Merlau Castle

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Merlau Castle
Merlau

Merlau

Alternative name (s): burgk merla, (1376) Merlau Castle
Castle type : Location
Conservation status: Burgstall
Place: Mücke - Merlau
Geographical location 50 ° 37 '30.8 "  N , 9 ° 1' 53.5"  E Coordinates: 50 ° 37 '30.8 "  N , 9 ° 1' 53.5"  E
Height: 267  m above sea level NHN
Merlau Castle (Hesse)
Merlau Castle

The Merlau Castle , later named Schloss Merlau after the new building , is an abandoned castle in the Schlossgasse 11 area of the Merlau von Mücke district in the Vogelsbergkreis in Hesse .

Geographical location

The castle, which cannot be precisely located, probably stood on the site of a later castle building that was demolished in the 19th century.

It is also possible that it is a tower castle at about 271  m above sea level. NHN high church hill acted. The castle was first mentioned in 1279 and again in 1489 in old documents. The street name “Burgstrasse” could remind of this presumed location. But there is also the possibility that the street name refers to the "Old Castle" - a larger, probably fortified manor house, which also belonged to the Lords of Merlau.

history

Coat of arms of the von Merlau

The Merlau Castle was built by the Lords of Merlau, who have been documented since at least 1199, and was mentioned in 1279. On May 25, 1302, the castle of Rauschenberg was pledged to Gottfried VI. von Ziegenhain by Otto I of Hesse , a son of Landgrave Heinrich I of Hesse . In 1337, Merlau Castle and the Bobenhausen and Felda courts were pledged by Landgrave Heinrich II to the brothers Johann and Heinrich von Eisenbach , who were to use part of the construction of the Merlau Castle . After 1343 (return of the fief to the Landgraviate), the castle came in large parts to the Landgraviate of Hesse , since then also known as Merlau Castle . In 1490 there are several documents from the Hessian Landgrave Wilhelm , in which the von Merlau brothers were awarded a bower, two castle seats within the Merlau Castle and two farmsteads , as well as further fiefs , tithes and accessories. Only in 1576 was Landgrave Ludwig IV. , The only Landgrave of Hesse-Marburg , the sole owner of the castle and town. It is unclear whether the castle served as the basis for the later palace construction due to its location, which cannot be documented precisely.

Merlau Castle

Merlau castle ruins, illustration from around 1853
The medieval bridge over the Seenbach in Merlau, built in 1599 to the west as a crossing after the castle was built

The construction of the Merlauer Schloss dates from 1583 to 1591, commissioned by Landgrave Ludwig IV and carried out by his master builder Ebert Baldewein . It was a moated castle , in which the moat could be flooded all around by dammed ponds as required.

In the roughly 250 years of its existence, the sizeable building complex has suffered multiple damage, as the castle has served as quarters for the troops moving through in all wars since 1618 and the place and population have been repeatedly subjected to storms, pillage and looting.

In the Topographia Germaniae by Matthäus Merian from 1646/1655 Merlau is described as follows:

"Not far from this place is the imaginary castle Mörla / or Merla / in a valley vnnd Wiesengrund / which LandGraff Ludwig elder has most gracefully inherited: And in this area there are many beautiful forests / and comfortable hunts."

- Matthäus Merian : Topographia Hassiae et Regionum Vicinarum

There is a legend that the castle should have "as many windows as days in the year". The palace was an irregular multi-wing complex, probably three-story with Renaissance gables and two floors in the roof area, around a closed inner courtyard. In the courtyard there was a tall tower, to the west there was another slender, raised tower, probably a stair tower . On the western side of the stream there was a kind of bower or fixed house and the whole thing was surrounded by a wall.

Preserved double coat of arms in the Merlauer church

In the wars of revolution after 1790, the troubled residents of Merlau saw the castle as the reason for the past multiple attacks, they covered the roof and thus initiated the decline. In the following decades it was used as a "stone quarry" for building houses. The final demolition took place in the middle of the 19th century on the orders of Ludwig X. The remaining stones were used between 1853 and 1857 for the new construction of the Merlau church . An elaborate double coat of arms of the former castle ( Hesse and Württemberg - probably for the builders of the castle, Ludwig IV and his first wife, Duchess Hedwig von Württemberg ) is located in the church vestibule.

The moat of the castle was filled in and the entire terrain was filled with earth.

At the site of the former palace there were foundations , probably a bower . In the pond next to it there are remains of the former moat .

Vorwerkshof and Herrnmühle

The Vorwerkshof (mill, stable and barn) was the agricultural property that supplied the residents of the castle with food and was located northeast of the castle in the area north of today's Schloßgasse . Even today the streets around the Herrnmühle are called Vorwerkshof and Burgwaldstraße . The barn ("Scheuer") of the Vorwerk burned down in the 1920s and was rebuilt. The stable of the Vorwerk is still largely unchanged.

The Herrnmühle, also known as the “Herrschaftliche Mühle”, was part of the castle and still stands today. In the centuries of its existence, the Herrnmühle has often been enlarged and technically rebuilt. From 1807 it was also used as a sawmill and weaving mill, and from 1920 it was in operation as an electricity supplier for all of Merlau. Today there are holiday apartments in the Herrnmühle. The Herrnmühle is connected to the castle in various legends and fairy tales , for example a white woman always had her walk from the Herrnmühle to the castle.

literature

  • Rudolf Knappe: Medieval castles in Hessen. 800 castles, castle ruins and fortifications. 2nd Edition. Wartberg-Verlag, Gudensberg-Gleichen 1995, ISBN 3-86134-228-6 , p. 239 f.
  • Ludwig Sartorius: Mücke-Merlau. Past and face of a community. Self-published, Mücke-Merlau 1992.

Web links

Commons : Burg Merlau  - collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Burg Merlau, Vogelsbergkreis. Historical local lexicon for Hesse (as of May 21, 2010). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS). Hessian State Office for Historical Cultural Studies (HLGL), accessed on November 27, 2012 .
  2. ↑ a b Burg Merlau - All around Merlau at hobstallstowwe.de
  3. ↑ Gottfried VI. (Goat grove)
  4. ↑ The use of the terms Burg Merlau and Schloss Merlau in the same sentence leaves some questions unanswered. In addition, Heinrich I is incorrectly stated here as feudal lord. See: CF Günther: Pictures from Hessian Prehistory. Darmstadt 1853, p. 148.
  5. ↑ Grunberg in: 7. Topographia Hassiae et Regionum Vicinarum (Hessen), 1646/1655 etc.
  6. ↑ Description based on Merian's drawings and building description of Merlau Castle in the Wiki of the project “Renaissance Castles in Hesse” at the Germanic National Museum
  7. ↑ Requests for the release of building material from the old castle church for the construction of the new Merlau church are in the Hessian State Archives in Darmstadt , dated as early as 1823/24
  8. ^ Entry on Merlau in the private database "Alle Burgen".
  9. ↑ Robert Keller: The Vorwerkshof with the Vorwerksmühle. Self-published, Mücke-Merlau 2012.
  10. ^ Theodor Bindewald : Oberhessisches Sagenbuch. New increased edition Frankfurt am Main 1873, therein No. 72: The last Schloßjungfer in Merlau. P. 72.
  11. ^ Theodor Bindewald: Legends and fairy tales from Upper Hesse . Mikado-Verlag, Atzbach 1980, ISBN 3-8124-0026-X .