Rinteln city fortifications
The city fortifications of Rinteln were a system of defensive structures for the city of Rinteln that protected them from attacks from around the 13th century to the beginning of the 19th century. This included the medieval city wall with towers and city gates as well as a rampart and moat. In the 17th century, Landgravine Hedwig Sophie von Hessen-Kassel had Rinteln expanded into a bastionary fortification based on the Dutch model and provided it with a garrison . During the Napoleonic Wars , the fortress was taken by Dutch troops without a fight in 1806 and immediately razed on Napoleon's orders . The main remnants of the city fortifications are remains of the city wall, ramparts and bodies of water.
Medieval city fortifications
A town wall consisting of palisades in Rinteln was first mentioned in 1257 in a document from Count Johann I von Schauenburg . In it he confirmed the gifts and privileges granted to the Rinteln monastery by his father Adolf IV . According to another documentary mention, the city fortifications were completed in 1344 by a rampart with a moat. Further mentions of the city fortifications come from the years 1474 and 1492, when Counts Erich and Otto III. confirmed their privileges to the town of Rinteln. It also mentions a Landwehr near Möllenbeck . The city wall was mentioned in a document in 1484, when the Eulenburg was given a special position in the village as the Burgmann's seat of the Möllenbeck monastery . Six months of work on the city fortifications in 1530 have been handed down because the fortifications no longer corresponded to the time. In the 15th century it was neglected to adapt it to the changed defense technology with the advent of artillery .
During the Thirty Years' War troops of Duke Christian von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel invaded Rinteln in 1623 by climbing over the city wall and took over the city after a short battle with the vigilante group . This was followed by a six-month cast. There is a plan of the city fortifications from 1633, which was made by Swedish troops. It shows Rinteln as a city with ramparts and a moat, which had 10 towers and three double gates in the city wall with the Seetor, the Ostertor and the Wesertor. A branch of the Exter fed as a mill exter a system of ditches that flowed around the city and flowed into the Weser . In 1633 a bridgehead with a jump was built on the opposite side of the Weser from Rinteln . In 1639 the city razed its city fortifications, the extent of which is not known. This was done by resolution of the Rinteln city council so that the regularly invading Soldateska could no longer settle . In 1646 the fortifications in Rinteln were razed again by Swedish troops who were in Minden .
City fortifications 1633 (water surfaces repainted)
City fortifications 1648
Reconstructed wall tower on the city wall
Rest of the city wall on the Weser
Mühlenexter as a moat near the city wall
Modern fortress
Rinteln has belonged to the Grafschaft Schaumburg since the Middle Ages . When the Schaumburg Count Otto V died in 1640 without an heir, the county was divided. As a result, Rinteln came to the Landgraves of Hessen-Kassel in 1647 and became a Hessian exclave that was far away from the residence in Kassel . Around 1660, Landgrave Wilhelm VI decided. , Had Rinteln expanded to a fortress and provided the place with a garrison . After his death in 1663, his guardian ruling widow, Hedwig Sophie , pushed the plans forward. A fortress of the old Dutch style in the manner of Menno van Coehoorn was planned . This technique proved itself in damp as well as flat terrain, was inexpensive and required little stone material. Work began in 1665 after Landgravine Hedwig Sophie had sent the fortress builder Johannes Rotarius to Rinteln. As the client, she let all available workers in Rinteln, such as farmers, soldiers and women, be employed. 500 foreign workers were quartered in the city. Difficulties were found in the procurement of building materials, especially in the case of palisade wood , which was required in the tens of thousands. The foresters protested against the felling of the wood in the Schaumburg forests , as they viewed the deforestation as overexploitation . As a result, wood was brought in from Hessian forests on rafts on the Weser . Obernkirchen sandstone from the quarries of the nearby Bückeberg was used for stone structures . Ship deliveries with weapons and equipment for the fortress also came from Hesse. For example, a transport in 1665 included four cannons, 400 muskets , 12 rifles , 100 fire tubes , 100 pikes , 50 morning stars , 1000 hand grenades , 100 fire tubes and hand mills for 1000 men.
At the end of 1676, after twelve years of construction, most of the work was completed. Around 150,000 m³ of earth had been moved. The fortress was inaugurated in 1678. According to a contemporary witness, a " considerable fortress " had emerged, which was still imperfect, but ready for use. The fortress belt consisted of seven bastions , two redoubts , two ravelins , casemates and underground passages. The bastions (Charlotte, Christian, Hessen, Hedwig, Landgraf, Sophie, Wilhelm) were about five meters high and provided with loopholes . They were built from masonry and earth. Outwardly, the fortress had a four-fold staggered line of defense. The outermost obstacle to the approach was the glacis as an approximately two meter high embankment, behind which a covered path for the infantry ran. This was followed by a moat almost 30 meters wide and three meters deep. This trench was bordered by a head-high and about 10-meter-wide rampart that could be defended by infantrymen. The adjoining main wall, about 16 meters wide, had a height of five meters and was secured by a palisade wall; On the wall there were positions for 20 gun batteries. The already low and incomplete city wall was no longer important in defense. The permanent garrison in Rinteln consisted of around 200 and at times up to 400 soldiers.
Information board for the Rinteln fortress near the former Hedwig bastion
Cannons between the fortress wall and the Eulenburg , today Rinteln Museum
Fortress gate, integrated into a modern building complex near the Weser
Barred casemate entrance to St. Sturmius Church
entertainment
Between 1776 and 1779, the now 100-year-old fortifications were renewed. Among other things, the Contrescarpe was reinforced to a length of 9,600 feet with the construction of around 12,000 palisades. Because of the persistently high costs of maintaining the fortifications with gates, bridges, locks and 28 military buildings, the Hessian Landgrave Friedrich II limited the fortress budget to 600 Reichstaler per year from 1782 . Major damage was caused in 1784 and 1799 by flooding of the Weser with ice drifts , whereby walls were washed away and threatened to collapse. In 1799 two towers were demolished to replace the Ostertorbrücke in order to save the cost of the stone material. When the political situation between Prussia and France came to a head at the beginning of 1806 , the Hessian Landgrave Wilhelm I gave the order to make the Rinteln fortress ready for defense. For this, the city council of Rinteln demanded the enormous sum of 36,000 thalers, of which Wilhelm I approved 3000 thalers at the end of October 1806. On November 1, 1806, the French besieged Wilhelm's royal seat, Kassel. On November 8, 1806, Dutch troops under General Herman Willem Daendels, as an ally of the French, took the Rinteln fortress without a fight.
Grinding
After the city of Rinteln was captured in November 1806, the demolition of the fortifications began in December on the instructions of Napoleon. Around 2000 soldiers, citizens and farmers were involved. About six months later, after the walls were removed, the facilities were no longer of military importance. The extensive areas were then available for civil purposes. The town of Rinteln received the right to use the ramparts in 1816 and leased them to citizens. Newly laid out gardens and a promenade along a poplar avenue transformed the ramparts into a green belt around the old town. Between the former Christian and Charlotte bastions, a park in the style of an English landscape garden was created in 1819 . At the St. Sturmius Church near the Weser, a casemate has been preserved to this day as a two meter high room with a floor area of 15 m². From here a connecting corridor led to the footbridge of the governorate island in the Weser. While the casemate, closed by bars, has been preserved, the corridor was filled in and walled up when the church was built around 1888.
Historical meaning
The Rinteln Fortress was one of a number of modern state fortresses along the Weser between Kassel and the North Sea, which were created between 1660 and 1680 in Verden and through the fortresses of Hameln , Nienburg , Minden , Bremen and Carlsburg . The trend was based on the unrestricted defense sovereignty of the sovereigns, which the emperor had granted them after the Thirty Years War . The Catholic Prince-Bishop Christoph Bernhard von Galen began building the fortress around 1655 with the Ludgerusburg in Coesfeld , where he established his residence , and around 1660 with the Citadel of Münster . The princes in Protestant northern Germany followed suit in terms of defense technology and fortified strategically important places on the Weser. Landgravine Hedwig Sophie had Rinteln fortified in order to secure the Grafschaft Schaumburg, acquired in 1647, as a Hessian exclave. In addition, with the garrison set up in Rinteln in 1651 and the fortress built from 1665, Hessen demonstrated the Hessian claim to power at a strategically important Weser crossing not far from the Brandenburg fortress of Minden and the Brunswick-Lüneburg fortress of Hameln.
literature
- August Woringer: Rinteln as a Hessian fortress and garrison town , Rinteln, 1935
- Karl Vogt: City and Fortress Hameln. The history of the Rinteln fortifications. , Rinteln, 1964
- Stefan Meyer: Rinteln in: Historical city views from Lower Saxony and Bremen , Göttingen, 2014, pp. 268–270, published by the Historical Commission for Lower Saxony and Bremen
Web links
- Report and photos of the historical city walk along the fortifications at rinteln-aktuell from July 8, 2014
- Report on the historical city walk along the fortifications in the Schaumburger Zeitung of July 11, 2014
Individual evidence
- ^ Rintelner views
- ↑ Dark Remnant of the Fortress. The forgotten casemate at St. Sturmius Church - not a secret passage. in: Schaumburger Zeitung of December 17, 2011