Kaiserpfalz Kaiserswerth
The ruins of the Kaiserpfalz Kaiserswerth are located in the Kaiserswerth district of Düsseldorf . The Palatinate goes back to a monastery founded by the monk Suitbert (us) around 700. At that time, the Franconian housekeeper Pippin the Middle and his wife Plektrudis gave the Anglo-Saxon monk an artificially created Rhine island by encircling the old arm of the Rhine, on which there was already a Franconian Fronhof - protected by earthworks, moats and palisades. In the following time this developed into a fortified customs festival. On December 23, 1982, the complex was entered in the city's list of monuments in the category of castles, mansions, fortifications, and palaces.
The name Kaiserswerth is derived from the Middle High German word werth for island. It therefore means Imperial Island or the Emperor's Island .
history
Development to the royal court
The location of the courtyard and the monastery was well chosen: On the one hand, the Rhine is clearly visible there; on the other hand, two important trade routes, the Hellweg into the interior of Germania and the old Roman trade route between Xanten and Neuss, meet there.
A castle there was first mentioned in a document in 1016 . In that year, Emperor Heinrich II reconciled with the Count Palatine Ezzo and gave him Kaiserswerth and the castle. Ezzo's son Otto gave the donation in 1045 in return for the appointment as Duke of Swabia by King Heinrich III. to this back. Shortly afterwards, Heinrich III. expand the existing castle building to a palace. In 1050 the construction work had progressed so far that he and his entourage could stay there for some time. Until his death in 1056, Heinrich III. verifiably another four times Kaiserswerth. This first Salic plant has completely disappeared today, but at that time made Kaiserswerth the suburb of the Duisburg-Kaiserswerth county .
The royal robbery of Kaiserswerth
Henry III. After his death in 1056 he left his six-year-old son Heinrich IV. His mother Agnes von Poitou continued the reign for her underage son, which met with displeasure from numerous imperial princes. At the head of a group of conspirators, the Archbishop of Cologne, Anno II, had Henry IV kidnapped during a tour of Kaiserswerth in the coup d'état of Kaiserswerth in 1062 in order to bring him under his influence. As a result, Heinrich's relationship with the Church was disturbed throughout his life. And he only visited the Palatinate one more time in his life: for the Princely Assembly in 1101.
Subsequently, Kaiserswerth lost its importance for almost 100 years.
Friedrich Barbarossa and Heinrich VI.
In 1174, Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa moved the Rhine toll from the Dutch city of Tiel to Kaiserswerth. For this purpose he had Kaiserswerth expanded into a mighty fortress , the completion of which was not, as is often claimed, 1184, but probably not until 1193 under his son Heinrich VI. took place. The remains of the imperial palace that are visible today date from that time.
However, the complex was not designed as a permanent residence, and so only one stay of Barbarossa on April 22, 1158 can be proven. However, numerous documents issued in Kaiserswerth testify to the stays of later emperors, such as Heinrichs V , Konrads III. , Henry VI. , Otto IV. And Henry VII.
After the expansion by Emperor Barbarossa, the Palatinate consisted of a three-storey palace with a mighty keep in the middle . The main entrance was in the Klever Tower to the northeast . A semicircular surrounding wall with a trench in front and two corner towers offered protection from the land side.
The end of the island situation
After the death of Henry VI. the Kaiserpfalz came into the hands of the Cologne and Guelphs. Otto IV held prominent prisoners here, for example the bishop of Münster , Otto I von Oldenburg , a partisan of Friedrich II Otto's friend Count Adolf III, in the context of the German throne dispute in 1214/15 . von Berg tried five times, unsuccessfully, to free him by attacking him "from the water". On his sixth attempt in 1215, he used a ruse. He had the artificial arm of the Rhine, which made Kaiserswerth an island, diverted south of the city. The river bed was drained with it. The Palatinate could now be attacked from the land side and the Münster bishop freed.
In 1247 , Count Wilhelm von Holland, who was elected to be the anti-king of Frederick II, besieged the complex for a year. Their defenders had to surrender in the end, as they probably ran out of food supplies.
Pledges
After the fall of imperial power, Kaiserswerth and the palace complex had been a pledge object without interruption since 1273. Until 1424 the city and the Palatinate were owned by the Netherlands, then both belonged to Kurköln , the Duchy of Kleve or Jülich-Berg . These very short periods of ownership were then followed by 350 years of continuity with the affiliation to Kurköln, which both had acquired for 100,000 guilders. The Palatinate and the city of Kaiserswerth were therefore an important exclave of the Electorate of Cologne in the Duchy of Jülich-Berg on the right bank of the Rhine. Under Salentin von Isenburg the complex was expanded and converted between 1567 and 1577, but in 1655 some buildings in the Palatinate, including the Palatine Chapel, were destroyed by a powder explosion.
The Cologne diocese dispute
During the Cologne diocese dispute in 1688, both Joseph Clemens von Bayern and Wilhelm Egon von Fürstenberg-Heiligenberg tried to succeed the late Cologne Archbishop Maximilian Heinrich von Bayern . The former was supported by the German Kaiser and Wilhelm Egon by King Ludwig XIV for the succession. Since Wilhelm Egon already had great influence as First Minister and Coadjutor in the last years before the death of the Archbishop of Cologne as First Minister and Coadjutor, he made it possible for French troops to occupy the Electoral Cologne areas on the left Lower Rhine, including the Kaiserswerth enclave on the right bank of the Rhine. As a result, from April 1689 an army of Brandenburg, Dutch and Munster troops besieged Kaiserswerth and bombed the imperial palace. On June 25, the French commander, Marconier, had to surrender because a fire destroyed the city's food supplies.
The Palatinate was badly damaged by the bombardment and was subsequently repaired. Joseph Clemens of Bavaria was his successor as Archbishop of Cologne and Kaiserswerth with the Palatinate belonged again to Kurköln from 1692.
War of the Spanish Succession
In 1702 the War of the Spanish Succession broke out. The Cologne Elector Joseph Clemens took the side of France again and made the Duke of Jülich-Berg, Johann Wilhelm II (also called Jan Wellem ), Elector of the Palatinate and hereditary seat of the German Empire, an enemy. In the spring there was a siege by troops from Brandenburg, the Netherlands and England, who captured Kaiserswerth on June 15, 1702.
12,000 cannon shots had left their mark: Almost all the houses in the city were destroyed, and the palace complex was heavily damaged again. On the orders of Johann Wilhelm II, this was razed and blown up on August 9th. The mighty keep also fell victim to this demolition, and the land side of the facility was then completely destroyed. Nowadays, when the water is low, large chunks of masonry are still visible in the gravel bed on the river bank.
The mighty portal stone, which was walled in as a lintel over the main entrance at the Klever Tower, was brought to Düsseldorf as spoils of war and placed in the courtyard of the Benrath Palace there for 150 years . Today it is back on the grounds of the Kaiserpfalz. Its Latin inscription reads in German: "In 1184 after the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, Emperor Friedrich increased the kingdom with this ornament, willing to consolidate justice and that peace reign everywhere."
With the Peace of Rastatt, however, Kaiserswerth fell back to the Electorate of Cologne in 1714. In 1838 the city of Kaiserswerth took over the imperial palace.
The 19th and 20th centuries
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The remaining ruins served as a quarry for the townhouses for almost two centuries, so that in the middle of the 19th century the east side of the complex was torn down to the foundation walls. In 1884, the construction of a flood dam, which ran across the Palatinate area, destroyed further building fabric.
The provincial curator at the time, Prof. Paul Clemen, began excavations and restoration work in 1899, which lasted until 1908. Then the ruin fell into a deep slumber again. During the Third Reich, the Palatinate served as a national memorial, before security work was repeated from 1967 to 1974.
During the Nazi era , the Palatinate ruin served as a regular meeting point for the Düsseldorf Hitler Youth (HJ), who held propaganda events and night torch illuminations there. The Hitler Youth "place of honor" was inaugurated in 1933 by Baldur von Schirach . There was a memorial plaque for 21 killed Hitler Youth as well as an "eternal" Schlageter flame in memory of the Freikorps fighter and right-wing extremist saboteur Albert Leo Schlageter .
In 1958, the French painter Georges Mathieu used the backdrop of the Kaiserpfalz for an art campaign called The Abduction of Heinrich IV by Archbishop Anno of Cologne from the Kaiserpfalz zu Kaiserswerth : Assisted by Hans Peter Reuter , who was wearing a red pillow with paintbrushes, he walked, dressed in a red coat, solemnly through the ruins of the Palatinate in the dawn. Then he threw the brushes into the Rhine from the highest point of the ruin. The action was documented by the photographer Charles Wilp .
The Palatinate today
In connection with the 1300th anniversary of Kaiserswerth, the palace ruins were restored again from 1997 to 2001. The northern and southern parts have been preserved, while there are no more surface traces of the eastern half of the complex.
The six-meter-thick western front of the Palas facing the Rhine is still 50 meters wide and 14 meters high, despite the destruction. In its heyday, the building still had one storey more than its wall, which is still preserved today, shows. It was built from irregular basalt blocks from Drachenfels and tuff . While large bricks were used for the construction of round arches and vaults , gray trachyte blocks served as corner stones and window frames. An ancient inscription in the castle proves its origin: "As a trachyte, I hurried away from the Drachenfels, open the doors to both capable sailors and settlers."
Archaeologists assume that the former utility rooms were on the ground floor of the Palas. However, this has not yet been proven beyond doubt. On the upper floor there were representative and living rooms with brick vaulted ceilings, the beginnings of which are still recognizable. For example, there was the ballroom with a large balcony facing the Rhine. The floors were connected by a monumental main staircase two meters wide, which is still preserved today.
A brick-paved area on the Palatinate grounds measuring eight by eight meters marks the interior of the former 55 meter high keep with its 4.5 meter thick walls, which was completely blown up on August 9, 1702.
Compared to other Romanesque buildings, the Palatinate in Kaiserswerth has a special feature: In the southern part of the complex there are the remains of a nine-meter-high cylindrical building made of bricks and tuff, which used to reach the second floor and the remainder of a former cistern system which was only built on the 13-meter-deep well made of trachyte blocks during the electoral era. Collected rainwater was cleaned by a layer of sand surrounding it and prepared for use as drinking water.
So far only one cellar room in the Pfalzanlage is known. This had the peculiarity that it could be flooded in times of need and, so it is assumed, used as a fish tank.
Nowadays, a permanently installed wooden bridge replaces the former drawbridge, over which one could reach the Palas from the Klever Tower . The entrance to a small inland port, fed by the Rhine , was under the drawbridge . Only in the course of the last restoration work did the Klever Tower regain its present form: its ruins were rebuilt to illustrate the former access situation to the main castle .
In 2014, the sculptor Peter Schwickerath designed the sculpture “In Context”, made from a single steel slab that you can walk through. The accessible steel sculpture creates a new spatial perception of the imperial palace, takes up the Romanesque round arch as a defining style element and places it at the center of attention.
Buildings no longer preserved
The excavations carried out by Clemen brought to light the foundations and remains of some buildings that are no longer preserved today. According to this, the Kaiserswerth Palatinate used to have a large outer bailey that was crescent-shaped around the main bailey. It was surrounded by a ring wall made of tuff blocks with a double tower in the north and a round shell tower in the south. On the land side, a wide moat was placed in front as an additional safety measure.
The main castle had a sophisticated toilet facility, the septic tank of which flowed into the Rhine and was previously wrongly interpreted as an inner courtyard.
literature
- Thomas Biller: The Palatinate of Friedrich I. zu Kaiserswerth - on their reconstruction and interpretation. In: Wartburg Society for Research into Castles and Palaces (Ed.): Schloss Tirol. Hall buildings and castles from the 12th century in Central Europe. (= Research on castles and palaces. Volume 4). Deutscher Kunstverlag , Munich / Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-422-06225-4 , pp. 173–188 ( PDF ; 8 MB).
- Günther Binding : German royal palaces, From Charlemagne to Friedrich II. (795–1240) . Knowledge Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1996, ISBN 3-534-12548-7 , pp. 318-326.
- Paul Clemen : Security work on the Hohenstaufenpfalz . In: Bonner Jahrbücher , Bonn 1909, pp. 43–59.
- Paul Clemen: Investigation and excavations of the Hohenstaufenpfalz in Kaiserswerth in the years 1899 and 1900 . In: Bonner Jahrbücher 106/107 , Bonn 1901, pp. 148–158.
- Benedict Mauer: Pfalz Kaiserswerth . In: Burgen Aufruhr - On the way to 100 castles, palaces and mansions in the Ruhr region. Essen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8375-0234-3 , pp. 108-111.
- Christoph Mulitze: Kaiserswerth - pearl on the Rhine. Gaasterland Verlag, Düsseldorf 2005, ISBN 3-935873-08-5 .
- Dieter Weber: Wasserburg as a royal palace and customs post. In: Christa-Maria Zimmermann, Hans Stöcker (Ed.): Kayserswerth. 1300 years saint, emperor reformer. Triltsch, Düsseldorf 1981, pp. 54-57.
- Beatrix Wedi-Pascha, Franz-Josef Vogel: The imperial palace in Kaiserswerth . Düsseldorf 2000.
- Jens Wroblewski, André Wemmers: Theiss-Burgenführer Niederrhein . Konrad Theiss , Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-8062-1612-6 , pp. 82-83 .
Web links
- Förderverein Kaiserpfalz - Kaiserswerth eV - Barbarossapfalz
- Siege of Kaiserswerth in 1702 (English)
- Video about the Kaiserpfalz
Individual evidence
- ↑ Entry in the monument list of the state capital Düsseldorf at the Institute for Monument Protection and Preservation, accessed on July 25, 2007.
- ↑ B. Wedi-Pascha, F.-J. Vogel: The Kaiserpfalz in Kaiserswerth. 2000, p. 3.
- ↑ See Bernhard Stamm: Eternal Flame of the Hitler Youth on the Rhine . In: Heimat- und Kulturkreis Wittlaer (Hrsg.): Heimat-Jahrbuch Wittlaer 2003 . Wittlaer home and culture area, Düsseldorf 2003 ( online ).
- ^ Charles Wilp: Düsseldorf, suburb of the world. Dazzledorf. Melzer, Dreieich 1977.
- ^ P. Clemen: Security work on the Hohenstaufenpfalz. 1909, p. 45.
- ^ Wilhelm Avenarius, Bernd Brinken: Düsseldorf and Bergisches Land . 1982, p. 240.
- ^ P. Clemen: Security work on the Hohenstaufenpfalz. 1909, p. 50.
- ↑ a b P. Clemen: Investigation and excavations of the Hohenstaufenpfalz in Kaiserswerth in the years 1899 and 1900. 1901, p. 155.
- ↑ B. Wedi-Pascha, F.-J. Vogel: The Kaiserpfalz in Kaiserswerth. 2000, p. 8.
Coordinates: 51 ° 17 '58.4 " N , 6 ° 43' 53" E