Neuburg Castle (Untervaz)

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Neuburg Castle
The Neuburg

The Neuburg

Creation time : around 1300
Castle type : Hilltop castle
Conservation status: ruin
Place: Untervaz
Geographical location 46 ° 54 '46 "  N , 9 ° 32' 39"  E Coordinates: 46 ° 54 '46 "  N , 9 ° 32' 39"  E ; CH1903:  760381  /  one hundred and ninety-seven thousand eight hundred ninety-three
Height: 600  m above sea level M.
Neuburg Castle (Canton of Graubünden)
Neuburg Castle

The Castle Neuburg is the ruins of a hilltop castle on 600  m above sea level. M. southwest of Untervaz in the Swiss canton of Graubünden in Switzerland . It is located on the left side of the Rhine about 50 meters above the valley floor on a steep rock head.

In the Middle Ages the main road led to the villages on the right side of the Rhine. That is why there were no customs rights associated with owning the castle. Today the ruin is easily accessible on foot via a narrow road (no driving).

investment

The plant consists of a large-fortified Palas and an obtained only in residues ring wall on the west and north sides. This enclosed a courtyard with a cistern . The castle gate was on the west side. The well-preserved hall is one of the largest of its kind in Raetia .

The Neuburg stands out due to its extraordinary size; the four-storey hall forms a rectangle measuring 12 by 29 meters. The wall thickness is 1.5 meters at the bottom and decreases towards the top. Inside, two walls separate the building into three roughly equal parts. On the mountain side, an entrance about two meters high leads to the middle part of the castle.

The bottom three rooms were not connected by doors, but from above by separate wooden stairs or staircases. In view of the sparse window gaps, these rooms are likely to have served primarily as storage rooms, possibly also as a prison at times.

The upper three floors are unevenly developed. Seating niches and a lavatory in the northern part indicate that it must have been inhabited. A missing wall plaster can be explained by a wooden panel that has meanwhile disappeared . In the middle part, the kitchen is indicated by two outwardly leading rubble stones. On the south side was a room with stove heating. A window niche contains incised drawings from the Middle Ages; armed riders and various animals are recognizable. The drawings were discovered in 1984 during security work on behalf of the Swiss Castle Association. The doors on the outer wall are likely to have led either to the lavatory core or to a wooden portico .

Hardly any rubble around the building suggests that the masonry of the tower has been preserved up to its original height. A gable roof over the longitudinal axis is most likely to be the roof construction .

The rooms are connected to one another with metal ladders. The westernmost of the three rooms in the hall is filled with rubble.

history

The Neuburg around 1835
Residential floor with beam holes

As a monumental building with stately interior fittings, the castle complex belongs to the late period of castle building in Raetia. It is unclear whether the castle was built in place of an older, lost building.

The Neuburg was probably built around 1300 by the Thumb von Neuburg family . Their headquarters was the eponymous Neuburg (Kobach) in Vorarlberg . It is not known when the Thumbs first appeared in the Chur region . They probably settled in Untervaz in the early 13th century and built Rappenstein Castle there . Friedrich II. Thumb von Neuburg (died after 1312) and his brother Schwicker II owned the Neuburg near Untervaz . Two descendants of the knights Thumb v. Neuburg-Untervaz were buried in Chur Cathedral around 1408/09.

The Neuburg was first mentioned in a document in 1345. It was about a contract between the two brothers Siegfried and Johann Thumb and the Bishop of Chur. Siegfried and Johann entered the service of the bishop for three years and had to keep the castle open for him : “… our gemainer vesti diu haisset die Nüwburg.” In 1360 the castle was transferred to the brothers Heinz and Martin Buwix, who had a service contract with Austria had completed and promised to serve a year with two helmets and the fortresses Neu-Aspermont , Flums and Neuburg.

From 1385 the Thumb von Neuburg were again the owners of the castle. In 1396, Baron Ulrich Brun von Rhäzüns complained that he had taken "Frik Tumb Ems sin vich ze Emptz and drove it to the Nüwenburg". Around 1400 Johann von Neuburg entered the feudal sovereignty of the Bishop of Chur, which made him politically dependent on the bishopric.

In 1450 the rule came to the Ravensburg merchant family Mötteli von Rappenstein, who also owned Rappenstein Castle . In 1496 Mötteli sold the castle and its lordship for 2150  guilders to Bishop Ortlieb von Chur, who appointed Hans Lendy as bailiff on the Neuburg.

When on November 11, 1577 the bishop and the cathedral chapter sold it together with the rulership rights for 6000 guilders to the municipality of Untervaz, the Neuburg was already in ruins. So it must have been abandoned during the 16th century.

literature

  • Otto P. Clavadetscher, Werner Meyer : The castle book of Graubünden . Orell Füssli, Zurich 1984, ISBN 3-280-01319-4 .
  • Werner Meyer: Castles of Switzerland . Volume 3. Silva Verlag, Zurich 1983.
  • Emil Stauber: The gentlemen Thumb von Neuburg (1540-1621). In: History of the gentlemen and the community of Mammern. Frauenfeld 1934, p. 69 ff.

Web links

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