Carlsburg (Lehe)
Carlsburg or Carlstadt (also Karlsburg or Karlstadt ) represents the failed Swedish attempt at the end of the 17th century to build a fortress town at the confluence of the Geeste with the Weser (the location of the later Bremerhaven ). After unsuccessful attempts to establish a company in the 1670s and 1680s, the project was abandoned in 1700.
Starting position
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With the Peace of Westphalia since 1648, the sovereign rights of the former Archbishopric Bremen and the Hochstift Verden as duchies of Bremen and Verden as part of the Holy Roman Empire were exercised by the Kingdom of Sweden . Until the final loss of sovereignty over this territory in 1712 the duchies presented as exclave the westernmost possession of Sweden in central Europe and were considered strategically important territory in the battle for military and economic supremacy on the North Sea - especially against Denmark - considered.
However, Sweden had no major port cities and only minor fortifications in this area. In addition, the attempt to bring Bremen into Swedish hands failed in the First Bremen-Swedish War in 1654 as well as in the Second Bremen-Swedish War in 1666. After the conclusion of peace with the Hanseatic city, the plan arose to create a base of their own by founding a new port and fortress city directly at the mouth of the Weser and at the same time to damage Bremen. The Danish founding of Glückstadt an der Elbe in order to compete with Hamburg served as a model for this company .
First attempt at founding
The idea of building a fortified trading town on the Weser was promoted primarily by Field Marshal Carl Gustav Wrangel and the Governor General of the Duchies of Bremen and Verden Henrik Horn . With the consent of the Swedish regent Hedwig Eleonora , in 1670 fortress construction engineer Dionys Bredekow and Jean Mell , fortress builder and quartermaster general in the northern German possessions of Sweden, were commissioned to develop floor plans for a planned town .
Bredekow's design envisaged an almost circular fortress town on a hill south of the Geeste (near the town of Geestendorf ), taking into account both a radial and a chessboard-like street grid. The port of this settlement would have been directly on the Geeste opposite the former Leher Schanze , a small redoubt that was laid out in 1639 by Archbishop Friedrich II of Bremen .
Mell's design - which was ultimately chosen - preferred a town with an oval ground plan in the plain north of the river (near the town of Lehe ), surrounded by a fortification with ten bastions . Inside the city with a checkerboard grid of streets, a canal connected to the Geeste was to serve as a protected inland port . The construction of the after the Swedish King Karl XI. "Carlsburg" or "Carlstadt" named settlement was started in 1672 with extensive earthworks for the trenches and walls of the fortification ring. In addition, an artificial puncture was made before the last loop of the Geeste, so that it flowed into the Weser directly at the city. For this work, the residents of the neighboring Lehe were obliged to do so-called “ hand and clamping services ”. Jean Mell himself became the commander of the garrison, and Mayor Johann Besser.
Due to the Dutch War , which began in the same year and in which Sweden was involved as an ally of France, fewer funds were available than originally planned and the work progressed only slowly. Nevertheless, in 1674 the royal Swedish architect Nicodemus Tessin the Elder was commissioned to draw up detailed designs for streets and the layout of Carlsburg's public buildings. Ticino's draft envisaged the subdivision of the city into a larger Lutheran quarter (the Evangelical Lutheran Church was the Swedish state church) and a smaller Reformed quarter. In addition, one wanted to enable followers of other denominations - such as Catholics from England and Jews - to settle in Carlsburg.
Siege of Carlsburg
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Before the Bebauungs- and settlement plans were realized for Carl castle that construction activities had to be canceled in 1675, when an alliance of Brandenburg-Prussia , the Principality of Lüneburg , the Bishopric of Münster and Denmark , the Swedish areas in northern Germany during the Bremen-Verden campaign attack . Little is known about the exact state of the development of the city and the port at that time. Presumably there were only a few other buildings besides the quarters for the Swedish garrison , the commandant's house, the steward's house and a brick kiln. The number of civilians in the city was also very low. However, the fortifications of the city were already so far completed that the Swedish crew with 600 to 800 men and 72 guns were able to successfully repel an initial blockade of the city by Brandenburg ships and Danish troops.
When Carlsburg was besieged a second time from the end of October 1675, Mell's decimated garrison, weakened by lack of food and diseases, finally had to surrender to Munster and Lüneburg troops in January 1676. After the handover, the fortress was partially demolished; further damage to the structures resulted from floods.
Second attempt at founding
When, after the Peace of Saint-Germain, the area returned to Sweden in 1679, a new attempt was made to found a city in Carlsburg. But this time, too, difficulties arose: in 1681 a reconstruction initiative under the direction of the Hamburg merchant Philip Henrich Kniehauer failed . Then King Charles XI. 1683 write and publish special privileges for Carlsburg to attract settlers from France and the Netherlands.
In the course of these activities, the Swedish fortress builder Erik Dahlberg revised the original design by Jean Mell. He designed Carlsburg even more in the sense of an ideal city . The center of the place was supposed to form a cruciform harbor, around which four equally sized partial squares were arranged, which together formed a square. The two free-standing churches - the Swedish and the German - corresponded to the representative buildings of the town hall and the residence house at the other end of the area. The symmetrical street grid provided for 400 building sites for private houses. The city gates to Lehe (in the north) and Geestendorf (in the south) should be opposite each other diagonally to the street grid. As a significant change to earlier designs, his plan also envisaged the diversion of the Geeste directly through the city - an idea that ties in with the model of the Dutch canals ; the width of the canal corresponded exactly to the width of a building site. However, the project was not put into practice and the work that had started was discontinued.
After the failed establishment attempts in the 1670s and 1680s, King Charles XII, who ruled Sweden from 1697 . take up the plans again, but could not provide the necessary funds. In 1700 the last cannons from Carlsburg were finally brought to Stade and the project was finally abandoned.
remains
In the course of the Great Northern War , the area at the mouth of the Weser fell to Denmark in 1711 and then to Hanover in 1715 . In 1812 the French built a ski jump ( Battery Karlsburg ) on the southernmost of the former bastions of Carlsburg. From 1830 to 1834 the semicircular Fort Wilhelm battery was built at the same location by Hanover .
When Bremerhaven was founded in 1827, the remains of the Carlsburg ramparts are said to have been clearly visible in the area. After Bremen acquired the area, they were leveled at the construction of the new port city. The marketplace of Bremerhaven (today Theodor Heuss place ) here was approximately in the center of the former fortress. The street names Karlsburg and An der Karlstadt have been preserved in this oldest part of Bremerhaven . In 1849 the emigrant house of the agency of the businessman Johann Georg Claussen was built here, which was used by the Karlsburg brewery from 1891 . When the Bremerhaven University of Applied Sciences was founded in 1985, the remaining parts of the building were integrated into House K of the university.
literature
- Herbert and Inge Schwarzwälder: Bremerhaven and its predecessor communities . Publications of the Bremerhaven City Archives, Volume 2, Hauschild Verlag , Bremen 1977.
- Mascha Bisping: Urban planning as a political interpretation of a geographical area: Carlsburg and Bremerhaven . In: Cornelia Jöchner (Ed.): Political Spaces: City and Country in the Early Modern Age . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2003, ISBN 978-3050037745 .
- Henning Eichberg : Military and Technology. Swedish fortresses of the 17th century in the duchies of Bremen and Verden . Schwann, Düsseldorf 1976.
- Frank Gosch: Fortress construction on the North Sea and the Baltic Sea: the history of the German coastal fortifications until 1918 . Mittler, Hamburg 2003. ISBN 3813207439 .
- Burchard Scheper: About founding attempts of the Carlsburg in the context of urban historical developments in the area of today's city of Bremerhaven . Festschrift Heinz Stoob. Civitatum Communitas, Studies on European Urbanism. Cologne / Vienna 1984.
Individual evidence
- ^ Christian Petermann (ed.): The buildings of the University of Bremerhaven . Bremerhaven University of Applied Sciences / Wirtschaftsverlag NW, Bremerhaven 2005, p. 11
- ↑ Leaflet The Right Geometric Basic Rift / The Vestung Carolus-Stadt or Carolsburg, newly built by the Swedes in Herßogthumb Bremen on the Weser / And actual description / what a hero of the times happened to it / and how it finally went from the Allies to the Surrender has been forced. , 1680
- ↑ Anonymous: Theatrum Europaeum . Volume 11 (1682, ed. 1707), pp. 838 and 993-994
- ^ Herbert Black Forest: The Great Bremen Lexicon . Edition Temmen , Bremen 2002, p. 458.
Web links
Coordinates: 53 ° 32 ′ 24 ″ N , 8 ° 35 ′ 0 ″ E