Pleystein Castle

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Pleystein Castle
City view from Pleystein after Matthäus Merian

City view from Pleystein after Matthäus Merian

Creation time : 13th Century
Castle type : Hilltop castle
Conservation status: Burgstall
Standing position : Ministeriale, later high nobility
Place: Pleystein
Geographical location 49 ° 38 '46.3 "  N , 12 ° 24' 41.6"  E Coordinates: 49 ° 38 '46.3 "  N , 12 ° 24' 41.6"  E
Pleystein Castle (Bavaria)
Pleystein Castle

The Outbound Castle Pleystein was the center of the Upper Palatinate town of Pleystein in Neustadt an der Waldnaab in Bavaria ; Founded as a ministerial castle, it was later the seat of the Landgraves of Leuchtenberg and then the seat of the Pleystein administration.

location

The hilltop castle was located on a rose quartz rock , 38 m high and steeply sloping , in the middle of the town of Pleystein , which is known as the Kreuzberg . In place of the castle there is the new Baroque Kreuzbergkirche, rebuilt in 1902, and a Salesian monastery right next to it. On the former castle hill leads u. a. a steep way of the cross .

history

The Pleysteiner are a branch line of the Waldthurner and the Waldauer , who were resident in the northern Upper Palatinate. An Albertus de Plisteine ​​is mentioned for the first time in 1242 as a witness of a contract between the Margrave Berthold von Hohenburg and the Regensburg Bishop Seyfried , in which the Margrave, with the consent of his siblings, handed over the Rohrbach and Hohenburg Castle to the bishop and received it back as a fief . Albertus von Pleystein was probably a cleric of the bishopric of Regensburg . As such, he tested again in 1243, when Margrave Diepold von Hohenburg confirmed his brother's contract. On July 25, 1260, Fridericus de Pleistein appeared as a witness to a contract concluded in Regensburg. A Heinrich von Pleystein worked in 1261 on a contract that was concluded at Trausnitz Castle and in which goods were handed over to the Waldsassen monastery . In this Berthold and Ulrich von Waldthurn are referred to as the brothers of Heinrich von Pleystein. The Pleysteiners had a crenellated white tower in their coat of arms in the red field, which corresponds to the coat of arms of the Waldthurnians.

In the second half of the 13th century, most of the Pleysteiner's goods came to the Landgraves of Leuchtenberg . On June 2, 1284, Landgrave Friedrich II left his uncle Friedrich III. , the Burgrave of Nuremberg , the Pleystein Castle as a pledge. On June 2, 1309, the sister of Landgrave Ulrich I , Beatrix von Paulsdorf , renounced her rights to the Falkenberg , Neuhaus and Schwarzenschwall castles in Pleystein . Pleystein is also mentioned in the house contract of Pavia of August 4, 1329, in which Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian ceded the Rhine Palatinate and Upper Palatinate to the Count Palatinate . Landgrave Ulrich I lived in the castle himself; In 1331 he received important privileges for the city of Pleystein from Emperor Ludwig IV. On May 29, 1349, the Landgraves of Leuchtenberg joined the land peace concluded by King Charles IV with the Franconian estates and cities. Nevertheless, Charles IV supported the demands of the Count Palatine, and so the Landgraves Ulrich II and Johann I had to send their previously free possession of the Pleystein rule with other places and castles, such as Reichenstein Castle , to the later emperor as a Bohemian feudal system ; At that time, Pleystein was assigned to the Kingdom of Bohemia as a feudum honorabile , but the Leuchtenbergers were granted the right "for ever" to receive these goods as a fiefdom of the Bohemian crown. Rüdiger the old Pleysteiner and his sons Fränzel and Wolfhard waived their claims to various goods in Pleystein in exchange for goods in Altenstadt and Vohenstrauss on April 2, 1357.

On January 28, 1366, Landgraves Ulrich I and Johann I decided to separate property, in which the town and Castle of Pleystein fell to Landgrave Johann. In 1381 Landgrave Johann left the administration of the Pleystein dominion to his two sons Johann II and Sigost. At that time the city of Pleystein was expanded and surrounded with new walls; this work was completed in 1391. In the same year the city was given a freedom letter with a market right . On October 6, 1392, Duke Albrecht I visited the landgraves at Pleystein Castle; on this occasion the Zenger feud was also settled.

In Bohemia, King Wenceslaus IV succeeded his father Charles IV as the Bohemian and Roman-German King in 1378 . Accusations of drunkenness, negligence, extravagance and violence were soon brought against him (he had, among other things, had the Prague Vicar General Johann von Pomuk thrown into the Vltava and drowned). On August 20, 1400 he was deposed as German king and in his place was the Wittelsbacher Ruprecht III. elected by the Palatinate with a majority of the electors' votes. The landgraves were at first loyal to the son of Charles IV, which led to a siege by Palatine troops and in 1401 to the conquest of the city of Pleystein. The Landgrave was able to stay on the Veste Pleystein, but had to release 120 prisoners, which brought him into financial difficulties. Therefore, the rule of Pleystein had to go to Duke Johann III. pledged and sold against promise of redemption on February 14, 1418. However, the Kingdom of Bohemia had not been asked for consent, and so they let the landgraves continue to enfeoff this rule, even though the count palatine were now the owners of the rule. It was not until 1465 that the Bohemian King Georg von Podiebrad granted permission to sell the estate to the Wittelsbach family.

The Count Palatine Christoph III. , at that time also King of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, in 1463 lent the castle and office of Pleystein for ten years as pledge to Erhard von Rotenstadt . By the Hussite Wars between 1420 and 1433, the city was destroyed three times and completely impoverished. In 1465 the pawnshop was extended for life by Duke Otto I von Pfalz-Mosbach to Erhard von Rotenstadt.

The sprawling castle was already dilapidated at the beginning of the 16th century, but the Count Palatine had no intention of investing a lot of money in its construction. But the Pleystein nursing office was housed here, and the nurse still lived in the castle. In 1511 the judge of Pleystein asked that the castle be let to him, since the keeper had moved out. Then several complaints were made about the poor condition of the castle, and in 1536 a report was sent to the Palatinate court; In 1541 the keeper asked that he be allowed to live on his castle hat , as the castle was very dilapidated. In 1545 the city council asked that the castle be closed because it was in disrepair.

The Landgraves of Leuchtenberg tried several times to regain control of Pleystein, but the negotiations kept falling apart. On April 26th, 1600 the landgraves finally renounced all claims to the Pleystein rule. On August 1, 1615, Elector Friedrich V received the fiefdom of Pleystein from Emperor Mathias . After the battle of the White Mountain he lost the Kingdom of Bohemia, the imperial ban was imposed on him and he lost all of his possessions. Emperor Ferdinand II now gave the rule of Pleystein to Duke Albrecht of Bavaria. He was not impressed by the remote rule and in 1626 asked Emperor Ferdinand II for consent to be able to hand it over to Count Palatine Wolfgang Wilhelm von Pfalz-Neuburg . Wolfgang Wilhelm was enfeoffed on October 24, 1626. In 1653, with the consent of Emperor Ferdinand Pleystein , the Count Palatine sold for 40,000 fl to his brother-in-law, Prince Wenzel Eusebius von Lobkowitz . But in 1656, surprisingly, the lordship of Pleystein was enfeoffed to the Count Palatine Philipp Wilhelm . His son, Count Palatine Friedrich Wilhelm von der Pfalz wanted to sell Pleystein. Emperor Leopold did not agree to this, but in 1684 he allowed the lease to Matthias Franz von Wunschwitz on Ronsberg . He remained the owner of Pleystein until 1695 and built a stately home here in 1688, today's Pleystein Museum of Local History. After 1695, Franz Ferdinand von Rummel , the keeper of Weiden , took over the pledge of the rule of Pleystein. At the beginning of the 18th century, the Palatinate tried to regain the feudal right over Pleystein, but Emperor Karl VI. gave the Count of Sinzendorf a letter of appointment in 1725 , entitling him to take over the rule of Pleystein after the death of Count Palatine Karl Philipp, who died without a male heir . The Sinzendorfer were the lords of Pleystein until 1745. After long disputes over ownership, Maria Theresa decided to return Pleystein to Elector Karl Theodor ; Since this was without a male heir, Duke Christian was enfeoffed with Pleystein at the same time and the Wittelsbach line from Pfalz-Zweibrücken subsequently remained in the possession of Pleystein. In 1800, Pleystein was converted into a district judge's office and, after several intermediate steps, assigned to the Treswitz district court , thus ending the rule of Pleystein as an independent administrative and judicial district.

On October 12, 1617, the mayor and council of the city of Pleystein asked to be allowed to use the stones from the old castle to build the tower of the parish church, the castle was "deserted" and the stones could be used for cornices and corner stones. The caretaker Georg Wolf von Wildenstein supported this request, because the dilapidated walls are a danger for the citizens living below the castle. On April 17, 1618, the governor Christian von Anhalt granted permission to use the stones of the castle for the construction of the church tower. During the Thirty Years War , most of the city was reduced to rubble by a Croatian invasion in 1634. The last tower of the fortress was demolished in 1781. At the beginning of the 19th century the town of Pleystein acquired the castle hill and had the pilgrimage church of the Holy Cross built on it from 1814 , of which a new building erected in 1912 stands on the site of the castle.

After the castle in Pleystein became uninhabitable, the keeper moved his official residence to the castle estate of Pleystein. Already in the 16th century a new maintenance office building was built on the market square, after its destruction in the Thirty Years War the castle estate became the seat of the administration again. In 1699, Franz Ferdinand von Rummel had a new building built on the fire site of the former nursing office and moved there.

literature

  • 650 years of the city of Pleystein: Festival week from August 1st to 9th, 1981. Pleystein 1981.
  • Siegfried Poblotzki : History of the rule, the city and the parish Pleystein. Verlag Stadt Pleystein, Pleystein 1980.
  • Georg Schmidbauer: The Lords of Pleystein: Lecture at the Museum Association Pleystein on March 27, 2011. Waldthurn 2016.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Local historian Georg Schmidbauer speaks in the town museum about "The Pleystein Lordship" and the earliest owners of the castle. In: Onetz. March 31, 2012 ( onetz.de ), accessed on February 27, 2020.
  2. ↑ Stadtmuseum Pleystein - History of the City of Pleystein , accessed on February 27, 2020.
  3. ↑ Family coat of arms of the Lords of Pleystein - royal servants, earliest owners of the castle. White tower in the red field. In: Onetz . February 10, 2012 ( onetz.de ), accessed on February 27, 2020.
  4. ↑ Stadtmuseum Pleystein , accessed on March 3, 2020.