Homburg (Hamm)
| Homburg | ||
|---|---|---|
| Alternative name (s): | Hoemborgh (High Castle) or Hohenburg | |
| Creation time : | unexplained, possibly 1075 or in the 12th century | |
| Castle type : | Niederungsburg, moth | |
| Conservation status: | Burgstall, built over | |
| Standing position : | High nobility | |
| Construction: | Quarry sandstone | |
| Place: | Hamm | |
| Geographical location | 51 ° 40 '20.3 " N , 7 ° 43' 38.6" E | |
| Height: | 55 m above sea level NN | |
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The Homburg , even Humburg , Hohenburg or Homburg Knapp is called an Outbound large medieval motte (moth) on the south bank of the lip . In the twelfth century it served as the seat of the Counts of Berg . It was around 1.5 km northwest of what is now the Hamm-Herringen district . Once one of the largest castles in the region, almost nothing is left of it today.
location
The Homburg or Hohenburg was located on the south bank of the Lippe, around 1.5 km northwest of today's Hamm-Herringen district , 500 meters west of Haus Nordherringen . From Lünener Straße you can reach Torksweg via a 400 meter long dirt road . From this point you can see a large mountain dump, the northern edge of which covers the southern rest of the castle complex. Most of the Homburg was located in the area of today's canal port of the VEW Gerstein power plant . It has completely disappeared.
Historical appearance
The Homburg is a moth , one of the largest in northern Germany. It consisted of two artificially raised hills. The northern one was still 75 meters in diameter and 9 meters high at the end of the 19th century. The southern one measured 90 × 75 meters and was 3 meters high. Both elevations rose steeply at the edge and were flattened like a plateau at the top.
The north hill was in the immediate vicinity of the bank of the Lippe in the floodplain with swamps. It consisted mostly of sand, interspersed with gray marl in certain places. The flatter south hill, on the other hand, was built on the dry terrace and surrounded by a ditch about 2 meters deep and 4 meters wide (in the area between the hills the ditch was up to about 3 meters deep and 6 meters wide). Descriptions from the 19th century suggest that there was a security system consisting of ditches and ramparts south of the castle, the exact dimensions of which, however, can no longer be determined today.
Like most Motten, the Homburg was divided into an outer and a main castle .
According to archaeological findings and comparisons with other castles, it can be assumed that a mighty defensive tower originally stood on the higher northern hill as the centerpiece of the fortification. The outer bailey was on the southern hill. Presumably the commercial and residential buildings were also located here. There were obviously no larger stone structures on the Homburg - in contrast to Mark Castle , which is also located in the urban area of what is now Hamm and must have been built around the same time. Fortification walls and houses were made of wood.
There are certainly reconstruction proposals, but these are hypothetical. For example, the fortification by palisades has not been archaeologically proven, but in comparison with other, better researched castle complexes from the same period, it is very obvious.
history
Given its size, Homburg must have been an important castle. It is therefore astonishing that there is no evidence whatsoever of their existence or history in contemporary medieval sources. Not even the medieval name at the time of its use is known. Heinrich von Hövel, who lived in the 16th century, suspected that the name Homburg was derived from the Huns . According to JD von Steinen, however, the name can be traced back to the term "Hoemborgh" (to be interpreted as high castle ). Von Steinen bases this on a document from the 17th century, which in turn refers to another, no longer preserved document.
There are several legends about the place where the Homburg was located. In Roman times, a mysterious Germanic seer who was called Velda or Veleda is said to have lived here . It is also said that the Knights of Homburg were strict, sometimes cruel masters in the Middle Ages. The last of them is said to have even sat in court on an iron chair, which is said to have been a few hundred meters up the lip on the " Krausen Linde ". The peasants would often have seen him rise from his lip on his iron chair.
The builder of the castle obviously belonged to the upper class of society. The castle was built directly on the diocese border between Cologne and Münster, not far from the village of Herringen. There the Deutz Abbey owned the main courtyard and the church. It is known that the bailiffs of the Deutz monastery, the lords of Berg, inherited the county of Hövel around 1075 (different view: after 1124). The castle may have been the seat of the Counts von Berg as bailiffs of Deutz Abbey. The system would have been built after 1075 or 1124. Another argument in favor of the construction of the Homburg in the 12th century is that the title of count among the Bergers can only be proven in 1077. In addition, the Counts of Berg did not exercise their rule in the northern part of the county , which belonged to the diocese of Munster , but had it administered by other nobles. Instead, they ruled south of the Lippe itself, probably supported by their traditionally good relationship with the archbishops of Cologne (the Berg family alone provided five of the archbishops of Cologne). The assumption arises that the Counts of Berg would not have built such a mighty castle after 1160, as they were enfeoffed with the rule of Altena by the Archbishop of Cologne that year. The construction time of the Homburg could therefore be narrowed down between 1070 and 1160.
The Homburg served as the center of power and a representative building for the new rule of the Counts of Berg an der Lippe.
Archaeological finds indicate that the castle must have burned down around 1200 or in the first decades of the 13th century. This date coincides conspicuously with the destruction of the castle and city of Nienbrügge in 1225, which was a consequence of the murder of Cologne Archbishop Engelbert I of Cologne by the allies of Friedrich von Isenberg . Since the Homburg was also owned by the Berg-Altena-Isenberg family , it is quite likely that the destruction of the Homburg can also be seen in this context.
Furthermore, the evaluation of archaeological material has shown that the castle has not been inhabited for almost two centuries in 1388. The assumption is made that the castle was either abandoned when it was presumably destroyed in 1225 or around 1160 when it was moved to Altena Castle .
The successor building to the Homburg was possibly the Nordherringen house . This structure, which was demolished in the 19th century, was built as a castle for the Counts von der Mark at the mouth of the Herringer Bach in the Lippe. The facility served to secure the lip border to the north. It was only about half a kilometer up the lip.
In 1912 the facility was severely damaged by the construction of the Datteln-Hamm Canal . The canal runs right through the castle. In the spring of 1936, the northern hill was almost completely removed in order to fill in the damp oxbow lakes of the Lippe and to gain new pastureland. On August 4, 1971, the canal embankment broke about 100 meters east of Homburgs Knapp. Bulldozers then pushed the remaining earth masses of the main castle to reinforce the break. After 1976 the part of the outer bailey, which was not disturbed by the canal construction, was overrun by a mine dump. In 1990, the last remains of the main castle were removed from the construction of the canal port for the Gersteinwerk .
Archaeological research
The first excavations and finds were made between 1851 and 1861. Here, Hofrat Moritz Friedrich Essellen from Hamm made a particularly good impression . Around 1900 the Hohenburg was examined by the Dortmund museum director Albert Baum. In the course of the construction of the Datteln-Hamm Canal in 1912, numerous valuable finds were recovered despite the extensive destruction of the facility. These are now owned by the Berlin State Museums. The then director of the Gustav Lübcke Museum in Hamm, Ludwig Bänfer, documented a lot of archaeological information in the course of the destruction of the northern hill in 1936. However, these records were destroyed during the Second World War, only the photos have been preserved. In the following year Uwe Lobbedey from the then State Office for Monument Preservation carried out a small excavation in the southern area of the outer bailey. However, this remained largely inconclusive.
Finds
In the years 1860/61 a 4 × 4 meter building plan was uncovered on the north side of the main castle. It was a cellar with a wall cladding made of dry-walled quarry sandstone, which was sunk to about 1.5 meters below the surface of the hill and had an entrance facing south. The building belonging to it was destroyed in a fire - some sandstones were reddened from the heat and the cellar was heavily riddled with charcoal and ash. Inside the building there was a box lock with an iron cover, which probably belongs to a chest. Several weapons were also found, an iron spearhead and a total of five arrowheads. Other finds from this period include horseshoes, spiked spurs and an iron ring.
The excavations in 1912 uncovered several bronze fittings of a horse harness and a large, elongated curved fitting with ornaments at the ends. The upper part of a bronze chandelier is evidence of the upscale lifestyle of the castle residents. Often they are relics of lockable chests. Shards from clay pots are mainly made of gray earthenware. The remains of a wooden bridge were also found between the two hills.
The most important find, the upper part of a Romanesque candlestick, was discovered in 1921 by the miner Simon from Nordherringen. Formally, it was similar to the bronze chandelier found in 1912, but its design was much more elaborate.
In 1936 numerous ceramic fragments were found. A chain mail that was discovered at the foot of the west side has unfortunately not been preserved.
Individual evidence
- ↑ This designation does not apply to the castle itself, but refers to the remaining ground monument.
literature
- The Homburg and Mark Castle, district-free town of Hamm . Published by the Regional Association of Westphalia-Lippe as the font Early Castles in Westphalia 19 in 1979.
- Georg Eggenstein, III. Before 1226 - Homburg Castle near Nordherringen . In: Traces of Time. The beginnings of the city of Hamm. Edited by Georg Eggenstein and Ellen Schwinzer. Notes on the city's history. Publication series of the Gustav-Lübcke-Museum Hamm, Issue 8. DruckVerlag Kettler, Bönen, 2002.
- Moritz Friedrich Essellen : The Hohenburg near Herringen an der Lippe and the grave on the same. In: Journal for patriotic history and antiquity (Westphalia), Vol. 22, 2, 1862, pp. 261–286.