Schönforst Castle

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Ruins of the Schönforster keep in the 19th century.

The castle Schönforst was a Wasserburg in today's Aachen district forestry . As the headquarters of the noble family of Schönforst she was near the kingdom road leading from Aachen to Trier led, and was also the center of the same rule .

history

The exact beginnings of Schönforst Castle lie in the dark of history. Reinhard von Schönau (also known as Reinhard I. von Schönforst), who was first mentioned in a document in 1348 as Lord von Schönforst, was the founder and first known owner of the estate of the same name . In 1369 he ceded the rule to his son Reinhard II, who no longer called himself von Schönau, but von Schönforst. It was not until his time as Herr von Schönforst that the castle was listed for the first time in documents as a fiefdom of the Cologne archbishopric , so that either Reinhard II or his father Reinhard I must have built the castle.

Reinhard II von Schönforst had the brother of Duke Wilhelm III of Jülich in a warlike conflict . , Rainald von Jülich , was taken prisoner and only released again when Wilhelm had paid a very high ransom. As a result, the blackmailed Duke of Jülich was not very sympathetic to Herr von Schönforst, and he besieged his castle for seven weeks in August and September of 1396 before the occupation surrendered. William III. von Jülich incorporated Schönforst into his duchy and then had the castle repaired and given new fortifications. Subsequently, however, he did not give them as a fief, but often pledged them to various subjects. Even under Wilhelm's successors it was always a pledge and at the same time always the seat of the ducal bailiff for the subordinate rule “Amt Schönforst”.

After the Duchy of Jülich fell to the Wittelsbach family at the beginning of the 17th century , Count Palatine Wolfgang Wilhelm von Pfalz-Neuburg pledged Schönforst Castle and the Vogtei to the Imperial Abbey of Kornelimünster in 1650 for 24 years . At that time the castle was already in ruins. Wolfgang Wilhelm undertook to have it repaired, but he did not keep this promise.

Illustration of the castle as a ruin in the Welser Codex from around 1720

As a result of the Thirty Years' War , troops of the Lorraine Duke Charles IV, who had been expelled from his country, moved through the Schönau area in 1652 . Under their Colonel de Champagne, they moved into their winter quarters in Schönforst Castle after they had previously devastated the area and threatened the castle residents, and lived there from December 1652 to the end of February 1653.

In 1711, the castle complex, which had meanwhile fallen into ruin, was given to the von Spee family in exchange for the Eller family before it fell to Prussia after the French occupation . In 1850 the facility was used as a quarry and material from the castle buildings was used to build a factory. On March 12, 1884, the last high remains of the castle wall collapsed, as a result of which the last remains - including the former keep  - were finally demolished in the same year. Although the former moats were still there at the beginning of the 20th century, nothing of the former castle can be seen today on the site that belonged to the city of Aachen from 1906.

description

Outlined site plan of Schönforst Castle from the end of the 16th century.

The appearance of the otherwise hardly described castle complex is known from a plan from the end of the 16th century. However, this is only a rough sketch, which was made almost without precise size information, probably in the course of planned and urgently needed renovation measures, presumably at the instigation of the then pledgee Adam Schaellert von Obbendorf . The plan therefore only gives an approximate impression of the facility at that time. It consisted of three separate building complexes on islands - two outer castles and one inner castle - which were connected by bridges, whereby access to the main castle could only be reached via the two outer castles.

The rectangular island of the first outer bailey could be entered via a bridge on its northwest side. On the north-west and south-west side it was built on and its buildings probably fulfilled a defensive function for the entire complex. At its eastern corner stood a round tower that protruded into the wide moat, while the south-eastern side facing the second outer bailey was only protected by a palisade . The access to the second outer bailey island located there was secured by a portcullis . The second outer bailey island was built on on three sides and was probably the actual farm yard of Schönforst Castle. A large rectangular gate tower on the northeast side secured the seesaw bridge to the main castle.

The main castle was a closed four-wing building that surrounded a rectangular inner courtyard. At the west and east corner there was a small round tower, which probably served as a stair tower and defense tower . At the north corner was a larger round tower, in which a barrel-vaulted room was probably used as a dungeon . In addition to a castle chapel in the south-east wing of the building, the most noticeable part of the main castle was its approximately 100- foot- high, three-story keep, which flanked the south-west wing  to the south of the entrance gate.

literature

  • Florian Glasses: Schönau - Schönforst. A study of the history of the Rhenish-Maasland nobility in the late Middle Ages . Dissertation at the University of Trier. Trier 1999, pp. 103-108, 231-234 ( PDF ; 3.1 MB).
  • Kaspar Friedrich Gottschalck: The knight castles and mountain castles of Germany . Volume 5. Hemmerde and Schwetschke, Halle 1821, pp. 3–8 ( digitized version ).
  • Joseph Lennartz: Castle and glory Schönforst . La Ruelle, Aachen 1901 ( PDF ; 905 kB).
  • Franz Mainz: A map of Schönforst Castle from 1590 . In: Journal of the Aachen History Association (ZAGV). Volume 93, 1986, pp. 143-150.
  • Emil Pauls : The last capture and occupation of Schönforst Palace near Aachen. In: Journal of the Aachen History Association (ZAGV). Volume 1, 1879, pp. 176-188 ( digitized version ).

Web links

Commons : Schönforst Castle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

References and comments

  1. ↑ Cf. F. Glasses: Schönau - Schönforst , p. 103. Older publications mention Johann Mascherel von Schönau as the first known owner of Schönforst, but no sources are available for this.
  2. ↑ Gläser states in his publication that Reinhard I. was the builder of the castle.
  3. ^ Friedrich Everhard von Mering: History of the castles, manors, abbeys and monasteries in the Rhineland and the provinces of Jülich, Cleve, Berg and Westphalen . Volume 3. Eisen, Cologne 1836, p. 107.
  4. ↑ a b The Lords of Schönau and their ancestors , accessed on October 25, 2009.
  5. ^ Heinrich Savelsberg: Latest guide for Aachen and the surrounding area. 8th edition. La Ruelle, Aachen 1922, p. 86 ( PDF ; 15.2 MB).
  6. ↑ Walther Zimmermann, Hugo Borger (ed.): Handbook of the historical sites of Germany . Volume 3: North Rhine-Westphalia (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 273). Kröner, Stuttgart 1963, DNB 456882847 , p. 200.
  7. ^ J. Lennartz: Schloß und Herrlichkeit Schönforst , p. 4.
  8. ^ F. Glasses: Schönau - Schönforst , p. 105.
  9. ^ F. Glasses: Schönau - Schönforst , p. 106.
  10. ^ F. Glasses: Schönau - Schönforst , p. 107.
  11. ↑ a b J. Lennartz: Schloß und Herrlichkeit Schönforst , p. 3.

Coordinates: 50 ° 45 ′ 49.6 ″  N , 6 ° 8 ′ 8.3 ″  E