burg Lauenstein  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Burg_Lauenstein
  2. ↑ https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_MHU5AQAAMAAJ/page/n441/mode/2up/search/Lehmann
  3. ↑ https://digitalesammlungen.uni-weimar.de/viewer/image/PPN666349916/1/LOG_0001/
  4. ^ Lauenstein Castle: 100 years ago intellectuals from all over Germany poured into the Franconian Forest ; Article by Brigitte Degelmann for the Neue Presse , February 12, 2014 (online at www.ludwigsstadt.de, accessed November 5, 2014)
  5. ^ Verlag Fränkischer Tag (ed.): Harmony of opposites: holistic regional development in Bavaria, the district of Kronach . Bamberg 1992, ISBN 3-928648-05-5 , pp. 13 .
  6. ↑ Peter Fiedler, Helmtrud Wagner: Even Deep Purple were there. Neue Presse Coburg , April 21, 2011, accessed on April 21, 2011 .
  7. ↑ Peter Fiedler: Holzmann is planning a million dollar deal. Neue Presse Coburg, April 21, 2011, accessed on April 21, 2011 .
  8. ↑ Veronika Schadeck: Holzmann wants to withdraw. inFranken.de, April 12, 2012, accessed on November 9, 2012 .
  9. ↑ Brigitte Degelmann: Lauenstein Castle: Apparently sold off the table. Neue Presse Coburg, June 12, 2012, accessed on November 9, 2012 .
  10. ↑ a b Petra Bordasch, Christian Kreuzer: must provide Munich now . In: New Press Coburg . November 23, 2013, p. 7 .
  11. ^ Christian Kreuzer: Solution for Lauenstein Castle. November 9, 2012, Retrieved November 9, 2012 .
  12. ^ Christian Kreuzer: Hope in Lauenstein . In: New Press Coburg . September 28, 2013, p. 7 .
  13. ↑ Peter Fiedler: The mountain of debt continues to grow . In: New Press Coburg . June 29, 2013, p. 12 .
  14. ^ Bianca Hennings: Castle hotel decision in July . In: New Press Coburg . July 2, 2014, p. 7 .
  15. ^ Bianca Hennings: Several interested parties for the castle hotel . In: New Press Coburg . February 4, 2015, p. 9 .
  16. ↑ Veronika Schadeck: Burghotel Lauenstein: There are several interested parties. inFranken.de, February 4, 2015, accessed on February 5, 2015 .
  17. ^ Bianca Hennings: Two applicants for the castle hotel . In: New Press Coburg . January 9, 2016, p. 7 .
  18. ↑ Petra Bordasch: The future of the castle hotel is still in the dark . In: New Press Coburg . August 4, 2016, p. 9 .
  19. ↑ Life should move back into the old castle. In: inFranken.de. December 15, 2017. Retrieved December 23, 2017 .
  20. ^ Hans-Jörg Henning: Guide through Lauenstein Castle in the Franconian Forest.
  21. ^ Siegfried Scheidig: The cook's grave (= district of Kronach, Bernd Graf [Hrsg.]: Heimatkundliches Jahrbuch des Landkreises Kronach . Volume 23-2001 / 02 ). Anton Hauguth-Verlag, Kronach-Neuses 2002, ISBN 3-9803467-6-5 , p. 66-77 .