Reifferscheid Castle
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The ruins of the castle Reifferscheid stands at a height of 450 m above sea level. NN near the German-Belgian border between the Eifel and the Ardennes in the area of the North Rhine-Westphalian municipality of Hellenthal in the district of Euskirchen in its district Reifferscheid . Their name is probably derived from a cleared area that belonged to a man named Rifhari, because the names "Rifersceith" or "Rifheres-sceit" mean "part of the forest of Rifhari".
From the medieval hilltop castle only remnants of are enclosing a gatehouse with two flanking circular towers and giebelter passage and a highly recognizable round and now whitewashed keep from rubble masonry receive.
history
Reifferscheid is first mentioned in writing in 1106 in the Chronica regia coloniensis under "Riferschit". The content of the message at that time referred to the destruction of the castle by its owner at the time, Duke Heinrich of Limburg and Lower Lorraine . He burned his castle down to prevent it from falling into enemy hands.
In 1130, Archbishop Friedrich I of Cologne raised a chapel near the castle to a parish church , which was looked after by Steinfeld Monastery , and in 1195 the Lords of Reifferscheid were first mentioned in a document. A few years later the brothers Gerhard and Philipp von Reifferscheid shared their rule , and a new branch of the family emerged: the Lords of Wildenburg .
Shortly after Johann V von Reifferscheid took over the rule, the complex was besieged in 1385 by troops of the Peaceful Alliance Maas-Rhein of the cities of Cologne and Aachen , the archbishops of Cologne and Liège and the Duke of Jülich , because Johann had it through numerous raids in the broken the peace in the near and far. The siege was unsuccessful, however, and the Alliance forces withdrew after three months of unsuccessful things.
In 1416 the lords of Reifferscheid inherited the Lower Alm line of the Counts of Salm and called themselves von Salm-Reifferscheid from then on .
After a fire in 1509, the damaged facility was rebuilt. Another fire on June 23, 1669 completely destroyed Reifferscheid and its castle. On the remains of the old structure, the owner had a representative castle built in the Baroque style, and the houses of the former castle freedom were rebuilt on the foundations of the old castle ring .
But the new splendor did not last long. During the Palatinate War of Succession , the palace was razed by the troops of Louis XIV in 1689 . The reconstruction at that time must have been carried out very quickly, because an ink drawing by Mathieu Throuüet shows the castle already completely repaired around 1725.
After troops of the French Revolutionary Army occupied and destroyed the facility in 1794, the Lords of Reifferscheid were expropriated in 1803. The Reifferscheid rule was thus dissolved. The ruin was auctioned off for demolition in 1805 and came into the possession of a private individual. In the following decades it served as a quarry and supplied building material for new buildings in the area, before it came back into the possession of the Salm-Reifferscheid family, who had meanwhile been raised to the prince status , in 1889 .
The ruin has been owned by the municipality of Hellenthal again since 1965. The citizens of Reifferscheid have devoted themselves to their preservation in the last few decades, for which the place has received several awards. The keep can now be climbed as a lookout tower and offers from its platform at 470 m above sea level. NN height the so-called Eifel view "Bergfried".
literature
- Alfred Esser: Reifferscheid. A brief history of the place, its castle and its church. Ingmanns, Schleiden 1979.
- Anton Fahne: History of the counts current princes of Salm-Reifferscheid. JM Heberle, Cologne 1866, first volume and Cologne 1858, second volume.
- Walter Pippke and Ida Pallhuber: The Eifel. Voyages of discovery through landscape, history, culture and art, from Aachen to the Moselle. 2nd ed. DuMont, Cologne 1984. p. 47, ISBN 3-7701-1413-2 .
- Olaf Wagener: ... waited at van dem lantfreden dat slos van Rifferscheit ... The peace execution against Reifferscheid 1385. In: Castles and castles. Vol. 47, No. 1, 2006, pp. 23-31, ISSN 0007-6201 .
Web links
- History of Reifferscheid Castle
- Entry on Reifferscheid near Hellenthal in the scientific database " EBIDAT " of the European Castle Institute
Individual evidence
- ↑ MGH SS XVII, p. 746.
- ^ Eifel view "Bergfried" on the website of the Eifel Tourismus GmbH
Coordinates: 50 ° 28 ′ 36.5 ″ N , 6 ° 27 ′ 59 ″ E