Arad fortress
| Arad fortress | ||
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 Arad Fortress, aerial view, 2011 |
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| Creation time : | 1763-1783 | |
| Geographical location | 46 ° 10 '15.7 " N , 21 ° 19' 54.8" E | |
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The fortress Arad (Romanian Cetatea Aradului ) is located on the left bank of the Marosch , in the IX. Subcetate district of the city of Arad , Romania . It was built in the 18th century as part of the military border with the Ottoman Empire . Over the centuries the fortress was used as a military base and as a military prison. The Romanian-Hungarian Peace Battalion (PSO) has been housed in the Arad fortress since 1999 .
history
After the victory on Kahlenberg near Vienna (1683), which heralded the end of Turkish hegemonic rule, the Habsburg army began a large-scale offensive towards the east in 1685.
In 1687, after the battle of Mohács , Arad was liberated from Turkish rule. The strategically favorable location of the city prompted Prince Eugene of Savoy to work out plans for the reconstruction of the former Turkish fortress as early as 1689. After the Empress Maria Theresa had the fortress built, the Austrian general and architect Ferdinand Philipp von Harsch designed the building plans in the Vauban - Tenaille style. The construction work lasted 20 years (1763–1783) and was directed by Johann Georg Haruckern . Since the fortress was near Arad, but across the river in the area of what was then Temes County in the Banat , the construction and financing of the fortress and the military buildings took place under the aegis of the Timisoara regional administration.
The peace of Karlowitz (1699) established the border between the Ottoman Empire and the Habsburg Monarchy along the Marosch . Arad became the center of the Austrian military border . In August 1699, the first border troops were recruited from the ranks of the Serbs and sent to Arad.
The main garrison of the fortress was the 33rd infantry regiment of the Imperial Habsburg army . However, the fortress of Arad lost its strategic importance after the last Turkish war , it was never besieged and the suitability of the new system could not be checked in practice at any time.
Franciscan monks (Minorites) lived in the wing of the building next to the Catholic church, which was located in the center of the fortress . Until 1918 the fortress was also one of the largest military prisons in the empire.
description
The fortress is laid out in the shape of a hexagonal star and provided with six bastions with a total of 296 loopholes . The three walls that surround the fortress are made of stone, with the spaces between them filled with earth. A wall is three meters wide. Originally, the fortress was surrounded by three entrenchments , which could be flooded with water from the Marosch if necessary. The circumference of the Arad fortress was 3180 meters.
The fortress still preserved today was built on a peninsula. Their floor plan corresponds to a regular hexagon with alternating angles that jump in and out. The inner ring was protected by six bastions. In front of the inner ring, six ravelins and twelve lunettes were erected, which form the reduite of the enveloppes . The entire complex is enclosed by a covered moat running around the fortress. In contrast to Vauban's system, the curtains were laid out in a divided system, the polygon sides are broken inwards. The main enclosure also has weakly divided fronts. In contrast to the old fortress, the new complex was casemated . The ravelins are the same height as the curtains. All defenses were covered.
The new construction of the fortress Arad was the only case in which Austrian fortress engineers developed their own new system. With the innovations, Count Harsch tried to overcome the French manner. The entire system shows typical features of the fortress construction from the time before the beginning of the so-called French manner in the Habsburg fortification system. In addition to the square floor plan and the bastions, these include the relatively long curtains that were common for the time before Vauban.
The main gate and the building complex inside the fortress were built in the baroque style . Inside the fortress there were buildings of the military administration , the guard and the monastery , which also housed a hospital and a Catholic church in baroque style . The last monks, members of the Johannes Capistranus order , left the monastery in 1861. The fortress was provided with three rows of underground bunkers . The total cost of building the fortress was three million Austrian guilders . Today the fortress serves as a barracks. As a military base, the fortress cannot be viewed or photographed.
Since 2000 the city administration has been negotiating with the Ministry of Defense to transform the fortress into a tourist center. However, these efforts have so far been unsuccessful for financial reasons.
Military prison
The Arad Fortress was first used as a military prison in 1794 when 1200 French soldiers who were involved in the Napoleonic Wars were held as prisoners in the fortress.
The fortress played a key role during the revolution of 1848/49 . It was besieged by the Hungarian Republican Army for nine months (October 1848 – June 1849). In the summer of 1849, the besiegers succeeded in occupying the fortress. After 46 days, the Habsburg army moved back into the fortress and partly used it as a military prison for over 500 officers of the Royal Hungarian Army . Most of the prisoners were sentenced to death. Among them were 13 generals who were executed on October 6, 1849 under the walls of the eastern outer fort and who went down in history as the martyrs of Arad . The generals Ernő Kiss, József Sweidel, Arisztid Dessewffy and Colonel Vilmos Lázár were shot, while the generals Ernő Pöltenberg , János Damjanich , Lajos Aulich , Gyorgy Lahner, József Nagysándor, Károly Leiningen-Westerburg Károly Knezich, Ignác Török and Károly Vécsey hanged were.
In 1852 Emperor Franz Joseph I visited the fortress and ordered some pardons. One of the most important prisoners imprisoned in the fortress is the Romanian revolutionary Eftimie Murgu .
During the First World War , thousands of Serbian soldiers and civilians from Bosnia-Herzegovina were imprisoned here. A camp was improvised in the outer fort between 1914 and 1918 to accommodate them. Of the detainees, 4,317 died as a result of typhus and bad treatment. They were buried in several mass graves in the Pomenirea cemetery. In their honor, a memorial plaque was placed at the entrance to the fortress.
The most famous prisoner of the Arad fortress was undoubtedly Gavrilo Princip , who killed the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie , during the assassination attempt in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914 , which led to the outbreak of the First World War.
Military garrison
After the fortress was built, the 33rd Infantry Regiment , a unit that was involved in important military operations by the Habsburg army, was housed here.
In November 1918 the fortress was occupied by French and Serbian troops and in July 1919 it was taken over by the Romanian army .
In the inter-war period, the fortress served as a military garrison again and housed the 93rd Infantry Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division of Romania. During the Second World War , the 93rd Infantry Regiment was deployed on the Eastern Front . During the fighting on November 20, 1942 in the Kalmyk steppe , south of Stalingrad , many soldiers of the Arad garrison lost their lives.
After the armistice agreement between Romania and the Soviet Union , Arad was occupied by Red Army troops on September 12, 1944 . A Soviet armored division was quartered in the fortress and withdrawn in 1958. Immediately after the withdrawal of the Soviets, a Romanian tank regiment was housed in the Arad fortress.
After the restructuring of the Romanian army (1995), the newly established infantry battalion 191 Colonel Radu Golescu was stationed in the fortress. The 191st Infantry Battalion with 400 soldiers has been involved in the Romanian-Hungarian Peace Battalion, Peace Support Operation (PSO), since 1999 .
Web links
- prourbe.ro , satellite view of the Arad fortress
- welcometoromania.ro , Cetatea Arad
- primariaarad.ro/ , Cetatea Aradului
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de (PDF; 33.8 MB), Swantje Volkmann: The architecture of the 18th century in the Temescher Banat
- ↑ virtualarad.net , short monograph of the city of Arad
- ↑ a b c prourbe.ro ( Memento of the original from November 17, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Ioan Tuleu: Cetatea Aradului
- ↑ enciclopedie.transindex.ro , Cetatea Aradului
- ↑ bmlv.gv.at , The Romanian Armed Forces - Army with Bite
