Lichtenberg Castle (Palatinate)
| Lichtenberg Castle | ||
|---|---|---|
.jpg) Lichtenberg Castle (Palatinate) |
||
| Creation time : | around 1200 | |
| Castle type : | Höhenburg, spur location | |
| Conservation status: | ruin | |
| Standing position : | Count | |
| Place: | Thallichtenberg | |
| Geographical location | 49 ° 33 '20.4 " N , 7 ° 21' 20.9" E | |
| Height: | 393.5 m above sea level NHN | |
|
||
The Lichtenberg Castle is the ruin of a Spur castle in Thallichtenberg in the Kusel district in Rhineland-Palatinate . With a length of 425 m, the castle is one of the longest castle ruins in Germany and the largest castle complex in the Palatinate.
location
Lichtenberg Castle is up to 393.5 m above sea level. NHN high mountain spur of the mountain of the same name in the North Palatinate Bergland , the 416.8 m high main summit of which is 500 m northeast. The mountain is flanked to the south by the Pfeffelbach and to the northwest by the Hesselbach. The castle lies between Thallichtenberg in the northwest, Ruthweiler in the southeast and Körborn in the northeast. To the east of the castle is a large parking lot, which is located directly on the Burgstrasse leading from Thallichtenberg to Körborn. The facility can also be reached on foot from the surrounding villages on forest paths, with Körborn only a little lower (365.9 m), while Thallichtenberg is significantly lower at 287 m.
The castle is located in the district of Thallichtenberg, the parking lot mostly on Körborner and the main summit on that of Ruthweiler.
history
The castle is mentioned for the first time in 1214 on the occasion of a legal dispute: the Counts of Veldenz illegally built it on the area of the Benedictine monastery of St. Remigius in Reims . Although the castle was therefore razed to be razed, it remained intact and still belonged to the counts, after which it was extinct in 1444, to the dukes of Pfalz-Zweibrücken , until the actual end of the duchy in 1793.
In addition to its long-standing military importance (it was occupied by French troops on the occasion of the Reunion Wars in 1693 ), it served a variety of purposes:
- It was the secondary residence of their masters and, in 1529, hosted the reformers Zwingli , Oekolampad , Butzer and Sturm , who traveled through the Marburg Religious Discussion , as guests of their masters
- It was the seat of an extensive farm of their masters
- It was the seat of the official administration, which was only moved to the city of Kusel in 1755 by Duke Christian IV .
It was never conquered or destroyed by attacks and was the only undestroyed castle in the Palatinate after the Palatinate War of Succession. Nevertheless, it was described as "neglected" and "ruinos" as early as 1693 - when it was still being used by a manor. It was badly damaged by a major fire on October 26, 1799 and has been in ruins ever since. Only the castle chapel and the land registry survived the fire unscathed, as they were at a sufficient distance from the main castle. It was still inhabited. From 1816 the area around the castle belonged to Sachsen-Coburg-Saalfeld . This exclave was named after the castle principality Lichtenberg in 1819 , but only existed until 1834, when it was given to Prussia . The decline continued under the new owners.
The castle has been a listed building since 1895 . From 1922, the outer bailey was expanded into a youth hostel. From 1979 to 1984 the tithe barn was rebuilt and the Musikantenlandmuseum was set up in it. In 1983/84 the keep was given two more storeys and was roofed over. In the last decade of the 20th century the "Geoskop" was created as a branch of the Palatinate Museum for Natural History in Bad Dürkheim. In 2016, the wooden staircase that originally led to the high entrance on the outside of the keep was replaced by an L-shaped metal staircase.
The castle has only been part of the Palatinate district of Kusel since the regional reform in 1969 .
investment
Originally the castle consisted of two small complexes that have grown together over the centuries. The older one was the lower castle at the top of the mountain spur, which had already been abandoned in the late Middle Ages. It was roughly rectangular and had a keep with a shield wall on the attack side. Only the surrounding walls have survived. The most remarkable remains of the building is the gate system with the original castle chapel on the upper floor.
Towards the end of the 13th century, the upper castle was built several hundred meters above. It originally consisted of a central, square, residential tower-like keep and an oval-shaped circular wall with buildings on the edge of houses with a narrow courtyard. It was much smaller in area than the lower castle. The entrance was on the side facing away from the attack side. In the 14th and 15th centuries, the upper castle was gradually expanded with new, spacious palaces . Around the middle of the 15th century, the castles were given a common curtain wall and thus grew together. Only a few noteworthy buildings were built on the area between the two castles. The castle chapel was only built in 1755/58. From the end of the 15th to the 16th century, the castle was built with additional walls and bulwarks v. a. reinforced against the attacking side.
Todays use
.jpg)
The square, about 33 meters high, keep can be climbed as a viewing tower during the day and offers a beautiful view of the city of Kusel in the south and the Prussian mountains in the north. In addition, the castle is now home to a restaurant, a youth hostel , the Palatinate Musikantenland Museum and the GEOSKOP primeval world museum , which was integrated into the castle in a postmodern style . In addition to paleontological finds of the Palatinate's living world around 290 to 300 million years ago, the latter shows a visualization of plate tectonics , the peculiarities of the local geology and the history of mining in the North Palatinate Uplands , with regularly changing special exhibitions (e.g. 2006: Meteorites , 2017: Mammut., 2019: Petrified Weather) enrich and expand the exhibition offer. The castle is also one of the venues for the palatia jazz jazz festival .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Map service of the landscape information system of the Rhineland-Palatinate Nature Conservation Administration (LANIS map) ( notes ) Scale 1: 1,000
- ↑ Article Burg Lichtenberg , abbreviated reproduction from: Jürgen Keddigkeit, Ulrich Burkhart, Rolf Übel (ed.), Palatinate Burgenlexikon , Vol. 3 (IN), Kaiserslautern 2005
literature
- Alexander Thon (Ed.): How swallow nests glued to the rock. Castles in the Northern Palatinate . 1st edition Schnell + Steiner, Regensburg 2005, pp. 94–99, ISBN 3-7954-1674-4 .
- Palatinate Castle Lexicon (Contributions to Palatinate History 12.3), Bd.3: IN, ed. v. Jürgen Keddigkeit , Ulrich Burkhart u. Rolf Übel , Kaiserslautern 2005, ISBN 3-927754-51-X
- Ernst Schworm and Hartmut Stepp: Burg Lichtenberg , Görres-Verlag, 2nd edition 2002, ISBN 3-935690-10-X
Web links
- Thallichtenberg Youth Hostel in Lichtenberg Castle
- Environmental museum "Geoskop" at Lichtenberg Castle
- Extract from the Palatinate castle lexicon: Lichtenberg Castle
- Photo album Lichtenberg castle ruins
- Reconstruction drawing by Wolfgang Braun