Wohldenberg Castle

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Wohldenberg Castle
Wohldenberg Castle, from left: Church, gate tower, gate and office building, corner tower

Wohldenberg Castle, from left: Church, gate tower, gate and office building, corner tower

Castle type : Hilltop castle
Conservation status: Received or received substantial parts
Standing position : Count
Place: Sillium
Geographical location 52 ° 3 '31.4 "  N , 10 ° 9' 11.2"  E Coordinates: 52 ° 3 '31.4 "  N , 10 ° 9' 11.2"  E
Height: 218  m above sea level NHN
Wohldenberg Castle (Lower Saxony)
Wohldenberg Castle
Wohldenberg Castle around 1800

The castle Wohldenberg is a ruined castle , about one kilometer southwest of the town Sillium located. Sillium is a district of the municipality of Holle in the district of Hildesheim ( Lower Saxony , Germany ), whose coat of arms is adorned by the castle complex.

location

Wohldenberg Castle is a hilltop castle in the northwestern foothills of the Hainberg . It stands at 218  m above sea level. NHN high Wohldenberg, an elongated mountain ridge east and above the Nettetal .

The construction of the castle on a ridge is based on strategic considerations. It was difficult to conquer because of the steep slopes surrounding it. Here was the northern entrance to the Ambergau . The trade route “Frankfurter Strasse” crossed the Hildesheim - Goslar route below the castle .

Building description

The castle area was divided into the forecourt and the main castle, each with an inner courtyard, once there were even three inner courtyards. The castle entrance to the outer bailey continues today through a gatehouse with gates and corner tower. A bridge-like driveway spans the former moat . In the upper area of ​​the former main castle, which is no longer recognizable as such, is the 32 m high keep . Furthermore, parts of the up to 2 m thick surrounding wall and the Baroque style Catholic Church of St. Hubertus from 1731, which emerged from the former castle chapel, have been preserved.

history

middle Ages

View from the keep of the entrance building, on the right the baroque church of St. Hubertus , consecrated in 1731

It is very likely that Wohldenberg Castle was built between 1153 and 1160 by the Counts of Wöltingerode. This process was evidently connected with the territorial advance of the family into the Ambergau. Count Ludolf I took Wohldenberg Castle as his residence after 1174 , after he had converted his ancestral seat in Wöltingerode into a Cistercian monastery , Kloster Wöltingerode . Ludolf II already called himself Count von Waldeberch in 1172, subsequent Counts von Wöltingerode took over the name Wohldenberg more and more.

In the dispute between the Emperor Friedrich I called Barbarossa and Heinrich the Lion , the Wohldenberg counts stood on the emperor's side. For this reason, Wohldenberg Castle was destroyed by Heinrich the Lion in 1180. The castle was then rebuilt and as a result the influence of the Wohldenberg counts grew. So Hermann von Wohldenberg received the Poppenburg as a fief after Konrad II. Von Riesenberg , Bishop of Hildesheim from 1221 to 1246, had built it up as a fortification.

In 1275 the Counts of Wohldenberg sold their county including the castle to Bishop Otto I of Hildesheim . The Grafschaft Holle formed from then on as Untere Go, along with other Ambergaudörfern, the Amt Wohldenberg within the Hochstift Hildesheim .

In the following years the Wohldenberg was repeatedly pledged and mortgaged at short notice. Most of the time, like today, it was owned by the Hildesheim diocese. Robber barons also sometimes sat on the Wohldenberg . At the beginning of the 14th century, the castle finally remained in the possession of the von Bortfeld family for a long time . Other castle owners of this time were:

Modern times

Keep of the former upper castle, restored in 1858
Official house from 1852 below the castle

After the Hildesheim collegiate feud (1519 to 1523), Wohldenberg Castle and the Wohldenberg office fell to the Principality of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel . The castle owner Aschwin von Bortfeld was driven from the castle by the new rulers without compensation. In 1518 he donated the plague column, also known as the “stone Jacob”, at the foot of the mountain, which still exists today. In 1704 Drost Bocholtz had it revised.

During the Thirty Years' War , Wohldenberg Castle was destroyed in 1641 by the imperial forces lying near Bockenem . With the restitution of the Hildesheim Monastery in 1643, the Wohldenberg also became Hildesheim again. Baroque buildings and a baroque church were built under the episcopal Drosten in the following decades. This phase ended with the secularization in 1802. Residents of Sillium removed stones to build the large sheepfold in the village. A villager from Astenbeck bought the castle walls for demolition. Except for the Catholic Church, most of the buildings were demolished. From 1858, the government in Hanover initiated restoration measures. The keep was provided with a viewing platform with a crenellated wreath. Since then, the castle ruins have been a popular destination.

The new office building about 200 m below the castle was built in 1852, when the Wohldenberg office still had three large bailiwicks . After the dissolution of the office, the writer Oskar Meding lived there until 1896 , who wrote his numerous historical novels in the historical surroundings. After Meding's death, the house briefly served as a hotel.

20th century

During the Second World War the keep served as a flak tower . Today the tower offers a delightful view over the community of Holle to the Harz . The parsonage of the Catholic parish of St. Hubertus is housed in the gatehouse of the castle . Below the castle is a former tavern from 1561, which was a hive of activity in the period before the Second World War.

The new office building below the castle was acquired by the Caritas Association of the Diocese of Hildesheim in 1920 . Since 1946 the "Haus Wohldenberg" has served as a youth education center for the Catholic Church .

literature

  • Wolfgang Petke: The counts of Wöltingerode-Wohldenberg . Aristocratic rule, royalty and sovereignty in the northwest Harz in the 12th and 13th centuries. In: Publications of the Institute for Historical Research at the University of Göttingen . tape IV . Lax, Hildesheim August 1971.
  • Ernst Andreas Friedrich : The Wohldenberg Castle . In: If stones could talk . tape IV . Landbuch, Hannover 1998, ISBN 3-7842-0558-5 , p. 125-127 .
  • Hans Adolf Schultz : Castles and palaces of the Braunschweiger Land: The castle Wohldenberg . Waisenhaus-Verlag, Braunschweig 1980, ISBN 3-87884-012-8 .
  • Margret Zimmermann, Hans Kensche: Castles and palaces in Hildesheimer Land . Hildesheim, 2001, pp. 78-81

Web links

Commons : Burg Wohldenberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Map services of the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation ( information )
  2. ^ Jan Habermann: Allied vassals. The networks of counts and lords in the northwest Harz in the tension between rival princes (approx. 1250–1400) . Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2011, ISBN 978-3-8423-0704-9 , pp. 29-33 .
  3. ↑ Wohldenberg. In: burgen.de. April 11, 2012, accessed May 31, 2015 .
  4. ^ Margret Zimmermann, Hans Kensche: Castles and palaces in Hildesheimer Land . 1st edition. Lax, Hildesheim 1998, ISBN 3-8269-6280-X , p. 127 .
  5. ^ Josef Schlagheck: The plague column on the Wohldenberg . In: Our diocese past and present . tape 24 . Hildesheim 1955, p. 81-91 .