Burgstall Ketzelburg
| Burgstall Ketzelburg | ||
|---|---|---|
 restored foundation walls of the castle; Foreground: unfinished hall; Background: remains of a residential tower |
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| Alternative name (s): | Kesselburg, Ketzelburgk (1540), Schloßknickel (dialect) | |
| Creation time : | 2nd half of the 12th century | |
| Castle type : | Spurburg , high moth | |
| Conservation status: | Castle stable , small remains, excavations and partial restoration | |
| Standing position : | unknown | |
| Construction: | Wood, timber, stone | |
| Place: | Haibach | |
| Geographical location | 49 ° 58 '9.6 " N , 9 ° 12' 10.3" E | |
| Height: | 267 m above sea level NN | |
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The Ketzelburg castle stable , also known as Ketzelburgk or Kesselburg according to old records , is a castle stable that was archaeologically re- excavated under the direction of the Spessart Archaeological Project in 2004/2005 and 2014 . The former high moth from the second half of the 12th century is located about 2.7 kilometers north-northwest of the church of Haibach in the district of Aschaffenburg in Lower Franconia ( Bavaria ).
It was only inhabited for a short time, was put down according to plan and abandoned according to the excavation results and is now a restored example of a small castle, which in the early Middle Ages crossed the entire Spessart (then more densely populated) like a network.
location
The Ketzelburg, a spur castle of the type of a tower hill castle (Motte), is located today in a north-eastern location on the edge of the development boundary of Haibach, in the community forest at 270 m above sea level. NN high oval elevation, a steeply sloping natural mountain spur , the so-called "Schloßknickel", above the entrance to the so-called Haibacher Switzerland . The Burgstall is located between the area bounded east by Haibach , south by Ringwallstraße and west by the cul-de-sacs Ulmen- , Eichen- and Buchenstraße . To the north, the forest area, which also includes the Burgstall, merges into Haibacher Switzerland .
The restored castle ruins can be hiked as part of the Haibacher Kulturweg es created by the Spessart project . The castle was right outside the gates of Aschaffenburg , which was part of the Kurmainz . Possibly this is one reason for the short existence of the facility, as it could be perceived as a threat to the city and the Mainz territory.
description
The shape of the high moth was that of an oval. The interior of the castle, which is delimited by deep trenches , has a diameter of about 50 meters in a southeast-northwest orientation and 35 meters in a southwest-northeast orientation. The castle thus took up an area of around 1400 m 2 . The outer boundary of the ground monument , which slopes steeply on three sides, forms a ditch between five to seven meters deep and up to eight meters wide, with a wall up to five meters high in front of it. To the south-west, behind an approximately 100-meter-wide depression, a loess plateau that is now completely built over follows.
geology
The castle hill takes on a heavily reshaped rock knoll made of local, heavily weathered rock. The rock itself only emerges at the northern tip of the complex, directly below the castle plateau. The subsurface of the Ketzelburg is formed by sloping and fissured biotite gneiss . In the area around Haibach, only the sandstones of the Lower Buntsandstein appear, which in turn belong to the subgroup of the Heigenbrücker Sandstone (formerly part of the Gelnhausen series , now the Calvörde series ).
history
The Ketzelburg can still not be found in any documented archival documents or descriptions of its time.
Based on the dated archaeological finds, it can be assumed that it originated in the 2nd half of the 12th century during the Staufer period . It is quite probable that it was even dated before 1189, before Kurmainz issued a ban on the construction of stone castles at the gates of Aschaffenburg . It can also be assumed that the settlement from which the community of Haibach later developed at the same time as the Ketzelburg was built. The first documentary mention of the place comes from 1187. The small castle existed for a maximum of 50 years and was then, confirmed by the investigations, not destroyed but given up. Built in the beginning of the High Middle Ages , it was probably a culmination point for the settlement of this area of the Spessart, like many other small castles of this time.
It was an extremely eventful time, marked by the struggle for supremacy between the emperor and the pope , as it culminated in the investiture dispute . In the course of these disputes between high nobility and sovereigns, in which many low nobility were drawn, they went back from the Spessart to the flourishing cities such as Aschaffenburg . The conflict of the 13th century in the Spessart is dominated by the conflict between the Counts of Rieneck and the Archbishops of Mainz . These lords had the means and built much larger castles, such as the residence of the Archbishops of Mainz in Aschaffenburg, the Johannesburg (predecessor of today 's Johannisburg Palace ), or the ancestral castle of the Rieneckers . They built military installations, such as the Rieneckers, the Wildenstein Castle or the Landesehre Castle , which played an important role in the military conflicts. Further economic, social and technical developments also overtook the small Niederadel castles in the Spessart, which, often less than 100 years old, were neither stormed nor burned - they had outlived their function and were given up.
For the first time we find a pictorial labeling, listing the Ketzelburg as Postal, on the basis for the Bavarian State Survey serves Uraufnahmekarte of 1832. The castle is on an ordnance survey map visible from the 1839th Although the Ketzelburg is not named on this map, it is marked as a site memorial or castle stable. You can see how far the development of the then still very small village Haibach was from the Ketzelburg, but also from the road to Würzburg . In the following period the entries of the Ketzelburg, obviously correctly recognized as the Burgstall, accumulate.
The first descriptions of the Ketzelburg castle stable come from Aschaffenburg's mayor Adalbert von Herrlein and the local historian Josef Kittel . Both are based in part on sources that can no longer be localized today.
Since the complex was placed under monument protection in the second half of the 20th century and is also located in a wooded area, the ensemble has been largely spared from interference up to our days. A first inspection of the castle site by the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation provided evidence that the ground monument is not, as originally assumed, a Celtic or Germanic ring wall , but a medieval Niederadelsburg. In 1970 the Ketzelburg was added to the list of ground monuments (monument number D-6-6021-0019) and has enjoyed special protection by the state ever since.
Nowhere is a picture of the Ketzelburg, popularly known as the “Schloßknickel”. The question of what the Ketzelburg really looked like is partly left to the imagination and scientifically to the reconstruction possibilities of archeology .
Whether one of the noble families resident in the area with a similar name, von Kesselstatt ( documented as Kezzelstadt at the beginning of the 13th century ) or the gentlemen von Kesselberg, who presumably immigrated from Upper Franconia , can be assigned as the owner of the castle is currently (as of 2015) being investigated. A lower nobility family of the same name existed around the Kesselburg in the Palatinate , the Junker von Kezzelberg .
Only about 250 meters south-southeast of Ketzelburg in the square between the castle - Haidenbach - and Büchelberg road there is another listed as archaeological monument, not archaeologically investigated Haibacher Burgstall . Whether he is to be regarded as the successor and later Haibacher Ortsburg can only be revealed by excavations and dates. Here, too, there is currently no documentary evidence.
description
Excavations 2004/2005
On the ridge of the hill, a significant elevation in the north-western outer third was already apparent before the excavations in 2004/2005 began. At this point, the excavators also came across the remains of a high medieval residential tower . In addition, all previous studies assumed that the castle was accessed from the southwest. This could be confirmed archaeologically. Traces of belonging to the castle, the castle plateau upstream farmyard or a bailey then could not demonstrate against it.
From the 173 documented findings, layers and groups of layers, four phases of construction and settlement were identified on the castle plateau and the surrounding moat.
Castle description
The castle stables on the Ketzelburg were characterized by thatched and clapboard half - timbered buildings , pit houses and a wooden palisade . He played no role in major military conflicts. The castle was the administrative center for a smaller region, which at most allowed self-sufficiency with the bare minimum. The manor house and farm yard formed a unit. The control function of the castle was limited to the immediate vicinity of the farmers and residents of the surrounding towns, as well as to local traffic routes and markets.
The construction of the castle, the construction of the first residential tower, a representative gate system and even rescheduling and demolitions could be proven through the excavation. The castle was systematically dismantled and therefore there is no rich layer of destruction. Individual finds such as tiles , crockery , a weaving weight or a floor tile nevertheless allow conclusions to be drawn about the furnishings, living conditions and everyday life at the castle.
By removing the top of the hill consisting of rocks, a level plateau with steep slopes up to nine meters deep was created on the Ketzelburg. A found widening of the plateau made it necessary to provide the only moderately compacted material on the slopes with a loose stone covering on the surface in order to counteract erosion . Only in this way could the facility with its steep slopes survive to our days. The plateau is enclosed by a moat . A wall is in front of the sole ditch, which is sunk into the heavily weathered rock . It consists mostly of non-local loam .
Since the feudal lord on the Ketzelburg could only have had very few persons obliged to pay a feud, the individual had to do a lot of work. By excavating the surrounding ditch, a landmark was created that is still the clearest feature of the castle complex today.
Residential tower
The typical residential tower of the second half of the 12th century was built on the highest elevation of the castle hill. It had the shape of an approximately square with a side length of 5 meters in the interior. It should therefore have offered around 25 square meters of living and storage space on several floors. A two-layer mortar wall about 70 centimeters wide has been preserved from the residential tower. Your foundation was set directly on the adjacent rock.
Chunks of mortar, some of which still have remains of white whitewash, suggest that the wall base was originally plastered and whitewashed. An analysis of the filling mortar in Bamberg showed that the porous, crumbly mortar is a mixture of lime with unwashed, brown quartz sand , as it was mined directly at the Burgstall in the last century. The volume proportions of lime to sand are 1: 4. The high proportion of fine sand enabled the high viscosity of the mortar.
The residential tower of the Ketzelburg was divided by a single-shell intermediate wall into an elevated half with a rammed earth floor and a room half fastened on the floor with a stone packing and had a septic tank . The dumping of a stone ax fragment under the south wall of the residential tower, as well as the burial of a dog with food under the rammed earth floor are eloquent testimony to the superstition of the landlord. The finds were either buried near the door of the tower as a deterrent to evil and evil spirits or as a construction sacrifice. Finds suggest that a mug tiled stove was in operation in the residential tower .
Farm yard
In addition to the residential tower, the castle site also had a commercial section to the east. Search cuts in 2004 pointed to the remains of a pit house in which small post holes were visible next to a fireplace in the rammed earth floor. They are interpreted as traces of a standing loom . The discovery of a weaving weight speaks in favor of textile processing in this pit house .
Enclosure
The defensive wall could be proven as a wooden palisade on a stone wall. The cuts through the surrounding ring ditch produced a bottom ditch sunk into the heavily weathered rock, to which a wall was attached to the outside. There is no archaeological evidence of another palisade in the area of the outer wall. 800 years ago, the rock was eroded very steeply between the castle plateau and the deep ditch. As the backfilling in the moat showed, it was soon half backfilled and the stone gate behind it abandoned.
Pincer gate and gatehouse
A wall section examined in 2005 can be addressed with high probability as the left cheek of a gate listed in Stein. However , no traces of the gatehouse were found. Presumably the Ketzelburg did not have an actual gate, but only a stone wall passage. The excavated area made it impossible to determine the actual width of the wall opening. Carefully hewn sandstone blocks lying in the collapse of the gate ramp attest to the representative design of this structure, which is otherwise made of normal quarry stone masonry . Stone fragments in the area of the slope edge were extremely small compared to the solid foundations of the left gate wall. Overall, it can be assumed that the Burgstall had at most one stone entrance gate. The wooden palisade is likely to have joined this on both sides.
A small section of wall that kinks from the left gate cheek is interpreted as an indication of an interior development immediately behind the left gate cheek. A narrow, dug up, narrow, stone-set “canal” that slopes to the northwest and adjoins the gate cheek directly to the southeast, will have collected the water when it rains. The drainage was necessary to prevent the loam layers in the area of the south-west facing slope edge from softening and a resulting landslide in the steep trench. A cylindrical pit to a depth of 1.8 m in the south of the castle plateau probably served as a water reservoir.
In the second period the gate ramp was closed with a palisade and a trapezoidal building with a stone foundation was built in the now heavily raised, former gate passage, which could be entered from the southwest via a stone staircase. The abandonment of the castle site did not appear to be due to violent destruction and is believed to have been around 1200.
On the occasion of an attempt to reactivate the castle at the end of the 14th century, the castle was given its present form through extensive leveling measures.
Excavations 2014
Excavations in autumn 2014 were able to prove a bailey in the southern area. Traces of a racing furnace were found there . The smelting furnace would show that already 200 years before the first written mention of iron production in the Spessart here iron produced was. At the same time the area was in the Airborne Laser Scanning proven Altweg investigated. This also provides explanations as to why the castle was built at this, actually not very favorable, location.
Todays use
After the excavations in 2004/2005, the foundations of the former castle complex were restored. The residential tower and the south-western area (castle access, hall) were rebuilt as approaches and are accessible. Information boards on a Spessart circular route explain the history of the tower hill castle and the results of the excavations.
Say
There is a legend about the legend of the unfortunate knight of the Ketzelburg Junker Reiner von Haydebach who fell in love with two sisters of his farmer and who killed each other in a dispute over his favor. As atonement he fled on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and returned home as an old man, where he was found dead next to the memorial crosses of the sisters. Three old atonement crosses are supposed to document this event.
literature
- (Ed.) Heinrich Habel and Helga Himen: Monuments in Bavaria - ensembles, architectural monuments, archaeological site monuments : Volume VI. Lower Franconia. Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments (ed.). Munich 1985
- Harald Rosmanitz (with contributions from a large number of other authors): The Ketzelburg in Haibach. An archaeological-historical search for traces , Neustadt ad Aisch, 2006, ISBN 3-87707-676-9 . 222 pages
- (Ed.) Carsten Pollnick, Silvia Reiling: Haibach - a lively community: 2012 - 825 years Haibach , community Haibach 2012, ISBN 978-3-87707-865-5 , 445 pages; therein: The Ketzelburg in Haibach , pp. 20–29
- Adalbert von Herrlein : Aschaffenburg and its surroundings: A manual for foreigners , Aschaffenburg 1857, in it: The castle stable near Haibach pp. 94–96
Web links
- The Ketzelburg in Haibach: A mountain with (ge) layers - The Ketzelburg in Haibach reveals its secrets at www.spessartprojekt.de ; Research history, geomorphology , finds, excavation reports and pictures of the various stations of the excavations are presented in detail
- Entry on Ketzelburg in the private database "Alle Burgen".
- The Ketzelburg on Burgenwelt.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Haibach Culture Trail on www.spessartprojekt.de with the following themes: Legend sculpture - Ketzelburg - Hohes Kreuz viewpoint - Ketzelburgkreuze - Brunnenstube (1525) to supply water to the predecessor castle of today's Johannisburg Castle - Wendelberg quarry natural monument ( Spessartin )
- ^ Theodor Ruf: On the history of Haibach from the first mention to the middle of the 16th century , in: Renate Welsch, Carsten Pollnick: Haibach 1187–1987. 800 years of local history , Haibach 1987, pp. 44–65, especially pp. 44–53
- ↑ Kartenblatt - Hessenthal No. 86 of the Bavarian first recording for land surveying. Recorded in 1832/33, revised in 1844. On the map at hand, the castle stable is referred to as “Ketzelburg”. It is the oldest known entry of the ground monument on a map.
- ↑ Aschaffenburg and its surroundings . Colored lithograph (excerpt from a general staff map from 1839) on a scale of 1: 25000 (picture chronicle Alt-Aschaffenburg, plate 48)
- ↑ Adalbert von Herrlein: Aschaffenburg and its surroundings. A manual for foreigners , Aschaffenburg 1857, p. 94
- ^ Josef Kittel: The history of the Lords of Reigersberg , Würzburg 1891, p. 56.
- ↑ The incorrect designation as a Celtic refuge or Celtic ring wall can still be found in some cases today in maps, even in the Bavarian Monument Atlas.
- ↑ a b Bavarian list of monuments in Haibach: soil monuments
- ^ Wolfgang Hartmann: Who were the gentlemen of Kesselberg , in: Spessart magazine 09/2012 (106th year); see also under Bürg (Titting)
- ↑ Spessart Project: Excavation Results: Findings ( Memento of the original from April 26, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Excavation diary July 23, 2005 ( Memento of the original from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ News about the Ketzelburg: The excavations in autumn 2014
- ↑ The Ketzelburg in Haibach ( Memento of the original from May 13, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at spessartprojekt.de
- ↑ Legend and History - On the dubious relationship to one another ( Memento of the original from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. described in detail at www.spessartprojekt.de and in the book about the Ketzelburg.
- ↑ Adalbert von Herrlein : Aschaffenburg and its surroundings: A manual for foreigners , Aschaffenburg 1857, in it: The castle stable near Haibach pp. 95–96
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