Thorun Castle

Thorun Castle
Creation time :	around 1200
Castle type :	Hilltop castle
Conservation status:	Castle wall
Place:	Freital - Pesterwitz
Geographical location	51 ° 1 '6.9 " N , 13 ° 39' 4" E Coordinates: 51 ° 1 '6.9 " N , 13 ° 39' 4" E

Remains of Thorun Castle on the Burgwartsberg Freital-Pesterwitz

The castle Thorun is an Outbound hilltop castle of the Viscount of Dohna that appears only once in a document from 1206, already in its demolition is ordered. It is located on the Burgwartsberg in the Flur Pesterwitz , a district of Freital in the district of Saxon Switzerland-Eastern Ore Mountains in Saxony .

mention

In 1206, Thorun Castle was the subject of a court hearing between the Bishop of Meißen and the Burgraves of Dohna. According to the bishop's will, the castle should be razed. As Margrave of Meissen , Dietrich the oppressed mediated among the parties to the dispute and ordered the castle to be destroyed. The document in which this legal act is handed down is now considered the first written mention of some of Dresden's districts of today's city of Freital. In the same year Dietrich began to build his own Tharandt Castle in the neighborhood .

location

Thorun Castle is believed to be on Burgwartsberg (around 1600 "Burgkbergk") in the Freital district of Pesterwitz, which is about 10 km southwest of Dresden city center. In historical research since the 19th century it has been largely unanimously assumed that at this point the center of the late 10./11. Burgwards Bvistrici ( Weißeritz ) was established in the 19th century and first mentioned in a document in 1068 . Thorun Castle would therefore have been created through the conversion or expansion of an older facility. According to Manfred Kobuch , however, this assumption is wrong and the castle was created “on wild roots”. The center of the Burgward is now assumed to be on the castle wall at Hohen Stein in the Dresden-Plauen district .

Strategic importance

According to Vincenz Kaiser , the castle is an essential fortification of the domain of the Burgraves of Dohna. It seems to have been built around or soon after 1190. Reinhard Spehr , however, assumes that the Burgrave of Dohna on the first crusade under Emperor Heinrich VI. involved and built the castle only after his return around 1200/01, naming it after the important crusader castle Toron .

As in Kaitz , Döhlen or Höckendorf , various weir systems were built in the area of the Rote Weißeritz . This secured the colonization with the settlement focus on the castle Thorun (Pesterwitz), around Rabenau , around Dippoldiswalde as well as around Ruppendorf .

With Rabenau and Kaitz the name of the Burggräflich-Dohnaischen nobleman Burkhard is connected, who is mentioned 1206 as Burkhard von Kaitz and 1235 as Burchhardus de Rabinowe (Rabenau). In the wake of the well-known legal dispute between the Bishop of Meißen and the Burgrave (1201-06 verifiable), the Burgraves had to give up Thorun under pressure from the Margrave-Meissen. By then, the defense system had already achieved its main purpose, namely to open and secure a large-scale colonization train.

After the Dohna feud around 1400, the entire burgraviate came into margravial-Meissnian possession, so that all fortifications lost their strategic importance and gradually fell into disrepair.

Individual evidence

↑ Codex Diplomaticus Saxoniae Regiae II 1, pp. 70–72 No. 74. Online edition Therein: Legal dispute 1206 with Heinrich II.
^ Thorun in the Digital Historical Directory of Saxony
↑ Vincenz Kaiser, On the colonization and rulership of the Burgraves of Dohna in the Weißeritz area , as yet unpublished manuscript, Dresden 2007.
↑ Reinhard Spehr : Archeology in the Dresden Castle. The excavations 1982 to 1990 (publications of the State Office for Archeology with State Museum for Prehistory Volume 50), Dresden 2006, ISBN 978-3-910008-69-4 , p. 119, note 90.

literature

Alfred Meiche : Thorun and the name Tharandt. In: New archive for Saxon history and antiquity. Vol. 39, 1918, p. 36 ff. ( Online )
Otto Trautmann : The brook Zuchewidre and the Thorun castle. In: New archive for Saxon history and antiquity. Vol. 39, 1918, pp. 386-391. ( Online )
Manfred Kobuch: The Burgward Pesterwitz - a mistake . In: New Archive for Saxon History. Vol. 86, 1997, pp. 313-326.

[1] Codex Diplomaticus Saxoniae Regiae II 1, pp. 70–72 No. 74. Online edition Therein: Legal dispute 1206 with Heinrich II.

[2] Thorun in the Digital Historical Directory of Saxony

[3] Vincenz Kaiser, On the colonization and rulership of the Burgraves of Dohna in the Weißeritz area , as yet unpublished manuscript, Dresden 2007.

[4] Reinhard Spehr : Archeology in the Dresden Castle. The excavations 1982 to 1990 (publications of the State Office for Archeology with State Museum for Prehistory Volume 50), Dresden 2006, ISBN 978-3-910008-69-4 , p. 119, note 90.