Hexenturm (Walberberg)

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Walberberg in the 18th century with Walberberg with the building of the Zisterze, St. Walburga as a monastery church and the old keep on the outer side of the picture

The Witches' Tower of Walberberg in the northernmost district of Bornheim was mentioned as such for the first time in 1817, but is the name unrelated to traditional witch hunts of the Middle Ages or the early modern period . The name that was later established in linguistic usage is said to be based on the emergence of romantic sagas in the 19th century. The tower is to be built in the 12th / 13th Century as the keep of a castle that was abandoned at an unknown time, possibly during the Truchsessian War .

Today the old castle tower with the parish church of St. Walburga to the south forms the landmark of the place that can be seen from afar . The oldest picture of the tower structure can be found as a detail in a painting in front of the choir inside the church and shows the tower as it was in the 18th century.

location

Hexenturm on its south side, in the background on the right the hillside to the northwest

The tower stands free on a gently sloping site in the center of the village, next to the medieval parish church. Compared to geographic data from Walberberger Straße (74.3 meters above sea level in the Unterdorf), a height of approx. 95 meters above sea level is reached at the level of the tower base.

Tower history

Origin in the High Middle Ages

The origin of the building lies in medieval times, when aristocratic families and canons (often in personal union) carried out larger building projects. As elsewhere, in the foothills region these were the Cologne and Bonn monasteries, with the Cologne cathedral and the Bonn women's monastery in Dietkirchen having developed into the largest landowners.

It is uncertain which builder built the tower as a defensive or residential tower of a larger courtyard or castle complex at the turn of the 12th / 13th century. However, the older literature reports that it was the keep of a castle complex that was possibly the count's castle and the ancestral seat of a Countess Alveradis. With the approval of Archbishop Sigewin, she had given the Church of St Walburgisberge - where her father and son rested and where she herself wanted to be buried - a memorial that led to the founding of the Walberberg monastery. Just as Clemen noted only one possibility, Gondorf, who refers to Dehio , cannot prove a first builder and describes the tower merely as the traditional keep of the old Walberberg castle, of which the time of destruction is also unknown.

The Roman Canal as a quarry

Roman Canal Quarry

Already since Carolingian times, but increasingly from the 11th to the 13th century, the material of the Roman Eifel aqueduct (in addition to small amounts of tuff and trachyte from the Drachenfels) served as a quarry to extract building material for the construction of secular and sacred structures. Since the transport of the building material from distant, natural quarries was very expensive, many of the lords of the castle, monastery and church used the demolition of the free ancient material. Therefore, in the Walberberg buildings of the early Middle Ages, located on the route of the Roman Canal, Roman building material was found in the foundations or rising masonry. For example in the parish church, in the surrounding wall of the former local Cistercian monastery and in the masonry of the Romanesque- style tower on Walburgisstrasse. The considerable quantities of sewer fragments built into it are still partially sintered . In Walberberg's case, parts of this material are also visible in the unplastered interior of the tower.

Building description

Architectural drawing from Clemen 1890

Material, height and diameter

The five-storey round tower was thoroughly and professionally examined, documented and the findings archived from January to March 2005 by the LVR Office for Land Monument Preservation in the Rhineland . Taking all the factors into account, the experts seemed to be justified in carefully dating the round tower to the 12th or 13th century.

According to Jens Friedhoff , the data from the older literature seem to be confirmed, only the previously stated height to the tower differs. Gondorf (after Dehio ) puts it at 21 m, Clemen (after Stramberg and Maaßen ) gives no information about the height. Zerlett also gave a height of 21 m and, in a far different way, Hans Tück mentions a height of 30 m in his Walberberg home history. According to the most recent investigations, the tower has a total height of 18.30 m with an outer diameter of 8.60 m and a wall thickness of the base of 2.20 m. The wall thickness of the wall decreases from floor to floor and reaches 0.90 m in the final tower floor. If one accepts the scale drawn by the master builder Ludwig Arntz , there is only a small difference to the frequently cited tower height of 21 m, which could be due to the missing roof on the 1890 sketch. In addition, the drawing confirms Hans Tück's information on the visible heads of the basalt blocks in the masonry of the base, which were clearly marked on the stone-visible drawing both by Arntz and on a sketch by Tück. These views also appeared in early photographs of the first quarter of the 20th century.

All the historians' statements are consistent with the fact that significant amounts of reused Roman cast iron (opus caementicium) from the ancient Eifel aqueduct were used as building material . Today this is only available in situ in a few places in Walberberg. Furthermore, tufa and Drachenfels trachyte were used for the construction (Tück mentions additionally processed basalt blocks and cites the Brohl valley as a source of supply).

Former and present tower entrance

Tower floors

The ground floor with the most massive masonry originally had no entrance for security reasons. The access (probably by ladder) was on the first floor on the east side of the tower and is recognizable there today through a panel . The ground-level entrance, which will later also be on the east side, leads to the first floor via a stable wooden staircase, supported by a newly drawn-in beamed ceiling. This floor (possibly a living room) has niches as well as small remnants of a color from an unknown time on the wall surfaces. The wall surfaces below the surrounding cornice had previously been provided with a red, brick-based, possibly in the manner of a special slurry plaster. Above the cornice there were remnants of a painting which (today indistinct) were made from eleven alternating red and blue-black fields, separated from each other by white, painted dummy joints. The room was heated by a large stone wall fireplace, the dimensions of which are clearly understandable. A narrow stone staircase in the thickness of the wall is used to climb the next tower floor. The second floor could also be heated by a fireplace and had alcove windows. During an inspection, the other floors were described as similar, but not yet accessible to visitors. The top floor closes off the tower with a round bar profile and, unlike the lower floors, which often only have notch-like windows, has a wreath of arched windows. The flat tower dome above was only added at the beginning of the 1930s for conservation reasons. Its shape is likely to have been based on the painting from the 18th century (see above), as an earlier source is not available.

  • Promotion from the EC.

  • Drawings 1st floor.

  • Inner wall - stairs to the 2nd floor.

  • Location of a stone fireplace, 2nd floor.

Medieval owners

It is unclear to whom the building owners originated the former donjon. Paul Clemen referred to the research of Maaßen as well as to the references of Stramberg and his work "Rheinischer Antiquarius", in which he saw a reference to the possible ancestral seat of Countess Alveradis - donor of the Walberberg Cisterze in the year 1079 to 1089 - on the count's castle complex . For this time, the tower was considered by later historians as a keep, a castle of the Counts of Saffenberg in Walberberg. Whether the Lords of Saffenberg, who also issued the feudal letter for the knight Christian von Rinchedorp in 1140 and thus gave their name to today's Rheindorf Castle, who also might be the builders of the Gray Castle of Sechtem and of the expired Castle of Husen, can be regarded as the client for the construction of the keep between Sechtem and Keldenich come into question, according to Clemens research status has not been proven.

In the late 14th century, a document from 1388 said that the squire Conrad von Holtorp sold the property to the Cologne cathedral chapter . After that, the first known owners in 1384 were those of Holtorp. Conrad, son of the knight Ulrich von Holtorp, is said to have lived in the tower at Walberberg with his wife Styna (Christine Birklin, also Birkelin, Cologne patrician) and sold it to the Cologne cathedral chapter in 1388 with all associated possessions and rights. In connection with Walberberg, those of Holtorp are no longer mentioned.

Modern times and the end of feudal times

After the secularization that began in 1802 on the left bank of the Rhine , the unused property became the private property of the former Fron Helfen Geuer, who later bequeathed it to his son-in-law Scheben. He sold it some time later (1843) to the Cologne architect and master city architect Johann Peter Weyer , who had already been committed to the preservation and value of monuments in Cologne. Weyer's plans to market the tower and its idyllic location as a destination failed, however, because of the old Jewish cemetery on the tower site . In 1858, shortly before a planned demolition, the dilapidated tower, including a base area of ​​25 rods (approx. 350 m²), was transferred to the Prussian Treasury, represented by District President Eduard von Moeller in Cologne, after intensive efforts by the Bonn District Administrator Carl von Sandt .

monument

The building is owned by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and has been a protected monument since 1980 .

Others

In 2006 the tower was extensively restored and structurally secured. The tower, which is closed all year round, is adjacent to the Römerkanal hiking trail . It can be viewed on the day of the open monument and after consultation with the historical Walberberg support group.

literature

  • Paul Clemen : The art monuments of the city and the district of Bonn. (= The Art Monuments of the Rhine Province . Volume 5, Section 3, pp. 601–603). L. Schwann, Düsseldorf 1905, pp. 305-307. (Unchanged reprint. Schwann Verlag, Düsseldorf 1981, ISBN 3-590-32113-X )
  • Richard Knipping: The regests of the Archbishops of Cologne in the Middle Ages. Volume 2: 1100-1205. P. Hansteins publishing house, Bonn 1901.
  • Bernhard Gondorf: The castles of the Eifel and their peripheral areas. A lexicon of the "permanent houses" . J. P. Bachem, Cologne 1984, ISBN 3-7616-0723-7 , p. 51 .
  • Hans Tück: home history of Walberberg. 3rd, expanded edition. Walberberg 1978.
  • Klaus Grewe: The Römerkanalwanderweg . Eifelverein, Düren 2005, ISBN 3-921805-16-3 .
  • Uta Gerbisch: The Cistercian convent Walberberg (1197-1447). Verlag Janus, Cologne 1998, ISBN 3-922977-52-9 , p. 21 f.
  • Norbert Zerlett: City of Bornheim in the foothills. (Rheinische Kunststätten. Issue 243). Verlag Gesellschaft für Buchdruckerei, Neuss 1981, ISBN 3-88094-349-4 , pp. 18-20.
  • Kristin Dohmen: The witch tower of Walberberg. A medieval residential tower made of recycled concrete from the Roman aqueduct. In: Preservation of monuments in the Rhineland. 22, 2005, pp. 125-133.

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Hans Tück: Local history of Walberberg. 1978, p. 23.
  2. ^ Paul Clemen : The art monuments of the Rhine province . Volume 5: The art monuments of the city and the district of Bonn. 1905, p. 676 ff.
  3. ^ Richard Knipping: Regest of the Archbishops of Cologne. Volume II, No. 515, 1901, p. 307.
  4. ↑ a b Bernhard Gondorf: The castles of the Eifel and their peripheral areas. A lexicon of the "permanent houses" . J. P. Bachem, Cologne 1984, ISBN 3-7616-0723-7 , p. 51 .
  5. ^ Klaus Grewe: The Römerkanalwanderweg. 2005, section: The Roman Canal as a quarry of the Middle Ages. P. 54.
  6. ↑ LVR Office for Monument Preservation carried out in the Rhineland. An article on this followed in: Preservation of monuments in the Rhineland. Volume 3, 2005, pp. 125-133.
  7. ^ Entry by Jens Friedhoff zu Walberberg, Hexenturm in the scientific database " EBIDAT " of the European Castle Institute, accessed on September 26, 2017.
  8. ↑ Uta Gerbisch: The Cistercian convent Walberberg (1197-1447). 1998, p. 21.
  9. ^ Paul Clemen: The art monuments of the Rhine province . Volume 5: The art monuments of the city and the district of Bonn. 1905, p. 662 f.
  10. ^ Norbert Zerlett: City of Bornheim in the foothills . Ed .: Rheinischer Verein für Denkmalpflege und Landschaftsschutz (=  Rheinische Kunststätten . Volume 243 ). Society for book printing, Neuss 1981, ISBN 3-88094-349-4 , p. 25 .
  11. ↑ The knightly landed nobility of the Grand Duchy of Lower Rhine. Retrieved September 12, 2017 .
  12. ↑ The witch tower of Walberberg. Retrieved September 2, 2017 .

Coordinates: 50 ° 47 '38.37 "  N , 6 ° 54' 35.51"  O