Neudahn Castle
| Neudahn Castle | ||
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 The outer castle gate (left) and the striking battery towers |
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| Creation time : | before 1240 | |
| Castle type : | Rock castle in spur location | |
| Conservation status: | Ruin, partially restored | |
| Standing position : | Ministerials | |
| Place: | Dahn | |
| Geographical location | 49 ° 9 '47 " N , 7 ° 45' 26" E | |
| Height: | 310 m above sea level NHN | |
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The rock castle Neudahn in the southwestern Palatinate Forest (federal state Rhineland-Palatinate ) rises at the northern end of an elongated ridge near the town of Dahn . The core area of the castle is located on one of the sandstone cliffs that are typical of the Dahner Felsenland .
geography
Neudahn is located 2 km northwest of Dahn on the right of the Lauter , which is still called Wieslauter here in the upper reaches , on a foothill of the Kauertberg about 90 m above the valley floor. The castle rock reaches 310 m, the lower castle 290 m. Directly below the castle, the Moosbach , which was dammed up into a small woog for the former operation of a mill , flows into the Wieslauter from the right.
history
The name "Neudahn" is a bit confusing because the castle is older than Grafendahn in the Dahner Burgengruppe , albeit younger than Altdahn . Their location enabled them to protect and block the road leading there through the Wieslautertal, on whose route the B 427 and the Wieslauterbahn run side by side today .
The castle was probably built shortly before 1240 by order of the Bishop of Speyer ; because from 1233 to 1236 he was Conrad IV of Dahn . The executive ministerial was Heinrich von Dahn , who is also documented as Heinrich Mursel von Kropsberg . Presumably he received the castle from the beginning as a hereditary fief . His second name, as well as later inheritance, indicate that there were family ties to the southern Palatinate - Kropsburg , Burrweiler .
The castle was first mentioned on May 3, 1285 as Than Castle , whereby the list of the associated goods in the document shows that it must be Neudahn.
Already a hundred years after the castle was built, Mursel's family died out and the castle became the property of the related Altdahn line. Presumably burned down in the four-man war in 1438 and then rebuilt, the system was again badly damaged in the Peasants' War in 1525. However, since King Henry II of France stayed at the castle in 1552 , it must have been thoroughly renovated beforehand. After the last Dahn knight, Ludwig II, died in his castle in Burrweiler in 1603, Neudahn fell back to the diocese of Speyer . From then on, the castle served as the official residence of the episcopal bailiff until French troops finally destroyed it in 1689 at the beginning of the War of the Palatinate Succession .
Today it presents itself to the visitor essentially in the form that it assumed during the renovation and expansion phases after 1525 and after the last destruction.
Security and restoration measures took place in the 1970s. The complex is looked after by the General Directorate for Cultural Heritage of Rhineland-Palatinate, Directorate for Castles, Palaces, Antiquities , and is one of the best preserved castles in the southern Palatinate Forest, along with Berwartstein, which is 10 km away .
investment
Core castle
From the oldest - late Staufer - Castle are processed vertically on the, almost 20 m high core rock merely another cistern at the western end and the southern walls of the small palace to find with window and door systems. At the north-western end of the castle rock to the south was a late medieval residential building, to the west of it a well . A formerly plastered stair tower from the same time, on the northwestern edge of the castle rock, leads up to the upper castle. As with many castles, the current entrance on the ground floor is probably not authentic and was designed for today's visitors, as the year 1975 above the entrance speaks for. It is also outside the inner castle gate. The historical entrance gate can be seen on the inside of the gate on the left at a higher height.
The dominant image of the castle is provided by the two approximately 24 m high four-storey battery towers on the opposite side, which are leaned against the cliffs of the upper castle. They date from the first half of the 16th century and were accessed via another stair tower to the north. The western one is about 7 m in diameter, the eastern about 10 m, the wall thickness is about 3 m. Two gun openings (so-called mouth sockets ) in the southern battery tower are designed in the form of lion grimaces, while the rest are mostly goggle-shaped mouth sockets.
Outer bailey
Remains of a tower with a diameter of 7 m can still be found to the left of the former gate in the southeast. From this tower run to the west, then to the north, parts of a strong defensive wall that has completely disappeared on the steep north and north-east side of the slope. It led to the flanking tower on the north side of the facility.
To continue the castle hill to the east-southeast, the complex was protected by a wedge-shaped bastion , which is also considered to be Neudahn's "identification mark". The shape was designed to prevent bullets from hitting head-on. It protected the upper castle on the flatter mountain slope there. The bastion and the turrets show that in the late Middle Ages the castle was significantly modified and the lords of the castle took into account the introduction of firearms.
literature
- Eckhard Braun: Palatinate castles and firearms. Meyer, Hauenstein 1997, pp. 467-482, ISBN 3-927891-07-X .
- Stefan Grathoff: The Dahner castles. Alt-Dahn - Grafendahn - Tanstein. Guide booklet 21. Edition Castles, Palaces, Antiquities Rhineland-Palatinate. Schnell and Steiner, Regensburg 2003. ISBN 3-7954-1461-X .
- Otto Piper : Castle studies. Construction and history of castles. 3rd edition 1912; Reprint: Anaconda, Cologne 2011, ISBN 978-3-86647-674-5 , pp. 613f.
- Alexander Thon (Ed.): ... like a banned, inaccessible magic castle. Castles in the southern Palatinate . 2nd, improved edition. Schnell and Steiner, Regensburg 2005, pp. 112–117, ISBN 3795415705 .
Web links
- Entry on Neudahn Castle in the scientific database " EBIDAT " of the European Castle Institute
- Reconstruction drawing by Wolfgang Braun
Individual evidence
- ↑ Grathoff 2003, p. 4 (see literature )
- ↑ Braun 1997, p. 471.