Wehlen Castle
| Wehlen Castle | ||
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| Creation time : | around 1200 | |
| Castle type : | Höhenburg, spur location | |
| Conservation status: | Castle walls, cellar, rotunda | |
| Standing position : | Count | |
| Place: | City of Wehlen | |
| Geographical location | 50 ° 57 '28 " N , 14 ° 2' 1" E | |
| Height: | 245 m above sea level NN | |
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The Burg Wehlen is a partially obtained Spur castle on a ground spur at 245 m above sea level. NN 25 meters above the Elbe in the town of Wehlen in the Saxon Switzerland-Eastern Ore Mountains district in Saxony .
history
The castle was probably built at the beginning of the 12th century and was first mentioned in a document in 1269. 1245 she received the Meissen Margrave Henry the Illustrious from the Bohemian King Otakar I paid. The castle was lent to the Saxon noble family von Saalhausen , then to the von Köckritz family . Nickel von Köckritz sold the castle and associated property in 1484.
The castle has not been inhabited since 1547 and gradually fell into disrepair. In 1550, Elector August gave the remains to the towns of Hohnstein and Neustadt as building material .
Construction site
The local mountain association exposed three cellar rooms with cross and barrel vaults in the castle complex at the end of the 19th century. However, this was backfilled with the remains of the tower, which was torn down in the 1960s.
Of the former 85-meter-long and 16-meter-wide castle complex with two outer castles , only the foundation walls of a tower and a cellar are owned by the city of Wehlen and a rotunda, presumably a bastion called the "drum", is privately owned was inhabited in the 1980s. Since 2017 the ruins have been awakened from their slumber by the “Burgfreunde Wehlen”. All trees on the castle plateau were felled first and the wild growth on the castle walls was consistently removed. In the meantime, the original tower stump has been rebuilt and the castle cellars have been dug up again in thousands of hours of voluntary work in close cooperation with the Monument Office and the State Office for Archeology. From 2020, these will be open to the public again during guided tours. The Sedan memorial from 1870/71, which was destroyed for political reasons in the GDR, was found again. The bronze plaques on the memorial were removed by courageous citizens shortly after 1945 and hidden in the Wehln fire station. The reconstruction of the monument is planned for the anniversary in 2021. The castle tower, which was then rebuilt by the “Mountain Association for Saxon Switzerland”, was also demolished in the sixties of the 20th century against the will of the population, and the cellars that had already been laboriously excavated were filled. The friends of the castle want to give the town of Wehlen back its old silhouette with a monument and castle tower.
literature
- Bruno J. Sobotka: Castles, palaces, manor houses in Saxony , Bruno J. Sobotka, Stuttgart 1996.
- Marie-Therese Greiner-Adam: Resurrection of the ruin , Sächsische Zeitung, Pirna, October 17, 2016.
