Thurant Castle
The ruins of Thurant Castle (also Thurandt ) stand on a wide slate mountain spur high above the town of Alken on the Moselle . It is located in the district of Mayen-Koblenz ( Rhineland-Palatinate ) and belongs to the spur castle type . A specialty are - besides the location on the steep valley shoulder - the vineyards on the sunny side.
From the middle of the 13th century, the archbishoprics of Cologne and Trier were joint owners of the complex and had their respective shares administered by burgraves. Each half therefore had its own keep , its own residential and farm buildings and a separate entrance.
Since the beginning of the 16th century, the double castle gradually fell into disrepair and was completely in ruins due to destruction during the War of the Palatinate Succession . Robert Allmers (1872–1951) from Varel , co-founder of the local Hansa-Automobil Gesellschaft and from 1914 director of the Bremen Hansa-Lloyd-Werke , acquired the plant in 1911 and had some of it rebuilt. The castle is still privately owned today, but can be visited for a fee from March to mid-November. According to the Monument Protection Act of Rhineland-Palatinate, it is a protected cultural monument and entered in the state monument list. The entire facility is designated as a monument zone. Thurant Castle is also a protected cultural asset under the Hague Convention and is marked with the blue and white trademark.
history
Ceramic and coin finds suggest a Roman settlement on the mountain spur, but the first documentary mention of a facility at this location dates from the year 1209.
Probably in the period from 1198 to 1206, Count Palatine Heinrich I the Long from the noble family of the Guelphs had a fortification built at the current location in order to secure the claims of his brother, Emperor Otto IV. , In the Moselle area. The hilltop castle he named according to tradition, after the castle Toron at Tire in modern Lebanon, which he with his army during the Barbarossa Battle of the Third Crusade had besieged in vain. After Count Palatine Heinrich II the Younger died in 1214 without male descendants, Emperor Friedrich II gave the castle and the town of Alken as an imperial fief together with the Palatinate to the Wittelsbachers loyal to the Hohenstaufen .
Due to its location in the Trier region, Thurant Castle was also claimed by the Archbishops of Cologne and Trier. In 1216 Engelbert I of Cologne succeeded in taking the complex by force. Although Pope Honorius III. protested against this approach, Engelbert maintained his conquest until his death in November 1225, before the castle returned to the possession of the Count Palatine near Rhine. Otto II of Bavaria then appointed the knight Berlewin, called Zurn, as burgrave. Since Berlewin was active as a robber baron and attacked the Trier region from his castle, Arnold II von Isenburg and Konrad von Hochstaden got together and besieged the castle from 1246 in the so-called Great Feud . In 1248 the complex was taken by them and on November 17th of that year a contract of atonement was signed, which is still preserved today and thus represents one of the oldest German documents. In the document, the Electoral Palatinate renounces Thurant Castle and the associated place Alken in favor of the two archbishoprics.
The archbishops divided the complex into a Trier and a Cologne half, which were separated from each other by a wall and each managed by its own burgrave. Each half had a separate entrance, its own residential and farm buildings and a keep, now known as the Trier Tower and the Cologne Tower . In the 14th and 15th centuries, both parts of the castle served not only as an after-fief, but also as a pledge. The families of von Schöneck , von Winningen, von Eltz and von der Reck were among the noble families that had ruled Thurant since the beginning of the 14th century . Since 1495 the lords of Wiltberg were one of the tenants. They used the castle, which was described as dilapidated as early as 1542, as a quarry to build the Wiltberg'sche Schloss , also called Wiltburg , in Alken .
During the War of the Palatinate Succession, further destruction by French troops occurred in 1689 and finally turned the complex into ruins. Only the two keep and a house from the 16th century were largely intact.
Privy Councilor Robert Allmers acquired the facility in 1911 and had some of its parts rebuilt in 1915/16. It has been jointly owned by the Allmers and Wulf families since 1973.
description
Most of the original buildings still preserved today date to the period after 1248. The gate was not built until the castle was partially rebuilt at the beginning of the 20th century, while a residential building, the so-called mansion , was destroyed in the Second World War from 1960 to 1962 was rebuilt.
The entire complex is surrounded by a curtain wall and protected by a ditch on its south side.
Trier Castle
The Trier part of the castle complex can be reached via a gate, to which a wooden bridge spanning the neck ditch leads. This is followed by a large inner courtyard, which Robert Allmers transformed into a rock garden in the 20th century. From there the 20 meter high Trier Tower can be reached, which is located north of it on an elevated plateau. With its walls three meters thick at the base, it now serves as a water reservoir and cannot be visited.
On the west side of the inner courtyard is the mansion on the Moselle side , a residential building that is still in use today, which was rebuilt on old foundations between 1960 and 1962, as it was destroyed by American artillery fire and a subsequent fire during the Second World War was. At the north-western corner of the building, a battlement on the side of the Moselle begins on the western curtain wall, which continues into the Cologne part of the castle.
A second, smaller gate leads from the inner courtyard into the north-west courtyard of honor , in which the only preserved of the three previous cisterns of the castle is located. Your shaft is about 20 meters deep. The main courtyard was formerly closed on its north-western side by a thick wall, of which today only a part remains in full height and strength.
In the northern corner of the courtyard there is a three-story building, the top floor of which was built in half-timbered construction and today, together with the first floor, serves as a holiday home. On the ground floor there is the castle chapel with old wall and ceiling frescoes , the furnishings of which include a baroque altar from 1779 and a font from 1515. To the northeast of the building is the still preserved ground floor of the Trier Palas .
Cologne Castle
In the past, the Cologne castle half could only be reached via a narrow wooden bridge and the adjoining Pfalzgrafentor at the northwest corner of the complex. The gate is adjoined by an inner courtyard, at the south-eastern end of which there are two round towers , which are connected by a covered battlement between them. In the interior of the southern tower wall paintings are preserved, which show the coats of arms of all owners and liege lords of the castle.
The southern round tower is connected to the ruins of the Cologne palace from the 16th century on the east side of the complex via the former border wall to the Trier half of the castle . Formerly housing the knight's hall , the building was destroyed by Napoleonic troops in 1812/13, so that today only the ground floor, apart from the basement, is completely preserved. In addition to the gable walls with chimney incisions, the north-eastern outer wall of the higher storeys has also been partially preserved. It has window openings in the style of the late Romanesque , which, however, do not belong to the original structure, but were added at the beginning of the 20th century.
At the northern end of the castle is the so-called hunting lodge with two tourelles , which, like the manor house, has been rebuilt on old foundation walls. Its ground floor is occupied by a single room with dark wood paneling and beamed ceiling, which serves as an exhibition space for hunting trophies, armor, old weapons and finds from excavations. The building is connected to the Cologne Tower by a covered battlement , the first floor of which was previously used as a dungeon . Torture tools can be seen there today. The tower can be climbed as an observation tower and offers a very good view of the Moselle valley.
literature
- Klaus Freckmann: Introduction to the history of the castles and palaces on the Moselle . In: Wartburg Society for Research into Castles and Palaces (Hrsg.): Research on castles and palaces . Volume 2. Deutscher Kunstverlag , Munich / Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-422-06187-8 , pp. 9-30.
- Martina Holdorf: Castles and palaces on the Middle Rhine (= Signpost Middle Rhine . Volume 5). Görres, Koblenz 1999, ISBN 3-920388-71-2 , pp. 69-72.
- Gustav Schellack, Willi Wagner: Castles and palaces in the Hunsrück, Nahe and Moselle regions . Henn, Kastellaun 1976, ISBN 3-450-19912-9 , pp. 240-243.
- Gunther Seifert: The Moselle Castles - Between Trier and Koblenz . Seifert, Overath 1999, pp. 4-5.
- Stefan Ulrich: Arras, Beilstein, Bernkastel, Cochem and Thurandt. Observations on some Moselle castles . In: Castles and Palaces. Journal for Castle Research and Monument Preservation. Vol. 49, 2008, No. 3, ISSN 0007-6201 , pp. 154-160.
- Thurant Castle and surroundings . Allmers, Varel 1994.
- Sources: local dictionary
Web links
- Official website of Thurant Castle
- Information and pictures about the castle
- Entry by Jens Friedhoff about Thurandt Castle in the scientific database " EBIDAT " of the European Castle Institute
- Reconstruction drawing by Wolfgang Braun
- Video Thurant Castle
Individual evidence
- ^ General Directorate for Cultural Heritage Rhineland-Palatinate (ed.): Informational directory of cultural monuments - Mayen-Koblenz district. Mainz 2020, p. 3 (PDF; 5.8 MB).
- ↑ A written record can only be found from the end of the 19th century in the tourist guide literature e.g. B. in C. Rutsch Der Führer an der Mosel , Trier 1887. In the "classics" of the Moselle literature by JA Klein 1831, K. von Damitz 1838 or Otto von Czarnowsky 1841, the memory of the crusade is not mentioned as the name of the castle. A reference by Ludwig Mathar (around 1920) to the Gesta Treverorum as a source is incomprehensible. There the name only: Castrum aedificavit super Mosellam, quod Thurunum apellavit. Digitized original, JW v. Goethe University Frankfurt a. M., p. 118.
- ↑ Paul-Georg Custodis: The development of Thurant Castle in the 19th and early 20th centuries - previously unknown facts about the reconstruction . In: Jens Friedhoff, Olaf Wagener (ed.): Romanticism and historicism on the Moselle . Michael Imhoff, Petersberg 2009, ISBN 978-3-86568-518-6 , page 66. It would be possible as well as the naming by the Moselle Romanesque word turún , or the vulgar Latin turrÂne for tower. See also the historical local dictionary of the Institute for Historical Regional Studies at the University of Mainz .
Coordinates: 50 ° 14 ′ 53.7 ″ N , 7 ° 27 ′ 10.5 ″ E