Straussberg Castle
| Straussberg Castle | ||
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 Straussberg Castle - courtyard of the main castle, view of the castle kitchen |
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| Creation time : | around 1200 | |
| Castle type : | Höhenburg, spur location | |
| Conservation status: | ruin | |
| Standing position : | Ministeriale | |
| Construction: | Quarry stone | |
| Place: | Sondershausen - Straussberg | |
| Geographical location | 51 ° 23 '19 " N , 10 ° 44' 42" E | |
| Height: | 390 m above sea level NN | |
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Straussberg Castle is a spur castle in Sondershausen 's Straussberg district in the Kyffhäuserkreis in Thuringia . The keep can be climbed, the buildings obviously only became ruin again in the last 50 years - during the GDR era . A committed association is trying to restore the castle under expert guidance . The buildings can be viewed through the local castle association.
location
The castle is located west-northwest of Sondershausen and about 16 kilometers north of the city of Schlotheim , the former official seat. It rises to 390 m above sea level. NN high mountain spur of the Dün in the locality of Straussberg.
history
The castle was built around 1200 as a ministerial seat, possibly when the Landgraves of Thuringia took possession of areas that had become free with the ostracism of Henry the Lion . It was initially a military structure and the local power center of the landgraves.
The castle complex was not mentioned for the first time in 1267, when Berthold von Schlotheim, as a head coach from Schlotheim , now a supporter of the new Thuringian landgraves, who descended from the Wettin family, first registered at the castle. The content of the document concerns a donation of land to his brother.
As the administrative center, the castle was also a meeting point for negotiations with local administrators. From 1285 to 1316, for example, the treasurers of the neighboring imperial city of Mühlhausen documented there. For the defense and administration of the castle, knight families from the region's nobility were commissioned with the "castle hat". Around 1318 the castle became the property of the Counts of Hohnstein . By inheritance it passed to the Counts of Schwarzburg in 1356 .
Even in the 15th century, the castle had retained a strategic value, in 1421 the counts made the rule of the Archbishop of Mainz a fief. In doing so, they helped the Archbishop of Mainz achieve partial success in connection with the ongoing disputes with the landgraves about supremacy in Thuringia.
1465–1548 the rule was pledged to the lords of Tütcheroda . After the release, Count Wilhelm von Schwarzburg made the castle his residence from 1552–1598. During structural changes under his rule in 1581, the renewed castle kitchen and gatehouse were built. After Wilhelm's death the castle became state property and became a domain. From then on, the still intact buildings served as granaries. Provisional safety measures were taken by installing support pillars and partition walls.
The castle, which had been structurally intact until then, had been subject to further decay since the 1950s. The local association has only been carrying out building maintenance measures since 1990. Today (2012) the castle is mostly a ruin.
investment
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Ring wall of the inner castle
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The keep
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The castle has a trapezoidal floor plan and has an extension (with moat) of about 70 × 70 m. As the oldest part of the castle, the protruded from the wall front circular applies Keep on the south side of by a moat separated from the surrounding castle complex. Consisting of small-scale quarry stones attached masonry of the tower has only a few window slits, the high-altitude access to the tower interior was probably originally reached by a ladder. The platform used today as a vantage point has no crenellated wreath , a picture from the 19th century shows the tower still with a high, conical roof and weather vane.
Under the protection of the keep, access was via a drawbridge on the south side of the castle. The former gatehouse is now in ruins.
The living rooms of the castle were in the great hall on the north side of the courtyard. The corresponding dilapidated outbuildings were still shown around 1880 as the “smithy” and “old kitchen” (with a ruinous chimney). The castle chapel is to the west of the tower and was "restored" around 1870. During the renovation, only the choir area of the church building remained as a "chapel"; the owner at the time designated the relatively dry space of the nave as a storage area for grain. Within the building complex, 1581 conversions were carried out in order to be able to continue using the up to 300 year old, partly dilapidated buildings. The residential buildings were also affected.
Others
In the castle, three strange stones were shown, which stood in an anteroom of the chapel, but were originally supposed to have served very profane purposes, they resemble old official dimensions with which, for example, wooden grain dimensions (bushels) could be checked. For this purpose, the grain determined with the wooden grain measure had to be poured into the corresponding hollows of the stone for the calibration test; if these were then incompletely filled, the wooden measure used was too small and was destroyed to prevent fraud. The castle was the seat of a Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt office until 1850, and the caretaker had to keep a wide variety of measuring standards.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Principality of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, district court districts of Frankenhausen and Schlotheim . In: Paul Lehfeld (Hrsg.): Architectural and art monuments of Thuringia . Issue 5. Gustav Fischer, Jena 1889, Straussberg, p. 76-80 . (as digitized PURL )
literature
- Thomas Bienert: "Schernberg, OT Straussberg - Straussberg castle ruins" - Medieval castles in Thuringia . Wartberg Verlag, Gudensberg-Gleichen 2000, ISBN 3-86134-631-1 , p. 159-160 .
- Michael Köhler: "Straussberg" - Thuringian castles and fortified prehistoric and early historical living spaces . Jenzig-Verlag, Jena 2001, ISBN 3-910141-43-9 , p. 241 .
- Georg Dehio : Handbook of the German art monuments. Thuringia . Deutscher Kunstverlag 1998, ISBN 3-422-03095-6
