Würdenhain Castle
Würdenhain Castle was a castle in Würdenhain in the southern Brandenburg district of Elbe-Elster . It was located southeast of the village in the confluence of the Großer Röder and the Schwarze Elster . In 1442 it was destroyed by order of the Saxon Elector and not rebuilt.
history
The emergence of the Würdenhain rule
In his 1953 chronicle of Würdenhain , the Würdenhain local history researcher Rudolf Matthies speculated that the castle located here may have been built on an old Slavic fortification in the first quarter of the 11th century. It is more likely, however, that it was built around 1200 as part of the German East Settlement , when six more castles were built on the left bank of the Black Elster in Mückenberg , Elsterwerda , Saathain , Liebenwerda , Wahrenbrück and Uebigau .
The Castle Will Hain had military on its surrounded by water place at the mouth of Roeder importance. It was the cornerstone of the Gau Nizizi or the Saxon East Mark . The central economic center of the Würdenhain rulership was the so-called Oppach , originally overgrown with oaks and alders and covering an area of 400 hectares to the west of the castle, a large part of which has now been deforested.
After the consolidation of German rule, the castle districts were transformed into mansions and vassals were enfeoffed with them. The vassals of the castle in Würdenhain lived from the work of their farmers who founded the villages of Würdenhain, Reichenhain and Haida around 1200 and expanded the old Sorb villages of Prieschka, Oschätze, Kröbeln and Kosilenzien. The Dominium Würdenhain appears for the first time in documents as such a manorial rule in 1370 . To this rule belonged the area with the villages Haida , Reichenhain , Prieschka and Oschätze , originally also Kosilenzien and Kröbeln up to the Ziegram . In 1405 the castle in Würdenhain was expressly attested as such in a pledge. At that time it belonged to Heinrich von Waldow, who was also based in Mückenberg .
Razing of the Würdenhain castle
The castle is said to have been destroyed by order of the Saxon Elector Friedrich II . According to this, he had taken the Würdenhain castle lord Hans Marschall prisoner in his castle Würdenhain in April 1442 and had him thrown into prison, had the fiefdom Würdenhain and its accessories drawn in, had the castle destroyed itself and ordered that it should never be rebuilt. The wrongdoer's brothers, Gerhard, Juerge and Ludolf Marschall, then announced the feud to the elector, which is why their properties in Thuringia were withdrawn from them.
In the following year the Bohemian nobleman Hinko Birke was enfeoffed with dignity groves by the Duba . However, the deed of purchase states : The Waell zu Werdenhain should never be built on or timbered up. The marshals then decided it would be better to end the feud and make peace with the sovereign. Through friends they brought about a settlement, submitted to the expiatory measures and on August 5, 1443 renounced all rights to Würdenhain. Hans Marschall himself was released from prison and vowed to leave all the lands of the Saxon princes for at least a year and a day. He was later resumed with grace and even appointed bailiff. As compensation for the damage suffered by Würdenhain, the elector granted him another castle for a few years. In addition, the Marschall brothers were given back their paternal goods in Thuringia after they vowed right primal feuds . On February 28, 1455, Hans Marschall again waived all claims because of Würdenhain. In 1480 the castle was mentioned again as the Wahle or the Wahlstedt .
During the Reformation , the ruin reappears in the files of the Mühlberg Office in 1564 . At that time the Würdenhain farmers complained about the Mühlberger Amtsschösser Fuchs. This also means that the trees and probably also the stones of the desert castle site were used for public buildings and the ruins served as a quarry. Presumably the nave of today's village church was made from their stones .
The land map from 1885 still showed the moats that ran around the castle and included an interior space that roughly corresponded to the area of the Saathainer castle . The man-high walls, which partly existed until the end of the Second World War, were finally leveled and the trenches filled.
In the present, a memorial stone reminds of the former Würdenhain Castle. The boulder with an inscription was donated and erected in 1998 by the Bad Liebenwerda association “AG Heimatkunde” on the occasion of the 555th anniversary of the razing of the castle.
literature
- Rudolf Matthies : History of the village Würdenhain . 1953 ( Online [accessed on March 14, 2015] Compiled as part of the National Reconstruction Work with subsequent additions by Ursula, Heinz and Matthias Lohse).
- Rudolf Matthies: The rule Würdenhain . In: Working groups of the friends of nature and home of the German cultural association Bad Liebenwerda district (Hrsg.): Home calendar for the Bad Liebenwerda district . Bad Liebenwerda 1962, p. 112-116 .
- Heinrich Nebelsieck : History of the Bad Liebenwerda district . 1912.
Web links
- Sub-district page of Würdenhain on the community homepage of Röderland ( Memento from March 8, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
Footnotes and individual references
- ↑ a b c d e f g Rudolf Matthies : History of the village Würdenhain . 1953 ( Online [accessed on March 14, 2015] Compiled as part of the National Reconstruction Work with subsequent additions by Ursula, Heinz and Matthias Lohse). Online ( Memento of the original from April 16, 2005 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.
- ↑ Gerd Günther: Lecture "Defense systems of the medieval development of the country on the Black Elster - Saathain and Würdenhain castle areas", Gut Saathain , April 4, 2019
- ^ "History of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Heimatkunde eV" on the club's homepage, accessed on July 11, 2020
Coordinates: 51 ° 28 ' N , 13 ° 28' E