Sonnenburg Castle

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sonnenburg Castle, view from the east

Sonnenburg Castle is a castle and a former monastery of the Benedictine nuns in St. Lorenzen in South Tyrol in Italy . Little has been preserved from the old building stock, but some Romanesque windows and fresco fragments in the crypt point to the old age of the complex.

history

Originally the castle belonged to the counts of Lurn and Pustertal . In 1022, after the death of his sister Aribo , Count Volkhold received the “Suanapurc” ( suana = atonement, court) castle and donated it to the Benedictine order for the establishment of a women's monastery, together with the property belonging to it. This was built in the first half of the 11th century, as far as can be seen from the confused and largely falsified foundation tradition. Wichburg , daughter of Aribos and his wife Wichburg von Sonnenburg , became the first abbess - before 1139 . For almost eight hundred years afterwards, the Benedictine nuns of Sonnenburg were the landlords of the Gadertal area. They set up a court in Enneberg .

There is a Sonnenburger Urbar from 1296 , which documents the widespread ownership of the monastery. The property management was organized in the individual offices of Gadertal, Mühlwald , Eisacktal and Etschtal with an outpost on the north shore of Lake Garda. Still applies, no later than 1846, one originating from the 14th century on the orders of the abbess Dietmuth manufactured, another Urbar , as evidenced a copy.

In the 15th century there was a conflict between Nikolaus von Kues (Nikolaus Cusanus), Bishop of Brixen , who wanted to reform the convent, and the abbess Verena von Stuben , who was opposed to this and supported by the Tyrolean Prince Duke Siegmund . In the course of the disputes, farmers in Enneberg who were willing to pay taxes to Sonnenburg were killed by Sonnenburg's opponents.

The minstrel Friedrich von Sonnenburg probably came from here.

The novel "The Nun of Sonnenburg" by Josef Weingartner is set in the late days of the monastery shortly before it was abolished .

Dissolution and subsequent use

After almost eight hundred years, the monastery was abolished in 1785 by Emperor Joseph II as part of the Josephinism ( secularization ) named after him . The library and archive holdings were also scattered, the remains of which are now in various locations (Innsbruck, Munich, Bozen, Nuremberg).

During the Tyrolean struggles for freedom (1797–1813) the castle served as a military hospital and later as a home for the poor. Today there is a hotel of the same name in the complex.

A tunnel was dug under the castle for the expansion of the Pustertal state road. The work was temporarily stopped in 2009 because the blasting caused damage to a Romanesque fresco in the crypt, among other things . The tunnel was then continued without blasting and opened in early December 2010.

literature

  • Michael Wolf: Sonnenburg . In: Magdalena Hörmann-Weingartner (ed.), Tiroler Burgenbuch. IX. Volume: Val Pusteria . Athesia Publishing House, Bozen 2003, ISBN 978-88-8266-163-2 , pp. 115-124.
  • Wilhelm Baum : Art. «Sonnenburg». In: Ulrich Faust, Waltraud Krassnig (arrangement): Germania Benedictina III / 1–3. St. Ottilien 2002, pp. 604-702.
  • Karl Knötig: The Sonnenburg in the Puster Valley . 3. Edition. Athesia Publishing House, 2001 Bozen, ISBN 88-7014-351-1 .
  • Karl Wolfsgruber : The oldest land register of the Benedictine monastery Sonnenburg in the Pustertal ( The medieval land register of the diocese of Brixen. 1). Vienna: Böhlau 1968.
  • Josef Weingartner : Sonnenburg. In: Der Schlern 1923, pp. 41–50. (on-line)

Web links

Commons : Sonnenburg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Sonnenburg in the Topographia Austriacarum (Matthäus Merian)  - sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Irene Klammer: The crypt frescos in the former nunnery Sonnenburg with special consideration of the stylistic influence of Aquileia . In: » Der Schlern « 66, 1992, pp. 285–292.
  2. ↑ Martin Bitschnau , Hannes Obermair : Tiroler Urkundenbuch, II. Department: The documents on the history of the Inn, Eisack and Pustertal valleys. tape 1 : By 1140 . Universitätsverlag Wagner, Innsbruck 2009, ISBN 978-3-7030-0469-8 , p. XXXIff. (Introduction) and pp. 174–182 , No. 201 (founding report ).
  3. ↑ Manor of Sonnenburg. (PDF; 134 kB).
  4. ↑ VI. Library. A. Documents and manuscripts. In: Journal of the Ferdinandeum for Tyrol and Vorarlberg. Volume 12, 1846, p. XXXVII ( limited preview in the Google book search: “A very valuable land book of the Sonnenburg monastery, written on parchment in German, dated 13th on the orders of the abbess Dietmuth”).
  5. ↑ See Bitschnau-Obermair: Tiroler Urkundenbuch II / 1 (op.cit.), P. XXXII (Einl.).
  6. ↑ Tunneling under the Sonnenburg without blasting

Coordinates: 46 ° 47 ′ 8.3 "  N , 11 ° 53 ′ 26.3"  E