Gurnitz castle ruins
| Gurnitz castle ruins | ||
|---|---|---|
 Valvasor's engraving from 1688 |
||
| Castle type : | Hilltop castle | |
| Conservation status: | ruin | |
| Place: | Ebenthal in Carinthia | |
| Geographical location | 46 ° 36 '7 " N , 14 ° 23' 36" E | |
|
||
The Gurnitz castle ruins are the ruins of a hilltop castle on a small mountain above the Gurnitz parish church in the municipality of Ebenthal in Carinthia .
Castle
The facility is located on a partially artificial abgesteilten rocky promontory above the provost Gurnitz. It was a simply constructed Romanesque complex consisting of a large rectangular residential building with a tower on the west side and a walled castle courtyard. The residential building and tower were on the south side with a view of the Klagenfurt Basin . Access to the castle, which can only be reached by climbing today, was from the west. Today there are only small remains of the complex.
history
In 860 the area on which the castle ruins are located was donated to the Archdiocese of Salzburg. At first it was a royal estate and only later, in the 11th century, did it become a castle. From this point on, the owners carried the von Gurnitz name .
Bernhard von Gurnitz was first announced in 1156. The next owner was Heinrich von Gurnitz, who renamed himself Heinrich von Greifenfels in 1235 (see Greifenfels castle ruins ). His son Dietmar von Greifenfels renounced ownership in 1315, and the castle went to Konrad von Auffenstein . When the Auffenstein family died out in 1395/96 as a result of a suppressed uprising, the owners of Gurnitz Castle changed constantly and it was pledged at regular intervals, for example in 1437 to Konrad von Asbach , 1461 to Friedrich von Kastelwarkh , 1481 to Wolfgang Andreas von Graben , in 1484 to Niklas von Wildenstein , until it finally passed into the hands of Erasmus von Gera in 1584. The Gurnitz Castle stayed in this family until 1714. At that time it was already very dilapidated and could be described as a ruin. The new owner of this castle ruin was Johann Peter Graf von Goess . His family remained in possession of the castle from then on. Their actual family seat was and is Ebenthal Castle .
In 1825, the alpinist Joseph Kyselak visited the already heavily dilapidated ruin during his now famous hike through Austria, which he described in the following words:
“The three quarters of an hour from here [Ebenthal], to the east on a steep rock, the ruins of the ancient Veste Gurnitz, which the Turks intended to fall in 1473, are hardly worth a visit. - Soon all traces of the proud family castle of the glorious Knights of Auffenstein, whose last Frederick, at the end of the fourteenth century, humiliating his tribe, faded as rebels in prison, will have given way, while their deeds will continue to flourish for posterity! From the castle you can see the Glan and Glanfurt, after they have good-naturedly watered the home, to continue to run until they devour the cucumber, and this the greedy Drava. "
See also
literature
- Hugo Henkel: Castles and palaces in Carinthia. Publishing house Johann Leon sen., Klagenfurt / Vienna 1964.
- Franz Xaver Kohla, Gustav Adolf von Metnitz, Gotbert Moro: Carinthian Castle Studies. Rudolf Habelt Verlag, Bonn, 1973.
Web links
- Gurnitz ruins at www.wehrbauten.at
- Ruin Gurnitz on the website of the municipality Ebenthal
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Defense structures in Carinthia. Retrieved September 12, 2019 .
- ↑ Joseph Kyselak: Sketches of a foot trip through Austria, Styria, Carinthia, Berchtesgaden, Tyrol and Bavaria to Vienna - along with a romantic, picturesque depiction of several knight castles and their folk tales, mountain areas and ice glaciers on this hike, undertaken in 1825 . tape 1 . Vienna 1829, p. 69 f . ( google.at ).