Pfreimd Castle

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City center of Pfreimd

The lost Pfreimd Castle was located in the Upper Palatinate town of Pfreimd in the Schwandorf district of Bavaria (Schlosshof 11 and 13).

history

Pfreimd castle and settlement were built on a slight elevation in a wide valley low on the Pfreimd , which flows into the Naab not far from the village . An old road ran here in the Naab Valley .

Pfreimd has been documented since 1118 at the latest. A castle must have existed here as the centerpiece of a fortified place as early as 1156, as a Meginhardus de Phrimede was already documented at this point . In addition, in reports that are not historically verifiable, there is talk of a fortified courtyard at this point, which is said to have existed as early as the 9th century. In 1216 it was separated from the mother parish of Perschen and the village of Pfreimd became its own parish. The Lords of Rotteneck were the founders of the church in Pfreimd. The right of patronage was granted to the Lower Bavarian dukes and from 1332 to the Landgraves of Leuchtenberg. A document from 1311 shows that a moated castle stood here ( Pfreimd .. ipso fluuio Pfreimd circumdante castrum ).

Monument to Ulrich II von Leuchtenberg next to the renaissance castle Pfreimd

Pfreimd came to the Landgraviate of Leuchtenberg in the 14th century . In 1322 the Lower Bavarian dukes Heinrich II. , Otto IV. And Heinrich III. (Grandson of the buyer of Pfreimd, Heinrich I. Duke of Lower Bavaria ) their house in Pfreimd. The Landgraf Ulrich I did it by Konrad von Hohenfels triggered; he was to build a fortress here by agreement with the dukes. In 1332, Duke Heinrich III. the castle as free property to the landgrave . In 1366 Ulrich II von Leuchtenberg gave the castle to Elector Ruprecht I as a fief . When the property was divided in 1366, Landgrave Ulrich II received the Pfreimd fortress. The landgraves left their seat about 15 km away at the Leuchtenberg Castle and from then on resided in Pfreimd. The town of Pfreimd was established here between 1366 and 1372 and is documented as such in 1372. In 1372, Landgrave Ulrich II exempted the residents of Pfreimd from all duties and taxes for a period of six years in order to attract new residents. As early as 1399, the city was surrounded by a wall and a suburb had emerged outside (the so-called Freyung , here in the part of the city not secured with a wall the city judge's office was in the building Freyung 19). After 1399 Pfreimd was only referred to as a market and from 1491 again as a town.

After the destruction in the Hussite Wars and after a fire around 1481, Pfreimd received city rights in 1497; the town charter comes from Landgrave Johann IV. Since 1514 the Landgraves operated a mint that was housed in the castle. In 1517 Landgrave Johann IV sought to promote mining with the help of his Pfreimder judge, the mint master, a citizen of Pfreimde and experts from the Ore Mountains. In the landgrave's residence town of Pfreimd, a court (city court) is mentioned for the first time in 1372, whereby the landgrave was entitled to the lower jurisdiction . In 1546, Elector Friedrich II of the Palatinate granted the Landgrave neck jurisdiction , but in the Heidelberg Treaty he reserved the sovereign authority. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Pfreimd was referred to as Hofmark with a maleficent brought here . This resulted in the Pfreimd City Court, which lasted until 1803. Thereafter Pfreimd was assigned to the district court of Nabburg , which was formed on September 19, 1803 . At the turn of the 19th century, Pfreimd was the seat of the city judge's office, a toll office and a toll office.

The last landgrave was Maximilian Adam , died on November 1, 1646 in Nördlingen . As a result, Duke Albrecht VI. of Bavaria by Emperor Ferdinand III. enfeoffed. The Duke was married to an aunt of the last Leuchtenberger, Landgrave Mechthildis von Leuchtenberg . In 1650 he left this county to his brother Elector Maximilian of Bavaria in exchange for the county of Haag . The slopes from Pfreimd were drawn in separately to Amberg. Elector Maximilian I bequeathed the Landgraviate of Leuchtenberg to his second oldest son, Maximilian Philipp . A secondary education of the Wittelsbach family was created here . After the death of Duke Maximilian Philipp in 1705, Emperor Josef I. Leuchtenberg moved in as an imperial fief and placed it under the imperial administration. After the devastating defeat of Elector Max Emanuel in the War of the Spanish Succession , Leopold Mathias Fürst von Lamberg was enfeoffed with Leuchtenberg in 1708. The Elector of the Palatinate granted Prince von Lamberg Pfreimd with sovereignty in 1709. He was followed in 1711 by his father, Prince Franz Josef von Lamberg , who was succeeded by his eldest son, Franz Anton . In the Peace of Rastatt , Elector Max Emanuel was reinstated in his earlier possessions and Pfreimd also came into the hands of the Elector. After the death of Elector Max III. Josef moved in with Empress Maria Theresia Leuchtenberg in 1777 and in 1779 was enfeoffed to Elector Karl Theodor .

Excavations of the masonry of Pfreimd Castle
Renaissance castle Pfreimd
Renaissance portal to Pfreimd Castle
Old chancellery and stables of the Landgräflich-Leuchtenberg castle

The castle of Pfreimd then and now

After excavations to the west of the parish church, there were indications of two previous wooden buildings. According to the finds and a bone sample dated using the C-14 method , the oldest post construction is believed to date from the 7th century. After leveling, a second wooden structure was built in the same place. The most recent ceramic finds date from the 10th and 11th centuries. Then a first stone building was built here, which was part of the castle complex. The base of a Romanesque biforic window from the third quarter of the 12th century has been preserved. The castle was fortified with a propugnacula , a wooden defensive structure, which has been handed down in writing around 1300 . In the southeast of the complex stood a small square tower, the foundation of which rested on wooden piles. Together with a simultaneous masonry on the preserved castle wing, it was part of a gate system. Its construction depends on the construction work of Landgrave Ulrich von Leuchtenberg, documented in 1322 .

A building description of the castle is handed down from 1661, six residential and functional buildings are named, a "Black Tower", two stair towers and a castle moat with drawbridge. According to later cadastral plans, an elongated oval system with an area of ​​approx. 140 × 200 m can be seen here. The buildings, including the parish church in the southern part, were grouped around an irregular inner courtyard. The parish and castle church served as the burial place of the Leuchtenbergers (the oldest surviving tombstone is that of Landgrave Leopold ; † 1463).

Between 1480 and 1520 the medieval tower was demolished and the moat moved a few meters to the south. There was a great hall with 1.9 m thick walls and barrel-vaulted cellars. In 1534/35 it was decided to build a kennel or embankment wall between the moat and the castle's outer wall. One of these late Gothic barrel-vaulted cellars has been preserved in the so-called Benefiziatenhaus (Schlosshof 1), as has the remains of the palace walls . The excavated wall remains of the palace complex were not backfilled, but are permanently accessible to the public in the form of a walk-in archaeological basement. In one of the large vaulted rooms, the building-time flooring made of river pebbles was preserved and supplemented; missing floor surfaces were covered with solid brick material.

Two buildings can still be traced back to the renaissance castle from the beginning of the 16th century , the building Schloßhof 10 (here the year 1534 can be found) and Schloßhof 11/13 in the north of the complex (this is with two original portals from the late Renaissance, each with a Leuchtenbergic and Baden coat of arms). One of the portals has a building inscription by Landgrave Georg Ludwig from 1590. Alterations to the castle can be proven for 1534 (castle courtyard 10) as well as for the 1550s and for 1583/90. According to the description from 1661, the building with the prince's apartments, adjoining the parish church, now formed the west wing of the complex. In the north there was a building with a kitchen, dining room, office and court chapel. This was followed by another large building with functional rooms (including an office, registry and library) on the first floor and a large ballroom on the second floor. According to the inscription, this wing was rebuilt in a short time in 1590 after the old buildings were demolished. This completed the remodeling of the medieval castle.

literature

  • Dieter Bernd: Vohenstrauss . In: Historical Atlas of Bavaria , part of Old Bavaria . Series I, issue 39. Komm. Für Bayerische Landesgeschichte, Munich 1977, ISBN 3-7696-9900-9 ( digitized version ).
  • Pfreimd in: Courtyards and residences in the late medieval empire. A dynastic topographical handbook (pp. 450–452). (= Residency Research, Volume 15.I). Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Ostfildern 2003, ISBN 3-7995-4515-8 .

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ A new showcase for archeology in the Upper Palatinate
  2. ^ Wolf-Armin von Reitzenstein (1986): Lexicon of Bavarian Place Names. Beck, Munich.
  3. ↑ Dieter Bernd, 1977, p. 75ff.

Coordinates: 49 ° 29 ′ 39.5 ″  N , 12 ° 10 ′ 46.6 ″  E