Owl Tower (Merseburg)

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Owl Tower, view from the south (city side)

The Owl Tower is a preserved tower of the listed remains of the Merseburg city fortifications in the city of Merseburg in Saxony-Anhalt .

location

It is located west of Merseburg's old town, on the east bank of the Klia brook , east of Hälterstrasse and north of Bahnhofstrasse . Immediately to the east of the tower is the site of the JW von Goethe secondary school .

Architecture and history

The 28 m high Owl Tower is the only preserved of the nine archaeologically proven wall towers of the city, not counting the gate towers. The floor plan of the tower is almost square. The owl tower is crowned by a combat platform and a stone cone helmet . The wall thickness decreases from storey to storey, the edges formed inside served as beam supports for the storey ceilings. It was restored at the end of the 19th century. It comes from a comprehensive renovation of the city wall during the Saxon Fratricidal War (1447-51), to which Bishop Johannes Bose contributed 600 guilders and 20 shock new groschen. On this occasion, the urban area was expanded to the north along the Klia to the southwest corner of the Domburg. The tower has a larger floor plan than the previous towers, was higher and, above all, had a combat platform. Since, in contrast to the previous towers, it was laid out with almost the entire cross-section in front of the city wall in the Zwinger, the defenders could now work alongside the city wall with firearms. The greater height was necessary in order to be able to support the defenders of the kennel wall (not preserved) and on the wall with firearms. The tower is very similar to the Aschersleber towers from the same period and fits in with the fortification measures of the larger neighboring cities.

literature

  • Falko Grubitzsch, Marina Meincke-Floßfeder: List of monuments Saxony-Anhalt, Volume 6.1, Merseburg-Querfurt district (I), Merseburg district. Flugkopf Verlag Halle, 2000, ISBN 3-910147-66-6 , page 106.
  • Peter Ramm / Hans-Joachim Krause, Dehio-Handbuch der Deutschen Kunstdenkmäler, Saxony-Anhalt II: Dessau and Halle administrative districts. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-422-03065-4 , page 560.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans-Hartmut Scheuer: Investigation of the building stock, namely the cellar and vault systems, for the urban planning investigation of the old town. Diss. 1966. Merseburg City Archives 92 (1) G 3.3.8
  2. ^ The Merseburg episcopal chronicle, trans. u. commented v. O. Rademacher, Merseburg 1903, part IV (1431-1463), p. 38.
  3. ↑ Manfred Linck: City and Military in the Late Middle Ages. Publishing house Dr. Köster, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-89574-926-1 , pp. 66-71 .

Coordinates: 51 ° 21 ′ 28.1 ″  N , 11 ° 59 ′ 48.7 ″  E