Wartau Castle
| Wartau | ||
|---|---|---|
 Wartau ruins above Wartau |
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| Creation time : | around 1225 | |
| Castle type : | Hilltop castle | |
| Conservation status: | ruin | |
| Standing position : | Freelance | |
| Construction: | Tuff stones, Bollen stones | |
| Place: | Wartau | |
| Geographical location | 47 ° 5 '55.4 " N , 9 ° 29' 26.2" E | |
| Height: | 650 m above sea level M. | |
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The castle Wartau is the ruins of a hilltop castle imposing and visible from afar at 650 m above sea level. M. east of the hamlet of Gretschins on St. Martinshügel in the municipality of Wartau in the canton of St. Gallen in Switzerland.
investment
The central main castle consists of a mighty residential wing in the form of a massive donjon-like tower house. The dividing wall was added later; it is not connected to the outer walls and the construction joint can be followed up to the fourth floor.
Lime mortar plaster was used inside, as was the case with Gräpplang Castle and Alt-Regensberg . The ground floor was probably never inhabited, as there are no openings for light and air. Presumably this room under the kitchen did not serve as a dungeon , but as a pantry and cellar.
The four or five storeys that have been preserved can be distinguished on the basis of the light openings and the layers of beams. On the upper floors, the two residential parts are connected by passages. The old high entrance in the western wall is still there. Noteworthy are a chimney, arched niches as smoke outlets and a toilet niche set into the wall. Three-part arched windows and those with straight lintels are visible on the fourth and fifth floors.
The castle was increased by one floor around 1400. Bollen stones and not tuff stones were used at the top , as on the lower floors, and the walled-up battlement is still visible on one side . Presumably, this part was once with a gable roof covered; Traces of construction indicate this. The upper floors were rebuilt around 1500. The height of the tower is 22 m, one floor was 4 m high. The walls are up to 1.75 m thick. An extensive curtain wall extends around the central building . It runs along the contour line and is now mostly covered by forest.
The farm buildings and the cistern were located within this courtyard ; today's access was broken out again. The steeply sloping terrain outside the curtain walls made a moat superfluous.
history
There are no written reports about the builders and first owners of Wartau Castle. A dendrochronological examination of some wood remains showed that it must have been built around 1225. The Barons von Wildenberg come into question as builders ; they were the successors of the barons of Sagogn , who at that time were one of the most powerful aristocratic families in Graubünden and had their ancestral lands in Flims / Ilanz. They tried to expand their sphere of influence to the north and had already built the Freudenberg facility near Bad Ragaz for this purpose .
By inheritance, the Wartau came to Count Hugo III in 1320. from Werdenberg-Heiligenberg . This succession of ownership is uncertain, however, because in the first written mention of the castle in 1342, Johannes von Belmont pledged the Wartau fortress to his wife Adelheid von Klingen for 250 silver marks. On her mother's side, Adelheid was descended from a sideline of the Lords of Sagogn, so two different families made claims to Castle Wartau at that time.
The conflict escalated for the first time in 1352 in the so-called Belmont Feud : The Lords of Belmont went on the Vorderrheintal together with rebels against the Counts of Werdenberg-Heiligenberg. The counts lost the decisive battle, but were able to keep Wartau Castle. Ulrich Walter von Belmont only seems to have conquered this around 1360, when the counts were involved in another feud.
After the death of Ulrich Walter von Belmont in 1371, the Counts of Werdenberg-Heiligenberg seem to have brought Wartau Castle back into their possession. In the years that followed, the Meier von Altstätten sat at Wartau Castle as servants for the counts . They probably also had to defend them when the cousins of the owners, the Counts of Werdenberg-Sargans, advanced from their ancestral castle in Werdenberg towards Wartau. The war between the two related count houses began in 1393 and lasted for several years. In 1394 or 1395, the Sargans succeeded in conquering Wartau Castle after an eleven day siege and the rule of the Counts of Werdenberg-Heiligenberg in the Rhine Valley largely collapsed. However, they got the Wartau back. The winners waived their claims, but the counts had to redeem the castle for an unknown sum and in 1400 Count Rudolf II von Werdenberg-Heiligenberg was again the owner of Wartau. In 1402 the Werdenbergers got into financial difficulties and pledged the facility to the Austrians.
The decline of the once proud Werdenbergers could no longer be stopped. Count Rudolf II. Sold the castle and the estate to his cousin, Count Friedrich VII. Von Toggenburg, in 1414 . This sale was converted into a pledge only six days later, but the Counts of Werdenberg-Heiligenberg could no longer redeem it until they died out in 1428.
The rule of Wartau came from the Toggenburgers in 1429 by pledging to Count Bernhard von Thierstein, the brother-in-law of Friedrich VII of Toggenburg. In the run-up to the Old Zurich War , the latter concluded a league with the Sarganser countries in 1437, but this did not prevent them from occupying the castle shortly afterwards.
After the Thiersteiners died out , there were numerous changes of ownership: around 1450, the Wartau Castle was inherited by Georg Schenk von Limburg . In 1470 they pledged this to the barons of Montfort -Tettnang, from whom it again fell to the barons of Sax-Misox by inheritance in 1483 . Peter von Sax-Misox, however, had no interest in the rule, in which the subjects also refused to pay homage to him and sold it in 1485 together with the county of Werdenberg for 21,000 guilders to the city of Lucerne.
But Lucerne was too far away and in 1493 the complex was sold to the barons of Kastelwart . Matthias von Kastelwart died in 1499 in the service of King Maximilian I in the battle of Dornach against the Confederates, but Wartau had already been sold to the Swabian barons of Hewen the year before . In 1517 they sold the entire county of Werdenberg including the Wartau to the federal state of Glarus for 21,500 guilds. With the purchase by Glarus, whose bailiff from then on lived in the neighboring Werdenberg Castle, Wartau had lost all significance. The castle was abandoned around 1530 and left to decay.
When modern Switzerland was formed, Werdenberg was added to the canton of St. Gallen, but Glarus had already sold the Wartau ruins to private customers in 1818. It was not until 1911 that it came to the Wartau community through a donation from Hermann Seifert's estate . The first restoration was carried out in 1932. In 1982 the masonry of the castle was completely renovated for the last time.
- gallery
View from the fortress Magletsch from
The core area, reconstructed according to the fairy tales of 1511 and 1752
Inside of the tower with beam holes
in the tower, with the chimney on the left
literature
- Meyer, Werner : Castles of Switzerland , Zurich 1983.
- Graber, Martin: The Wartau Castle: building description, history, rights and possessions, collection of documents. Book 2003
Web links
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