Engelburg (Alsace)

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Engelburg ruins, view from the southeast

The Engelburg ( French Château dʼEngelbourg ), also called Castel Sant'Angelo , is the ruin of a hilltop castle in the Upper Alsatian town of Thann in the French region of Grand Est . Built in the first third of the 13th century by the Counts of Pfirt , it later passed to the House of Habsburg and then to the French crown. King Louis XIV gave the order in 1673 to grind the facility, since then it has been in ruins. Today, the complex belongs to the city of Thann and has been under monument protection as a classified Monument historique ( French Monument historique classé ) since December 6, 1898 . Your most striking component is a residue of the demolished in the 17th century the keep , the popularly Witch's Eye ( French l'oeil de la sorcière is called).

story

Beginnings

The Thann settlement and a fortification known as the “Old Castle ” were originally an imperial fiefdom and owned by the Counts of Egisheim-Dagsburg . Later they came to the Counts of Pfirt , who installed a bailiff there . The Engelburg was a successor to the old castle, the location of which has not yet been reliably localized. It was founded in the period between 1220 and 1230 by Ludwig III. from Pfirt. He wanted to use her to control the entrance to the valley of the Thur and raise a lucrative toll there, because the trade route to the Col de Bussang in the direction of Lorraine and thus a long-distance trade route from Italy to Flanders ran through the valley . At that time the castle consisted of a small inner castle surrounded by a curtain wall with a building and keep in the northwestern inner castle area as well as an outer castle . It is possible that a large Niederburg also belonged to it to the southeast of the main castle.

After the lord of the castle murdered his father in 1234, the imperial ban was imposed on him , and all his goods were legally reverted to the kingdom. In the same year, King Heinrich renounced his rights to the Old and New Castle in Thann in favor of the Strasbourg Bishop Berthold von Teck . Two years later, Emperor Friedrich II confirmed this waiver.

In the following years the Pfirter counts again became lords of the castle in Thann, because in 1251 Ulrich von Pfirt gave his allodial castle to the bishop of Strasbourg as a fief and received it back from him as such. Count Ulrich supported the bishop in his fight against the Hohenstaufen since 1246 . The castle gradually developed into the preferred residence of the pastors, and so there is much to suggest that Count Theobald (1275–1311) had the complex expanded and converted into the main seat, probably around 1300. At that time, a large residential building, a new castle chapel, first mentioned in 1304, and a connecting passage to the structure were added.

Habsburg pawn

When the male line of the Pfirter died out in 1324 , the entire county of Pfirt, including Engelburg, passed to the Habsburgs through Johannas von Pfirt's marriage with the Austrian Duke Albrecht II in the same year. Initially, these employed bailiffs to manage the facility, but later often used it as a deposit. From 1455 to 1563 it was therefore continuously in foreign hands.

In 1415 the castle was built by Count Palatine Ludwig III. taken. In 1444 the castle garrison resisted a siege by the Armagnaks and in 1468 by Bernese troops. As early as 1465, the name Engelburg was used for the first time in written documents for the defense system. The origin of the name is not completely clear, it could come from a first castle chapel, which was dedicated to the Archangel Michael .

With the Treaty of Saint-Omer in May 1449, the castle, together with other Habsburg possessions along the Rhine, came from Sigismund of Austria for 50,000 guilders as pledge to the Burgundian Duke Charles the Bold . At that time, the facility was still pledged to Heinrich Reich von Reichenstein . Duke Karl finally triggered it on June 19, 1470. His commissioners sent to Thann painted a gloomy picture of the state of the castle in the reports to the duke, because the permanent pledge had had a negative effect on the building fabric. In letters from the period 1471 to 1473 it is said that the roofs are in a miserable condition and that there are no effective means of defense. In addition, the rooms are completely empty. The Habsburg pledges took everything with them that could be removed at short notice: furniture, windows and doors as well as hinges and locks. One of Karl's commissioners estimated that the most urgent repairs would cost around 380 guilders. Although the ducal Bailli , Pierre de Hagenbach, who was employed in Thann , had the most necessary repairs carried out, these did not fundamentally change the poor condition of the facility.

Reconstruction and final razing

Thann and the Engelburg on an engraving from 1628

In May 1477 the Engelburg came back into Habsburg hands. In 1548 its structural condition was so poor that the demolition of the keep was recommended, but extensive restoration work began in 1571 only after the pledges had ended. Nevertheless, Vogt and Kaplan had to leave the castle in 1577 because it was in ruins and uninhabitable. For subsequent repair work, which was carried out in the years 1593 to 1601, 1614 and 1618 to 1621, a total of 4,000 guilders were estimated. In 1617, Thann's last bailiff moved into a newly built 20 × 9 meter half-timbered house , and a fountain and a new castle chapel were added during the last major restoration campaign up to 1621 .

During the Thirty Years' War , the complex suffered severe damage because it shared the lot of the city of Thann and changed occupiers seven times between 1633 and 1639. Sometimes it was in Swedish, then again in French hands. In 1654 they finally captured French troops. Four years later, King Louis XIV gave the rule and castle Thann to his ruling minister Jules Mazarin in 1658 , whose family remained the owners until the French Revolution . The last repairs were carried out on the facility as late as 1672, but it had long since lost its strategic importance, because the French border had shifted eastwards to the Rhine due to the provisions of the Peace of Westphalia . Nevertheless, in February 1673 , the French king gave his war minister Louvois the order to grind down the facility. The work for this took place in the period from May to September 1673 under the direction of the artistic director Vincent-Matthias Poncet de La Rivière. The blasting work was carried out by miners from Giromagny . It took a total of three attempts before the massive keep of the complex could be destroyed. The tower tilted to the side and broke into several parts. The bottom of them remained in a position that gave it a resemblance to an eye looking down into the valley. That is why it is now called the witch's eye.

From the 18th century

In the centuries that followed, the complex was permanently used as a quarry and lost a great deal of its building fabric, which had already been decimated by the razing, so that only a few remains of the once stately castle remain today. The Society for the Preservation of Historical Monuments in Alsace ( French Société pour la Conservation des Monuments Historiques ) carried out the first clean-up work in 1863 on the castle area, which was listed under the German government in 1898. This protection was renewed in 1930 by the now French administration. In 2013, a circle of friends was founded, which, together with the city of Thann, looks after the preservation and securing of the ruins.

description

The remains of the Engelburg lie on the 445 meter high, rocky hilltop of the Schlossberg 100 meters above the town of Thann, from which they are separated by the Thur. Its quarry stone masonry consists of greywacke and large Thur pebbles . The castle area is heavily terraced , which on the one hand is of natural origin and on the other hand was created by the demolition of rubble in the 17th century.

A plan of the complex made in 1657 shows it at the time of its greatest expansion. Accordingly, the castle consisted of four fortified sections, which were delimited by staggered circular walls on three different levels. In order to get to the highest located inner castle, a total of four gates had to be overcome.

Core castle

South view of Engelburg, clearly visible the preserved part of the southern curtain wall

The small rectangular core castle with a massive keep and a residential building was enclosed by a curtain wall and most likely belonged to the building fabric from the early days of the complex. Remains of the core of the nuclear facility can still be seen in the north-west and south. The north-western section of the wall shows an intact Romanesque arched window , which suggests that a first building stood in this area during the founding period, which may have been the "House of the Castellans ", which was laid down in 1570 , and a free-standing building in the courtyard of the Main castle had been replaced. The latter is suspected today under the rubble of the keep. The round keep showed similarities to those of Kaysersberg and the Pflixburg . He had a 2.5 meter thick wall with a diameter of 7.5 meters. Its high entrance was in the southwest and thus turned away from the entrance side, its weir plate had a crenellated wreath . When the tower was blown up in 1673, a four-meter high section remained intact and is now located directly southeast of the tower foundations.

Mittelburg

Engelburg ruins; left in the picture: remains of the well tower

To the south and west of the main castle was an area enclosed by its own circular wall, the approximately oval floor plan of which was around 150 meters long and around 70 meters wide. Today it stands out as a flat terrain sloping slightly to the west. The most important building in this part, known as the central castle, was a large, three-story residential building in the south-western area. Today only a depression in the cellar and a few remains of the wall are left of it. It could have been built around the same time as the Thanns city fortifications, i.e. in 1290. Presumably it is the "Duke's House" mentioned in 1473. It stood on the site of an older building, of which in 1980 a one meter high wall remnant made of sandstone - humpback blocks could be seen. On its south corner stood a small round tower, which in 1657 was equipped with a bell. Accordingly, the new castle chapel mentioned in 1619 can be assumed there or after it. It replaced an older chapel , probably further west , which was consecrated to St. Catherine and had lost its function after 1503. The youngest part of the central castle was a tower from 1621 protruding from the wall to the north, in which the castle fountain was located. A roundabout at the north-west corner of this area of ​​the castle was - judging by the preserved architecture - from the late 15th or early 16th century. A considerable piece of the wall still stands from him today. At the same time, a massive cannon roundabout was built on the eastern corner of the castle complex. Only a shapeless foundation wall remained of him. Also in the 15./16. In the 19th century, a kennel in front of the central castle and reinforced with four semicircular towers can be dated. From there, the entrance to the castle that ran beneath it could be painted. Today only small remains are evidence of it.

Forecourt

At the western end of the castle area was a kind of fortified forecourt with a large building. The way to the central castle led through there and was secured to it by a shell tower that stood right next to the gate to the central castle. The structural fabric preserved there is similar in age to the core and central castle and could therefore also date to around 1300.

Niederburg

The Niederburg, whose circular wall was crowned by a crenellated wreath and is still up to a height of three meters in the southwest, surrounded the central and central castle in the south and east. Access was through a gate in the east corner. The rest of the way followed the shape of the castle rock and led along its south side. Visitors had to pass through a second castle gate, which was flanked by a slightly higher, semicircular tower.

literature

  • Thomas Biller, Bernhard Metz: The late Romanesque castle building in Alsace (1200-1250) (= The castles of Alsace. Architecture and history. Volume 2). Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-422-06635-9 , pp. 424-430.
  • Georges Bischoff: Thann. Château dʼEngelborg. In: Roland Recht (Ed.): Le Guide des châteaux de France. Haut-Rhin. Hermé, Paris 1986, ISBN 2-86665-025-5 , pp. 156-158.
  • Martin Ehretsmann: Analysis architecturale du château de l'Engelbourg à Thann (Haut-Rhin). Campagne de sondages archéologiques 1992. In: Cahiers alsaciens d'archéologie, d'art et d'histoire. No. 28, 1995, ISSN  0575-0385 , pp. 179-194.
  • Nicolas Mengus, Jean-Michel Rudrauf: Châteaux forts et fortifications médiévales dʼAlsace. Dictionnaire dʼhistoire et dʼarchitecture. La Nuée Bleue, Strasbourg 2013, ISBN 978-2-7165-0828-5 , pp. 318-320.
  • Charles Nerlinger: État du château de Thann en Alsace au XVe siècle. In: Bibliothèque de l'École des chartes. Volume 59, 1898, ISSN  1953-8138 , pp. 304–321 ( digital copy ).
  • Charles-Laurent Salch: Nouveau Dictionnaire des Châteaux Forts dʼAlsace. Alsatia, Strasbourg 1991, ISBN 2-7032-0193-1 , pp. 316-317.

Web links

Commons : Engelburg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ^ First entry of the castle ruins in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
  2. ^ Felix Wolff: Elsässisches Burgen-Lexikon. Directory of castles and chateaus in Alsace. Unchanged reprint of the 1908 edition. Weidlich, Frankfurt a. M. 1979, ISBN 3-8035-1008-2 , p. 57.
  3. ↑ a b Thomas Biller, Bernhard Metz: The late Romanesque castle building in Alsace (1200-1250). 2007, pp. 424, 426.
  4. ↑ According to Thomas Biller, Bernhard Metz: The late Romanesque castle building in Alsace (1200–1250). 2007, p. 428. Nicolas Mengus and Jean-Michel Rudrauf, however, claim that the castle might have been built at the end of the 12th or the beginning of the 13th century and was first mentioned in 1225, while Charles-Laurent Salch stated that it was founded Dated to a point in time after 1225. Compare Nicolas Mengus, Jean-Michel Rudrauf: Châteaux forts et fortifications médiévales dʼAlsace. 2013, p. 318 and Charles-Laurent Salch: Atlas des châteaux forts en France. 19th edition. Publitotal, Strasbourg 1988, p. 654.
  5. ↑ Second entry of the castle ruins in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
  6. ↑ a b c Thomas Biller, Bernhard Metz: The late Romanesque castle building in Alsace (1200-1250). 2007, p. 429.
  7. ↑ Information on the transition to the bishop of Strasbourg after Thomas Biller, Bernhard Metz: The late Romanesque castle building in Alsace (1200-1250). 2007, p. 424. In the meantime, one can often read in older publications that the castle had long been a bone of contention between the diocese of Strasbourg and the Counts of Pfirt, and that the bishop finally prevailed.
  8. ^ Thomas Biller, Bernhard Metz: The late Romanesque castle building in Alsace (1200-1250). 2007, p. 424.
  9. ↑ a b c d e Thomas Biller, Bernhard Metz: The late Romanesque castle building in Alsace (1200-1250). 2007, p. 428.
  10. ↑ a b c Nicolas Mengus, Jean-Michel Rudrauf: Châteaux forts et fortifications médiévales d'Alsace. 2013, p. 318.
  11. ↑ a b c d e f g Charles-Laurent Salch: Nouveau Dictionnaire des Châteaux Forts dʼAlsace. 1991, p. 317.
  12. ^ A b Charles-Laurent Salch: Nouveau Dictionnaire des Châteaux Forts dʼAlsace. 1991, p. 316.
  13. ^ A b Charles Nerlinger: État du château de Thann en Alsace au XVe siècle. 1898, p. 304.
  14. ^ Charles Nerlinger: Thann à la fin du XVe siècle (1469–1474). Dʼaprès des documents inédits. Schlaeber, Paris 1893, p. 5 ( digitized version ).
  15. ↑ a b c d e Thomas Biller, Bernhard Metz: The late Romanesque castle building in Alsace (1200-1250). 2007, p. 426.
  16. ↑ a b c d e f g Thomas Biller, Bernhard Metz: The late Romanesque castle building in Alsace (1200-1250). 2007, p. 427.
  17. ↑ Castel Sant'Angelo on the website of the Association des châteaux forts dʼAlsace , accessed on September 26, 2020.
  18. ↑ The green travel guide. Alsace - Lorraine. Travel House Media, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-8342-8971-1 , p. 330.
  19. ↑ a b c Georges Bischoff: Thann. Château dʼEngelborg. 1986, p. 157.
  20. ↑ The Engelburg on the Kastel Elsass website , accessed on September 26, 2020.
  21. ↑ a b Website of the castle ruins , accessed on September 26, 2020.
  22. ^ Fritz Bouchholtz: Castles and palaces in Alsace. Based on old templates (= castles, palaces, mansions. Volume 24). Weidlich, Frankfurt a. M. 1962, p. 145.
  23. ↑ Information according to the second entry of the castle ruins in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French). According to Thomas Biller, the masonry consists of the pending porphyry . Compare Thomas Biller, Bernhard Metz: The late Romanesque castle building in Alsace (1200-1250). 2007, p. 426
  24. ^ Georges Bischoff: Thann. Château dʼEngelborg. 1986, p. 158.
  25. ↑ Information from Nicolas Mengus, Jean-Michel Rudrauf: Châteaux forts et fortifications médiévales dʼAlsace. 2013, p. 318. Biller and Metz also date it to around 1300, while Charles-Laurent Salch sees it as a late Gothic or Renaissance building . Compare Thomas Biller, Bernhard Metz: The late Romanesque castle building in Alsace (1200-1250). 2007, p. 427 and Charles-Laurent Salch: Nouveau Dictionnaire des Châteaux Forts dʼAlsace. 1991, p. 316.

Coordinates: 47 ° 48 '53.3 "  N , 7 ° 6' 4.4"  E