Burgstall (Guebwiller)

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Remnants of the castle barn wall

The Burgstall ( French Château du Burgstall or Le Burgstall for short ) is the ruin of a low castle in the center of the Alsatian municipality of Guebwiller ( German  Gebweiler ) in the Haut-Rhin department . Together with Hugstein , the so-called Oberlinger, Angreth and Hungerstein , it was one of a total of five fortifications in and around the village.

The complex was a fiefdom of the Murbach monastery and had an octagonal floor plan, which is rare in Europe . With a diameter of around 22.4 meters, however, it was the smallest of three octagonal systems in Alsace.

history

So far nothing is known of the beginnings of the castle . It may have been built between 1225 and 1235. At that time, Guebwiller belonged to the rule of the Murbach monastery, but it is unlikely that the Murbach abbot himself was the builder, because he had the nearby Hugstein Castle built as his official residence around 1230 . It is more likely that the facility was founded by a family of servants of the monastery closely associated with Guebwiller . It was first mentioned in a document as domus in 1270, when the Murbach servant Peter von Ungersheim sold his share of the facility for 50 silver marks to the Murbach abbot Berthold von Steinbronn. Shortly before 1271, the castle was incorporated into Guebwiller's fortifications.

Due to family disputes, the von Ungersheim family was relieved of their fiefdom in 1288 , but then received it back and remained in the possession of the castle until the 15th century. In 1454 at the latest, the Lords of Ostein were tenants of the complex, but it fell into disrepair in the 15th century and was called Burgstall . In 1473 the abbot of Murbach granted the Gebweiler citizen Clewi Fischer (also written as Vischer) permission to rebuild the area. Fischer built a new building in the late Gothic style using the remains of the wall .

In 1693 the Antonites from Issenheim bought the parcel with an old tower standing on it, which was demolished in 1698 at the latest in order to gain building material for other buildings on the area. In 1702 the order sold the property again. The castle was completely built over and fell into oblivion. A piece of the curtain wall only became visible again when it was demolished in 1972 . This was followed by excavations through which the unusual octagonal shape of the castle was unearthed. Today the remains of the facility above ground are integrated into the new supermarket.

description

Floor plan of the castle stable

The castle was one of the rare examples of an octagonal castle complex from this time. Otherwise this only applied to Egisheim Castle and Wangen Castle in Alsace , Kilchberg Castle in Tübingen, the Westphalian Holsterburg and Castel del Monte in Apulia .

The Gebweiler castle had an almost square, 6.70 x 6.55 meters measured keep at its center, on the east side of a fountain was. The tower was surrounded by an octagonal ring wall with a side length of 9.35 meters. The foundation of the wall was 2.18 meters thick, the section above was 1.75 meters thick. Up to a height of about 40 cm it was made of small ashlar, above that its outside consisted of humpback blocks made of red sandstone . The inside of the wall was covered with smooth blocks. Almost all of the cuboids of the remaining piece, which is about nine meters high, are marked with stonemason's marks, and many of them have wolf holes . In the thickness of the wall, the drain of a toilet dungeon has been preserved. The section of the ring also served as the outer wall of a building. At the time of the excavation in the 1970s, window frames were evidence of this, but they are no longer there today.

On the west side of the facility in front of the curtain wall was a 3.5 meter wide berm , which was surrounded by a steeply sloping moat . This was 4.5 to 5 meters deep and had a width of 7.5 meters on the surface. The excavation showed that it was filled in as early as the 15th century. In front of the moat there was a wall and a palisade . The castle gate was probably on the north side of the complex. The outer bailey is also believed to be there. Since no further masonry was found during the excavations , it can be assumed that the other buildings of the castle were made of wood.

By comparing the humpback square shapes and the similarity with Egisheim Castle, the construction of Gebweiler Castle is dated to the first third of the 13th century. This assumption is supported by ceramic finds from the beginning of the 13th century.

literature

  • Thomas Biller, Bernhard Metz: The late Romanesque castle building in Alsace (1200-1250) (= The castles of Alsace. Architecture and history. Volume 2). Deutscher Kunstverlag , Munich / Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-422-06635-9 , pp. 202–205.
  • Georges Bischoff: Guebwiller. Château de Burgstall. In: Roland Recht (Ed.): Le Guide des châteaux de France. Haut-Rhin. Hermé, Paris 1986, ISBN 2-86665-025-5 , pp. 51-53.
  • Nicolas Mengus, Jean-Michel Rudrauf: Châteaux forts et fortifications médiévales d′Alsace. Dictionnaire d′histoire et d′architecture. La Nuée Bleue, Strasbourg 2013, ISBN 978-2-7165-0828-5 , p. 119.
  • Gilbert Meyer, Pierre Brunel: Le Burgstall de Guebwiller. Results de fouilles. In: Annuaire de la Société d'histoire des regions de Thann-Guebwiller. Volume 9, 1970-72, ISSN  1146-7371 , pp. 17-24.
  • Charles-Laurent Salch: Nouveau Dictionnaire des Châteaux Forts d'Alsace. Alsatia, Strasbourg 1991, ISBN 2-7032-0193-1 , pp. 108-109.
  • Christian Wilsdorf: Le Burgstall de Guebwiller. Les châteaux octogonaux d'Alsace et les constructions de l'empereur Frédéric II. In: Annuaire de la Société d'histoire des regions de Thann-Guebwiller. Volume 9, 1970-72, ISSN  1146-7371 , pp. 9-16.

Web links

Commons : Burgstall  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Charles-Laurent Salch: Nouveau Dictionnaire des Châteaux Fort d'Alsace. 1991, p. 109.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Thomas Biller, Bernhard Metz: The late Romanesque castle building in Alsace (1200-1250). 2007, p. 202.
  3. ↑ Georg Heinrich Pertz (Ed.): Annales aevi Suevici. (= Monumenta Germaniae Historica . Scriptores (in Folio). Volume 17). Hannover 1861, p. 194, line 28 ( digitized version ).
  4. ↑ Georg Heinrich Pertz (Ed.): Annales aevi Suevici. (= Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores (in Folio). Volume 17). Hannover 1861, p. 215, line 6 ( digitized version ).
  5. ^ Georges Bischoff: Guebwiller. Château de Burgstall. 1986, p. 52.
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Thomas Biller, Bernhard Metz: The late Romanesque castle building in Alsace (1200-1250). 2007, p. 204.

Coordinates: 47 ° 54 '39.1 "  N , 7 ° 12' 35.3"  E