Weissenburg Castle (Thuringia)
| Weissenburg Castle | ||
|---|---|---|
 South entrance side |
||
| Creation time : | 1248 | |
| Castle type : | Höhenburg, location | |
| Conservation status: | Receive | |
| Standing position : | Margraves | |
| Place: | Uhlstädt-Kirchhasel -Weißen | |
| Geographical location | 50 ° 43 '52.3 " N , 11 ° 26' 54.1" E | |
|
||
The Castle White Castle is a hilltop castle in the district of the town of White Uhlstädt-Kirchhasel east of Rudolstadt in Thuringia on a close to the Saale towering rock wall.
history
It is believed that the complex was built around 1248 in connection with a division of the Weimar-Orlamünde Count House . The old dynasty is without a doubt a 13th century complex. In 1344 it came into the possession of Margrave Friedrich II of Meissen . Count Heinrich IV of Orlamünde received lifelong right of residence in the purchase contract.
The "Wizzenburgk" was a fort-like building with five towers, which occupied the higher part of today's castle grounds and was secured in the north by the steep slope to the Saale and on the other sides by ramparts, ditches and walls with a fixed gate. Remnants of the towers still existed towards the end of the 19th century, the moat and castle wall can still be seen today. It is possible that the extensive, multi-branched cellars in the sandstone rock under the south-western part of the castle, the so-called "grinding holes", date from the Orlamündic period.
With the different owners, the appearance and character of the castle changed in the first half of the 15th century. The ducal bailiffs were succeeded by the lords of Entzenberg and around 1443 by those of Kochberg as fiefdoms . In 1488 Eucharius von Kochberg sold one half of the property and in 1501 his brother Ernst the other to Friedrich von Thun ( Thüna ), a close relative who was highly regarded as an adviser to Saxon electors and dukes. On April 18, 1521, he accompanied Martin Luther to the session of the Worms Reichstag and is said to have been one of those who then staged the “arrest” of the reformer near Eisenach and his stay at the Wartburg .
During the peasant uprising in 1525, the last abbot of the Saalfeld monastery , Georgius von Thüna, fled from the rebellious peasants and citizens to his cousin in the Weißenburg. Two years later he died here, according to legend, sitting on his treasures in the deepest cellar.
In 1529 Friedrich von Thüna had the old castle converted into a comfortable palace . His coat of arms stone above the castle gate reminds of this. After his death (at the latest) in 1535, the considerably increased property fell to his sons. After all, the castle remained in Thünaian hands for more than 150 years, even if it was ultimately managed jointly with the Lords of Lengefeld , who were wealthy as Schwarzburg vassals in the Rudolstadt, Saalfelder and Leutenberg area.
From 1707 to 1761 von Lengefeld owned the Weißenburg alone, but then had to sell it because of their debts. With the Lords of Lengefeld, the long line of owners of the Weissenburg mansion, who came from local aristocracy, died out. Charlotte von Lengefeld, who later became Friedrich Schiller's wife , confessed her longing for the past family property with words about her youth home, the “Heißenhof” in Rudolstadt: “I stood for hours at my chamber window, looked into the dark window of the tower (the city church) in, listened to the bells…. My horizon was free. In the distance we saw beautiful mountains and an old castle on the mountain, which was so often the goal of my wishes ... "
In July 1777, letters to Frau von Stein testify , the Weißenburg was repeatedly visited by Goethe . The young poet looked after the three boys in the family and drew here. A few years later, in 1792, large parts of the old castle and the Thüna castle fell victim to a fire.
As a result of the reconstruction carried out from 1796, the castle was given a shape similar to that of today. In the higher south-west part there was now a two-storey residential building, at the foremost edge of the rock plateau the larger, initially even lower, castle building. The cross- vaulted ground floor of the gate building and probably also the lower part of the octagonal tower in the north were preserved from the Thüna castle . The owners of the property, which had been converted to free inheritance since 1795, were the bailiffs Breithaupt and Fränkel, who were followed by Baron von Elking at the turn of the 19th century . In 1878 the property was bought by the Sachsen-Meiningische Domain Treasury, and in 1881 the merchant Krüger acquired the north-eastern half of the castle area with the "villa", which he had raised by one floor. The south-western part has since served as the seat of the Meiningische Forstei Reichenbach, which was later renamed "Oberförsterei Weißenburg" and "Thüringisches Forstamt Weißenburg". In 1893, the Prussian ambassador to the Weimar court, Baron Eduard von Derenthall , became the owner of the Weissenburg Palace. His widow leased it to the Zwickau youth welfare office in 1927 , which operated a children's home there until 1932. In 1936 a “retraining home for unemployed girls” was set up. From 1941 to 1945, the anti-Semitic journalist Johann von Leers , who worked on behalf of the NSDAP and a professor at the University of Jena , lived in the castle with his family. After the end of the Second World War , Weißenburg Castle and the neighboring Weißeneck country estate became public property. The buildings initially served as accommodation for those who had been expelled from their homeland and refugees ( called resettlers in the GDR ). In 1946 the administration of the Rudolstadt district founded a sanatorium for lung patients. After the fall of the Wall , the castle complex was privatized and a rehabilitation clinic for oncology and rheumatology was set up. The “old” Weißenburg had a modern sister with the interdisciplinary therapy center. The reconstruction work could then begin. The Thuringian regional association of the German Rheuma League eV resides in the former servants' house next to the castle
Sources and literature
- Information board in the building
- Heinz Deubler in "Burgen und Schlösser bei Rudolstadt" from the series of Rudolstädter Heimathefte, 1972
- Hanns Rothen in "Burg und Floß", manuscript print 1997
- Marco Sennholz: Johann von Leers. A propagandist of National Socialism. be.bra Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-95410-012-5 .
