Meistersel Castle
| Meistersel Castle | ||
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 Remnants of the wall of the palace in the upper castle |
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| Alternative name (s): | Modeneck Castle, Modenbach Castle | |
| Creation time : | 1000 to 1100 | |
| Castle type : | Höhenburg, rocky location | |
| Conservation status: | Enclosing walls | |
| Standing position : | Clericals, nobles | |
| Place: | Ramberg | |
| Geographical location | 49 ° 16 '32 " N , 8 ° 1' 30" E | |
| Height: | 492 m above sea level NHN | |
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The castle Meistersel (also Castle Modeneck or fashion Bacher Castle is called), the ruin of a rock castle in Ramberg in Palatinate . It is located on a 492 meter high hilltop overlooking the Modenbach valley , near the “ Drei Buchen ” pass on the road from Ramberg to Edenkoben .
It is one of the oldest castles in the Palatinate, the name of which goes back to the words "Meister" and "Saal" or to the term "Meister des Saales". It can therefore be assumed that the ministerials of the Reichsburg Trifels were resident on Meistersel . The other name "Modeneck" comes from the nearby Modenbach valley.
history
The castle can look back on almost 1000 years of history, as it is mentioned for the first time in a deed of donation from the Bishop of Speyer , Johann I von Kraichgau , dated the Epiphany in 1100 , who handed the castle over to the diocese that year. Its exact founding date is unknown, but it is believed to be in the 11th century.
At the end of the 12th century, the complex received the status of an imperial castle and probably served to protect Trifels Castle. During this Hohenstaufen era, the von Meistersel family of knights named themselves after her. Some of its members were mentioned several times as bailiffs : for example, the Reichsministeriale Heinrich von Meistersele in 1198, then Siegfried von Meistersel and Ulrich and Jakob von Meistersel. When the family in 1277 became extinct in the male line, the castle reverted to King Rudolf von Habsburg , who around 1300 the Lords of Ochsenstein , an Alsatian , noble family with its fief .
In the middle of the 14th century the property was divided and the complex became a Ganerbeburg . Up to eight noble families had a share in it. Among the owners are Prince-Elector Ruprecht II of the Palatinate in 1391 and, from 1404, the Bishop of Speyer, Raban von Helmstatt .
During the German Peasant War , Meistersel Castle was partially burned down in 1525, but was rebuilt soon afterwards. Only destruction during the Thirty Years' War sealed the end of the facility. It was not rebuilt and it fell into ruin.
In 1935 the castle came into the private ownership of the Ludwigshafen factory owner Friedrich Raschig . Until about 1995 it was administered by the community of heirs. The headlines were made by the next owner who wanted to sell the castle via an internet auction house in early 2006 . After it was reported that the highest bidder had close contacts to the NPD , the state government of Rhineland-Palatinate announced in April 2006 that it would exercise its right of first refusal , as a private person was overwhelmed with maintaining the monument . Regardless of the legal dispute that followed, the country began taking security measures worth 50,000 euros in 2009. In March 2010, the then private owner and the state of Rhineland-Palatinate reached a settlement before the Marburg district court : The castle came into the possession of the state, which in return paid the previous owner 7,500 euros. The further costs for the renovation were determined by state conservation, geotechnical and monument conservation studies. In August 2011, the State Office for Property and Construction, the State Office for Monument Preservation of Rhineland-Palatinate and the Ministry of Finance agreed on the most necessary security work. The repair work began in the following October. With the security and expansion work, the state is investing around three million euros in the castle. Since the beginning of the measures, the ruin has been a construction site and closed to visitors.
description
The entire facility is in a very poor condition and is in great danger of collapsing. Restoration work is in progress (2019). The impressive remains of the walls and moats that have been preserved still reveal the earlier tripartite division of the castle complex.
The northerly by a surrounding wall surrounded Vorwerk is characterized by a broad, beaten out of the rock moat of the core Burg separated. Its origins date back to the 15th century.
The core castle is divided into an upper and a lower castle. The latter used to have an elaborate, double gate system as a connection to the Vorwerk , of which only the inner pointed arch gate remains .
The majority of the buildings in the lower castle have now completely or almost completely disappeared. Only the vaulted cellar and remains of the wall of the so-called “stone house” still exist.
The upper castle lies on a 15 meter high, narrow rock. It could be reached from the lower castle by stairs carved into the rock. A section that was intentionally left out during its construction was spanned by a wooden structure in earlier times, which could be destroyed in the event of a defense in order to secure access to the upper castle.
As in the case of the lower castle, only remnants of the upper castle have been preserved. In terms of art history, there is a window niche in the Gothic palace , which has a four-part window with pointed arches of the same height, as can otherwise only be found in Alsace.
The construction of the castle well is also interesting , the well chamber of which can be reached via a rock staircase from the upper castle. Its shaft is driven through the rock from there and is also accessible from the lower castle. As an additional water supply, the upper castle had a cistern , of which some remains of the wall have been preserved.
From the upper castle you have a wide view of the Rhine valley , but also of the Trifels, the Ramburg and large parts of the Palatinate Forest .
literature
- Rüdiger Bernges: rock castles in Wasgau . 6th edition. BINSY, Wuppertal 2005, ISBN 3-930376-25-3 , pp. 237-240.
- Alexander Thon (Ed.): "... like a banned, inaccessible magic castle". Castles in the southern Palatinate . 2nd Edition. Schnell & Steiner, Regensburg 2005, ISBN 3-7954-1570-5 , pp. 106–111.
- Alexander Thon, Jürgen Keddigkeit : Castle Meistersel. A single study from the "Palatinate Castle Lexicon" . In: Castles and Palaces . Vol. 42, No. 1, 2001, ISSN 0007-6201 , pp. 40-47.
- Alexander Thon, Rolf Übel , Dieter Barz: Meistersel . In: Jürgen Keddigkeit (Hrsg.): Palatinate Burgenlexikon (= contributions to Palatinate history. Volume 12/3). Institute for Palatinate History and Folklore, Kaiserslautern 2005, ISBN 3-927754-54-4 , pp. 533-548.
- Rolf Übel: Ramburg, Meistersel, Frankenburg, near Ramburg district Südliche Weinstrasse (= castles of the southern Palatinate. Volume 3). Verlag für Burgenkunde und Pfalzforschung, Landau 1999, ISBN 3-929893-07-X .
Web links
- Site of the Meistersel Castle
- Entry on Castle Meistersel in the scientific database " EBIDAT " of the European Castle Institute
- Photo gallery on Historische-orte.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Rhine Palatinate. Südwestdeutsche Zeitung. Edition March 11, 2010.
- ↑ The Rhine Palatinate. Südwestdeutsche Zeitung. Edition July 1, 2011.
- ↑ The Rhine Palatinate. Südwestdeutsche Zeitung. Edition of November 30, 2011.
- ↑ SWR-Landesschau: Blocking and construction costs, March 11, 2015 , accessed on March 1, 2016.