Vorsfelde castle wall
| Vorsfelde castle wall | ||
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 Site plan of the castle around 1850 |
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| Castle type : | Niederungsburg, swamp, moth | |
| Conservation status: | Burgstall | |
| Place: | Wolfsburg - Vorsfelde | |
| Geographical location | 52 ° 26 '21.6 " N , 10 ° 51' 3.3" E | |
| Height: | 56 m above sea level NHN | |
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The castle wall Vorsfelde is an Outbound Marsh Castle in Wolfsburg district Vorsfelde . It was a palisade- reinforced wooden defense tower in the style of a motte (tower hill castle), which was connected to a neighboring castle wall as a fore-castle . The facility was located on a sand island in the then swampy Drömling lowlands and was long believed to be the historical Vorsfeld Altes Haus castle .
location
The remains of the castle complex are in the lowlands of Aller and Drömling around 900 meters as the crow flies east of the medieval town center of Vorsfelde. The Burgstall is located on a meadow not far from the Mittelland Canal, about 100 meters north of the point where the Steekgraben covers the canal . The Aller, which was canalized in the 19th century, flows past about 300 meters to the northwest, but during the existence of the castle complex with its oxbow lakes it may have passed closer to it. This is shown in a site plan by Braunschweig city director Wilhelm Bode around 1850 based on a land survey from 1761.
According to one theory, the castle could have secured a trade route that led at a narrow point near Vorsfelde through the Aller valley. It is known that this route in the direction of Calvörde , today's B 188 , has existed for a very long time, because it was one of the few east-west connections. In the west lay the marshland of the Barnbruch and in the east the extensive Drömling swamp .
Search and discovery
The 800th local jubilee of Vorsfelde in 1945 was postponed to 1946 due to the Second World War . For the anniversary celebrations one needed presentable facts, because for the long existence of the place only the mention as Varesfelt existed in a papal bull of January 11, 1145 by Pope Lucius II in Rome. The Braunschweig regional archaeologist and director of the Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum Alfred Tode was entrusted with the search for historical evidence from the earliest local history . He first obtained information from literature and archives.
A first clue was a mention in the book about the architectural and art monuments of the Helmstedt district by Paul Jonas Meier from 1896. According to this, an Altes Haus castle was located on the left bank of the Aller outside the city, the walls of which had already been leveled. Tode concluded that it must have existed from the existence of Neuhaus Castle, which was about 3 km southeast of Vorsfelde and was first mentioned in 1371 .
In addition, Tode found a land map of Vorsfelde and the surrounding area, which had been made in 1761 by the surveyor FHA Penther as part of the Kurhannoverschen Landesaufnahme . It contained several references to historical sites. Among them was the drawing of a piece of land called Hopfengarten in the castle wall in the Drömlingswiesen east of the old town and near the Sudammsbreite. The map gave 6 acres and 16 rods as the size of the field, which was apparently enclosed by a wall, for growing hops .
A further indication of the existence of the complex was a sketch made around 1850 by Brunswick city director Wilhelm Bode based on the survey map from 1761. Bode drew a smaller, round wall on it called the Old House , which was separated by two causeways with a larger square castle wall of 6 acres and 70 rods was connected. Bode described the plant as a remnant of a against the Slavs -scale festivals .
Equipped with this information, the archaeologist Alfred Tode went to Vorsfelde for several weeks in the summer of 1946 to locate the castle site. He did not succeed immediately, because the old maps from the 18th and 19th centuries showed an old house in Drömling, but the area in the Allerniederung had changed many times since then. The Aller was canalized in the 19th century and the Mittelland Canal was built in the 1930s. The ramparts of the castle had already been completely leveled during the land consolidation in 1864 in order to make the area arable. Nevertheless, the archaeologist found what he was looking for, as he was well trained in the search for early fortifications. During the 1920s and 1930s he carried out the archaeological survey of Schleswig-Holstein .
excavation
When Alfred Tode came across a suspected site with irregular ground in a meadow, he began an excavation with two of his employees from Braunschweig and excavation helpers provided by the municipality of Vorsfelde. Equipped with the simplest work equipment, such as borrowed shovels and wheelbarrows, this was the first state archaeological project in the Braunschweiger Land after the Second World War. The excavation lasted two weeks. The archaeologists moved back and forth between the site and the excavation site every morning and evening in a tool-laden handcart. They were housed in a hotel, where they were fed on food stamps in the immediate post-war period .
During the excavation, a 40 meter long search cut was first made. The first finds appeared in a dark discolored culture layer below a 50 centimeter thick, empty layer of boggy soil.
After the first finds, public tours took place at the excavation site, which were organized for school classes and archaeological excursions from Braunschweig. According to the letter of invitation, a superficially barely visible, medieval castle about 50 meters in diameter was discovered. The archaeologists uncovered parts of the interior of the castle over 150 m², the outer palisade wall over 8 meters in length and a piece of the 1.5 meter wide moat . The most productive place of discovery was the moat, in which the earth-filled finds could be preserved. The special feature of the site was that numerous wooden parts have been preserved due to the damp soil in the Drömling lowlands. The found hewn stones were believed by archaeologists to be the foundations of the wooden structure.
Found objects
Finds from the excavation were stockade stumps, beams with mortise and tenon joints , wooden plates, wooden spoons, wooden cups, animal bones, small iron parts and hewn stones. During the excavation, the regional archaeologist Alfred Tode offered the local administration of Vorsfeld to loan the finds to a planned, small local museum in the village. However, the museum plans were not implemented. Today the smaller pieces, as well as around 100 photos and several excavation sketches, are in the Prehistory and Early History department of the Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum in Wolfenbüttel . From the numerous, up to 1 meter long palisade stumps, there are no more finds to provide information on the time of construction of the castle through dendrochronological investigations. A new excavation could provide further stockade stumps, as only part of the complex was excavated in 1946 and further finds are to be assumed in the ground.
Find evaluation
A final treatise on the excavation was apparently not written at that time for lack of time. Based on the ceramic shards found, the archaeologists dated the period of use of the fortification to the 12th to 13th centuries. They saw in her a wooden defense tower in the style of a moth but without a castle hill. According to the excavation results, the complex was surrounded by a moat and a palisade fence. According to the old maps, the castle is said to have been connected to a nearby castle wall by two 200-meter-long causeways . It should have been a bailey that has not yet been discovered and was probably located in the area of today's Mittelland Canal. As with other small aristocratic castles of this time, a representative of the lower nobility, for example a ministerial or castle man, sat on it . Since there are no burnt layer found that would have pointed to a violent destruction, is assumed to leave the system.
Assignment to the Vorsfeld castles
There are several documentary proofs of the existence of a Vorsfeld castle. It was first mentioned in 1218 with a Castrum Varsfelde, while it was destroyed in 1464. The Vorsfeld Castle was referred to as the Old House , which can be seen as a contrast to the Neuhaus Castle ( New House ) 3 km away . However, it is still not clear where the castle stood or whether the historical tradition means one or more complexes. There are only indications of the existence of fortifications in or near the place.
Castles on site
The excavated structural remains of a fortification in Drömling are the castle site shown on maps from the 18th and 19th centuries as an old house with an adjacent castle wall. However, it should not be identical to the Altes Haus castle mentioned in the older historical tradition . This results from the simple construction of the moth as a wood-earth construction, which was long out of date when the old house was destroyed in 1464. At best, the moth has the function of a forerunner complex, perhaps as the seat of a von Vorsfelde family, which was mentioned in 1217 by the servant Gottfried von Vorsfelde.
According to one theory, the Altes Haus castle could also have been located east of the Vorsfeld town center in the area of today's sewage treatment plant on the Aller. This is indicated by an aerial photo from 1940, which shows a rectangular area with soil discoloration in this area. It could have been a fortification with a weir on the Aller.
Castle in the place
Today the existence of the Altes Haus castle as a solid stone building is most likely to be assumed in the place. Their task was to protect the settlement on the Vorsfeld Werder, which had existed since at least the 12th century . According to a current theory, the castle stood on the property of the former office building on Amtsstraße. This is indicated by the field name In den Burgäckern and an undulating terrain with depressions, which can be interpreted as a moat . Since no structural remains can be found above ground, it could have been completely removed after its warlike destruction by the citizens of Vorsfeld in order to use the stone material for other building projects.
Castles in the area
See also
literature
- History of the apron volume 1 . Wolfsburg City Archives, Wolfsburg 1995, ISBN 3-929464-01-2 .
- Axel Hindemith:
- The castle was called the Old House in: Wolfsburger Nachrichten of August 19, 1986
- The finds in the moat were extremely productive in: Wolfsburger Nachrichten of 23 August 1986
- Important finds buried during the construction of the Mittelland Canal in: Wolfsburger Nachrichten of August 28, 1986
- The von Bartensleben were 1288 Burgmannen in: Wolfsburger Nachrichten of September 6, 1986
- Further fate of the ground monument unclear in: Wolfsburger Nachrichten of September 11, 1986
- Ernst Andreas Friedrich : The castles of Wolfsburg , pp. 136-138, in: If stones could talk , Volume III, Landbuch-Verlag, Hanover 1995, ISBN 3-7842-0515-1 .
Web links
- Entry by Stefan Eismann zu Vorsfelde, Motte in the scientific database " EBIDAT " of the European Castle Institute
- Historical reconstruction drawing of the facility