Hollenstedt castle wall

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Hollenstedt castle wall
Western part of the plant

Western part of the plant

Alternative name (s): Old Castle, Karlsburg, Hollenstedt Castle
Creation time : 9th century
Castle type : Niederungsburg
Conservation status: Reconstructed earthwork
Construction: Earthwork with fascines and heather flags
Place: Hollenstedt
Geographical location 53 ° 21 '10 "  N , 9 ° 43' 5.8"  E Coordinates: 53 ° 21 '10 "  N , 9 ° 43' 5.8"  E
Height: 10  m above sea level NN
Hollenstedt castle wall (Lower Saxony)
Hollenstedt castle wall

The castle wall Hollenstedt (also: Alte Burg , Karlsburg , Burg Hollenstedt or ( Old High German ) holdunstedi ) is a low castle built in the 9th century near the municipality of Hollenstedt in the Lower Saxony district of Harburg , which only existed for a few decades. The reconstructed ring wall is a branch of the Archaeological Museum Hamburg .

Location and structure

The "Old Castle" of Hollenstedt is located about 1.5 km south of the town in the river valley on a sandy headland on the west bank of the Este . Until 1968, the remains of the castle ramparts and moat stood out slightly from the terrain. The structure of the castle could only be vaguely reconstructed based on the excavation results; it was a former hill fort with an inner diameter of 80 m and a small ditch in front . The total diameter including the trench was 120 m. The originally 8 m thick and up to 4 m high wall consisted of a wood-earth construction, which was covered on both sides with heather plagues . The slope of the moat was secured by fascines made of wooden pegs and wattle. According to Ahrens and Matthies, the crown of the wall consisted of an approximately 340 cm high wooden palisade , which was backfilled with a chest-high sand pile and held on the inside of the wall by a pack of field stones. On the inside of the wall, like a casemate, 330 cm deep wooden buildings with pestilence roofs were built, the roofs of which rested on the stone packing of the superstructure. Inside the wall there were several houses 4–5 m wide and at least 16 m long. The access is assumed to be on the west side, where a boardwalk led in a gentle curve over the swampy terrain towards a gate.

excavation

The eastern part of the reconstructed complex with a medieval kitchen garden in the castle courtyard
Western part of the reconstructed outer wall with a moat in front

The archaeological investigation of the ring wall became necessary in 1968 after a land tenant had leveled the entire northern half and the eastern part of the complex to create fish ponds and destroyed large parts of the historical complex in the process. After draining the areas that had been removed, only 40 running meters of the lowest wall construction could be documented during the subsequent rescue excavation . For a more detailed investigation, only an undisturbed section of rampart with an outside area in the southeast and a ditch section in the south were left. The excavations were made difficult by frequent floods of the Este and penetrating groundwater. In order to be able to put the area under permanent protection, it was purchased by the city ​​of Hamburg in 1970 . A gate passage could not be proven with certainty. Due to the very swampy surroundings of the ramparts and numerous tracks in the west of the ramparts, a gate is most likely to be on the west side of the ramparts. This theory was supported by a clear depression of the ground and a charcoal layer on this wall section that deviated from the rest of the embankment. In the south-western outer area of ​​the rampart, several deeply retracted and tangentially aligned tracks in the direction of the presumed gate were found, which also point to a gate in the west of the facility. More detailed information on the construction of the gate was not possible. Likewise, no direct references to bridging the moat could be found at this point. Only a stone on the outer slope of the trench, which is unusually large for this area, could be interpreted as a support for a bridge. Many of the pieces of wood found inside the ramparts showed traces of fire to varying degrees depending on their location in the ramparts. Large amounts of rotten grain and the remainder of a millstone were found in a part of the building attached to the wall , which suggests that the castle complex was not burned down as planned. After the castle was abandoned, the wooden crown buildings must have kept the wall stable for some time. After they had rotted , the wall construction slowly eroded . A dendrochronological dating of 90 samples of the timber found was not possible because the trees of the timber found had grown under abnormal conditions on extremely moist or extremely dry locations and could not be classified in the existing data.

history

The excavator Claus Ahrens dated the castle on the basis of the findings to the late 9th century. In contrast, the results are also interpreted as the building of the Slavs between 804 and 817, when the Abodrites received the area through Charlemagne . A written mention in the Franconian Reichsannalen from the year 804 is therefore to be understood to mean that Charlemagne held his summer camp here before the castle was built:

"Nam imperator super Albiam fluvium sedebat, in loco, qui dicitur Holdunsteti, et missa ad Godofridum legatione pro perfugis reddendis medio Septembrio Coloniam venit."

“Because the emperor [Charlemagne] resided near the Elbe in a place called Holunstedi. And after he had sent an embassy to [King] Godfried [of Denmark] to hand over refugees, he went to Cologne in mid-September. "

- NN : Annales regni Francorum DCCCIIII

Nevertheless, the common name Karlsburg results from this record .

After only a few decades of use, the castle complex was destroyed by fire. After a long time it was probably rebuilt by the Stade Counts around 900 and later slowly fell into disrepair.

reconstruction

The castle wall was reconstructed in 1980 based on the excavation results from the 1970s, whereby the wooden and stone components were not rebuilt. The reconstruction is intended to reflect the impression that the facility might have created after its task. Inside the castle complex a display board provides information about the castle and the excavations. In June 2011, established teachers and students of Hollenstedter Estetalschule in a designed as a long-term project cooperation with the home and Transport Association Estetal and the Archaeological Museum Hamburg a medieval cottage garden with wattle fence inside the ramparts.

and display information about the image
Panoramic view over the eastern part of the castle courtyard in north direction

literature

  • Claus Ahrens: The "Old Castle" near Hollenstedt . In: Helms Museum - Hamburg Museum for Pre- and Early History (ed.): Information sheet . No. 45 . Hamburg 1980.
  • Claus Ahrens, E. Matthies: For the fortification of the old castle at Hollenstedt . In: Hammaburg NF . No. 5 (1978-80) , ISSN  0173-0886 , pp. 149-161 .
  • Claus Ahrens: The investigations on the Carolingian castle near Hollenstedt, district of Harburg in the years 1968–1972. A preliminary report . In: Helms Museum, Hamburg Museum for Archeology and the History of Harburg and the Museum and Heimatverein Harburg-Stadt und -Land eV (Ed.): Harburger Jahrbuch . No. 13, (1968/72) , ISSN  0722-6055 , pp. 72-104 .
  • Ernst Andreas Friedrich : The Karlsburg von Hollenstedt , pp. 35–36, in: If stones could talk , Volume II, Landbuch-Verlag, Hanover 1992, ISBN 3-7842-0479-1 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Claus Ahrens, E. Matthies: For the fortification of the old castle near Hollenstedt . In: Hammaburg NF . No. 5 (1978-80) , ISSN  0173-0886 , pp. 149-161 .
  2. ↑ a b c Claus Ahrens: The "Old Castle" near Hollenstedt . In: Helms Museum - Hamburg Museum for Pre- and Early History (ed.): Information sheet . No. 45 . Hamburg 1980.
  3. ↑ Klaus Richter: New archaeological observations on the topography of the medieval central place Hollenstedt, district Harburg . In: Hammaburg NF . No. 5 (1978-80) , ISSN  0173-0886 , pp. 163-173 .
  4. ↑ Michael Schmauder: Thoughts on the eastern border of the Carolingian Empire in: Walter Pohl, Helmut Reimitz (Ed.): Limit and difference in the early Middle Ages Vienna 2000, page 60 ff. With further references ISBN 3-7001-2896-7
  5. ↑ Claus Ahrens: The "Old Castle" near Hollenstedt . In: Helms Museum - Hamburg Museum for Pre- and Early History (ed.): Information sheet . No. 45 . Hamburg 1980, p. 15 .
  6. ↑ in loco is singular. Loco then means place, place, place, place.
  7. ↑ Johannes Hoops: Reallexikon der Germanic antiquity. de Gruyter-Verlag, Berlin, 2nd edition. 2000. In Volume 15, pp. 75-77.
  8. ↑ Joint project on Hollenstedt Castle on Dein Hollenstedt - Newsblog for the joint community of Hollenstedt from June 24, 2011 (accessed on June 26, 2012)

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