Engelsberg Castle Stables

Engelsberg Castle Stables
Engelsberg Castle Stables
Alternative name (s):	Eberhardsburg
Creation time :	probably 10th century
Castle type :	Höhenburg, spur location
Conservation status:	Burgstall
Place:	Fürstenfeldbruck - Kreuth
Geographical location	48 ° 10 '4 "  N , 11 ° 14' 58"  E Coordinates: 48 ° 10 '4 "  N , 11 ° 14' 58"  E
Height:	560  m above sea level NN

The Burgstall Engelsberg , also Eberhardsburg , refers to an abandoned high medieval spur castle immediately south of the Fürstenfeld monastery ( Fürstenfeldbruck , Upper Bavaria ) at 560  m above sea level. NN high spur of an Ice Age moraine train. The complex was probably originally a ministerial seat, which was later torn down from the monastery. Today the castle area is integrated into the urban recreation area. Only terrain features and the neck ditch remind of the former fortress . The term Burgstall means the place where a castle was and describes the present situation.

history

Neck ditch and access road

The history of the castle is in the dark. We only received the first certain news from a time when the castle had lost its original function.

According to legend, in the 10th century the castle belonged to the nobleman Eberhard, who allegedly died in the battle against the Hungarians on the Lechfeld in 955 .

The castle had existed since at least the 12th century. At that time it was on a side road of the long-distance connection from Salzburg to Augsburg. The route branched off from the old Roman road in Gilching and led via Germannsberg and Pfaffing past the castle to the old Amperbrücke and from there via Puch to Augsburg. At that time, the place Bruck with its bridge and the monastery did not yet exist. Both were only founded in the middle of the 13th century. The castle probably served to secure travelers and trade and to collect bridge tolls. Who was the feudal lord of the castle occupants, who were probably ministerials , can only be guessed at. Ministerials had to secure and administer the possessions of more powerful feudal lords. Both the Guelph dukes and the Wittelsbachers , who were counts palatine (1120–1180) before their time as dukes of Bavaria, can be considered feudal lords. The area around Fürstenfeldbruck was between the two sexes.

In the middle of the 12th century the route and with it the castle lost its importance. Between 1132 and 1144 a Magnus von Hadorf gave the Benedictine monastery Admont in Styria a castle next to the bridge of St. Stephen, burcstal iuxta pontem sancti Stephani . Mhd. Burcstal did not mean Burgstall in the modern sense, but generally meant a place on which a castle stands or the castle itself. The definition of the place sancti Stephani seems to refer to Pfaffing, 900 meters away, with St. Stephen's Church. However, it remains to be seen whether the Eberhardsburg was actually meant by the burcstal .

Otherwise, the decline as a possible Guelph castle could also be related to the decline of the Guelphs through the fall of Henry the Lion in 1180. Perhaps the lords of the castle moved to the nearby Gegenpoint Castle , which is only mentioned around 1150 and which they gave up around 1340. However, apparently several noble families named themselves after the place of Prukk . The genealogical connections are difficult to reconstruct here.

In the 13th century, however, the Eberhardsgarten at the foot of the slope (and thus probably also the castle) must have been owned by the Wittelsbach dukes. Otherwise the Wittelsbacher Ludwig the Strict would not have been able to transfer ownership of the garden to the Cistercians for the establishment of the Fürstenfeld monastery (1263). Presumably at that time the Eberhardsburg also passed to the monks, otherwise they acquired it very soon afterwards.

In 1285 the castle was mentioned for the last time as such (lat. Munitio "Schanze, fortification") and was demolished in the following period. It is no longer mentioned in the map of Philipp Apian from the 16th century. The monastery is believed to have demolished the castle to prevent it from being used again. The area of ​​the monastery was clearly visible from the plateau of the main castle. It is only 200 meters away from it. As the house monastery of the Wittelsbach family, Fürstenfeld was able to do without military security by service men and castle complexes. In addition, the dukes of Bavaria systematically suppressed the emergence of powerful competition on their territory.

A shooting range appears to have been set up on the plateau around 1700 (engraving by Michael Wening , 1701). In 1779 a pleasure garden was finally laid out on the site and a statue of Our Lady was erected, which was later moved to the wall of the outer bailey.

Today the former castle complex can be reached in a few minutes from the monastery. Some benches are used to relax the population, but the view is severely restricted by the forest.

description

The plateau to the east

Box with a statue of the Virgin Mary in the south-east of the site

The natural outcrop was probably abgesteilt addition artificial and on the east by the preserved moat from the grounds and the alleged Vorburg separately. In the north some mighty Nagelfluh banks protrude from the slope. The ground monument covers about 2000 m² (60 × 45 meters).

The trench is three to four meters deep, and an earth bridge allows easy access to the oval inner castle . The castle hill has been preserved as an irregular triangle. A plan sketch ("Eberhardsburg" by FS Hartmann (around 1870), archive of the Hist. Verein von Oberbayern) shows the area still rectangular with a rounded east side and a double neck ditch. According to this drawing, the north-western part of the castle was excavated for material extraction during the construction of the railway line.

The earthworks of the former outer bailey have largely disappeared, only in the area of ​​the neck ditch have clear remnants of walls, on which the statue of the Virgin Mary (a grape Madonna ) now stands in a barred wooden box. Originally, the Madonna on the plateau was supposedly surrounded by twelve angel figures, after which the castle stables were probably named Engelsberg .

The Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation lists the ground monument as a medieval castle stable under monument number D 1-7833-0065.

Say

There are several legends about the place.

The castle was once owned by Count Eberhard, ahd. Ebur harti “strong as a boar”, who lost his life against the Hungarians in 955. He is said to have been a particularly pious man, whose greatest wish was that his garden below the castle, the Eberhardsgarten, should become a monastery.

Originally, the Cistercian monastery was supposed to be built in the 13th century on the site of the former castle. However, the angels moved the walls built during the day to the foot of the mountain at night, so that the monastery was finally built at the place indicated by the angels. Here the legend probably explains the preference of the Cistercians to build their monasteries in valleys in contrast to the Benedictines .

When the castle stable was still overgrown, the residents of the village feared it, because they said that it was home to wild animals whose howls disturbed their sleep at night. However, it is also said that one could hear lovely singing at night. Angels are said to have sung the Salve Regina (on all Marian holidays ) . Of the 12 angels who once surrounded today's statue of Mary, each is said to have held a tablet with a verse of the song. The people then renamed the hill Eberhardsberg to Engelsberg .

literature

• Volker Liedke, Peter Weinzierl: Fürstenfeldbruck district (Monuments in Bavaria, Volume I.12). Munich 1996, ISBN 3-87490-574-8 .
• Hans H. Schmidt (Ed.): Sunken castles - in the five-lake region between Ammersee and Isar - historical-archaeological reconstructions (working group for local history research in the Würm region). Self-published, Gauting 2002.
• Walter Irlinger, Toni Drexler and Rolf Marquardt (eds.): Fürstenfeldbruck district - archeology between Ammersee and Dachauer Moos . Konrad Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-8062-2079-7 , pp. 64, 178-179.

Web links

Commons : Burgstall Engelsberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Robert Weinzierl: The Engelsberg von Bruck ... on the website of the HFV (Historical Association for the City and District of Fürstenfeldbruck)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation: Entry
2. ↑ In the chronicle of Fürstenfeld by Abbot Gerhard Führer (1820, manuscript) the fortress is attributed to the nobleman "Eberhard". The "Eberhardsgarten" is said to have been located under the castle at the site of the later monastery. See also Gisela Schinzel-Penth : Sagas and legends about Fürstenfeldbruck and Germering. 1st edition, 1996; P. 18-20 (with further references) and Robert Weinzierl: The Engelberg from Bruck ... . On the Internet at http://www.historischer.verein.ffb.org/pages/06_bib_bgesch_13_engelsberg.html ; accessed on April 9, 2008