Wittlage Castle
| Wittlage Castle | ||
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 Keep of Wittlage Castle |
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| Creation time : | From 1309 | |
| Castle type : | Location | |
| Conservation status: | Preserved essential parts | |
| Standing position : | Clerical | |
| Place: | Bad Essen - Wittlage | |
| Geographical location | 52 ° 19 '15.4 " N , 8 ° 22' 24.9" E | |
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The castle Wittlage is the fortress developed castle in the district Wittlage (Castle Road 5) of the municipality of Bad Essen in the district of Osnabrück in Lower Saxony .
history
Wittlage Castle was built in 1309 by Osnabrück Bishop Engelbert (II.) Von Weihe as a monastery castle to secure the eastern border against Ravensberg . It formed the core of the office of the same name formed from around 1355 and was the seat of the bailiff, later commonly referred to as Drost. From 1556 he also administered the neighboring Hunteburg office.
At the beginning of the Thirty Years War , the castle was not yet developed as a fortress and had no permanent occupation. It was therefore occupied by Danish troops from 1626 to 1628, but evidently not reinforced or expanded. It was only after Swedish troops occupied Wittlage Castle in 1633 that it was expanded into a fortress on a small scale. The Swedish troops were able to reject three attempts at conquest by 1642 and did not vacate the fortress until 1650. From 1651 to 1652 the Wittlage fortress was occupied by the Episcopal Osnabrück company on foot, after which it only served as the official residence of Drosten.
After the annexation of the Kingdom of Hanover and the principality of Osnabrück connected to it by the Kingdom of Prussia, the buildings in the former fortress were used to house the administration of the newly formed Wittlage district.
Today the buildings that have been preserved are used by the Osnabrück curative educational aid facility as a short-term care facility and as a conference and guest house.
description
The center of the castle / fortress was the other buildings towering received 33 meter high seven-story castle keep with a wall thickness of 3.8 meters. The 40 by 59 meter facility, which is surrounded by a ditch that can still be seen today, is reached via a bridge with an archway.
The outer circumference of the complex is 627 meters and is surrounded by the moat, the so-called “official ditch”, which is still filled with water.
literature
- Joseph Prinz: The Territory of the Diocese of Osnabrück , Verlag H. Th. Wenner, Osnabrück 1973
- Ernst Andreas Friedrich: Die Burg Wittlage , pp. 160–161, in: If stones could talk . Volume IV, Landbuch-Verlag, Hannover 1998, ISBN 3-7842-0558-5