Kesselstadt Castle

Kesselstadt Castle
limes	ORL 24 ( RLK )
Dating (occupancy)	Domitian time?
Type	Legion Vexillation?
size	375 × 375 m = 14 ha
Construction	Stone fort
State of preservation	Ground monument, not visible
place	Hanau - Kesselstadt
Geographical location	50 ° 7 '43.9 "  N , 8 ° 53' 43"  E Coordinates: 50 ° 7 '43.9 "  N , 8 ° 53' 43"  E
height	104  m above sea level NHN

Fort Kesselstadt was a Roman fort in the area of ​​the Wetterau line of the Upper Germanic-Raetian Limes . It is located in the old town center of Hanau - Kesselstadt in the Main-Kinzig district in Hesse . Function, occupancy and allocation to the Limes are largely unclear.

location

Fortresses and civil settlements in Kesselstadt

The fort is located on a slight elevation on the north bank of the Main and is now completely covered by the Kesselstädter town center and partly by Philippsruhe Castle . 400 m to the east, the Kinzig flows into the Main from the north. The Main itself runs from south to north until shortly before the mouth of the Kinzig and turns in a wide curve to the west. The location at this bend in the Main with the connection via both rivers to the nearest Limes forts may have been a major factor in the choice of location. To the east of the fort there are further damp lowlands ( Salisbach and Weihergraben ), which make approaching from the border even more difficult.

exploration

Already in the first half of the 19th century a Roman fort was suspected near the place Kesselstadt due to the place name (Kessel-Kastell). Finds of Roman graves during the construction of the Frankfurt-Hanau Railway in 1847 were the subject of early excavations by the Hanau History Association , which was founded a few years earlier. The search for the Kesselstädter fort in the area of ​​the Salisberg, previously Roman foundations had already been discovered in 1845 on the opposite peak of the Main. The opinions differed among the group of researchers to whom this early research can be assigned. While Albert Duncker opted for the Mainspitze, Reinhard Suchier and Jakob Rullmann looked for the fort near the Salisberg or near the center of Kesselstädter.

In 1886 Georg Wolff , the route commissioner of the Imperial Limes Commission , succeeded in discovering a fort in Kesselstadt as well as finding Roman walls on Köppelweg south of Fort Salisberg (probably part of the vicus that was later discovered there ). The find was more or less by chance, because Wolff's attention was drawn to the cast wall foundation while searching for Roman roads. Wolff's excavations took place in 1886/87 and in 1896 on behalf of the Reich Limes Commission. He was able to expose large sections of the wall in the still undeveloped area north and northwest of Kesselstadt. The eastern wall could only be proven in parts between the buildings. Large parts of the south and south-west were destroyed when Philippsruhe Castle was built on a platform with the previous archaeological material. But Wolff believed he could see a small piece of the south wall below Philippsruhe Castle, near the Main. Although Wolfgang Czysz was unable to locate any remains of the foundations at this point in 1980, so that he ultimately assumed that the Romans had not built a wall on this side of the fort, the Hanau History Association succeeded in 1994 in the property at Mittelstrasse 4 with evidence of the more than 2 m wide Foundations of this south-eastern flank of the fort.

An investigation by the State Office for the Preservation of Monuments in Hesse in 1975/76 in the area of ​​some still undeveloped land could confirm Wolff's results. The massive fort wall was and is occasionally cut into during construction work in Alt-Kesselstadt. Larger excavations are no longer to be expected due to the extensive overbuilding.

investment

According to the excavation results, the following picture of the complex emerges: The excavated ground plan includes an almost square fort area of ​​375 × 375 meters, which corresponds to an area of ​​14 ha. It has now been clarified that there was also a wall on the south-east side facing the Main. The axis of the via principalis shifted to the east shows an orientation to the east towards the Kinzig.

The 1.70 m wide wall sat on a 2.2 m wide foundation that was placed directly on the gravel layer in the underground in the northwestern area. Near the Main, under the cast masonry, there was often a dry embroidery made of upright basalt stones. The masonry was also made of basalt stones, probably from the nearby Wilhelmsbad quarry, as well as coarse-grained sand and plenty of mortar. Six excavated intermediate and corner towers enable a reconstruction with probably four trapezoidal corner and 22 wall towers. The north-west and south-west gates could each be verified by means of smaller probe cuts. Double pointed trenches were found (each 8.50 m wide, 1.78 m deep), but only on the western and north-western sections.

Nothing is known of the interior of the fort either. It is true that the camp road ( via sagularis ) accompanying the wall on the inside could be detected by gravel, the “main roads” of the fort ( via praetoria and via principalis ) were not detected. But the fort must have been visible on the surface for some time. Particularly in the eastern fort area, some streets of Alt-Kesselstadt still refer to the fort's structures, while in the west the main traffic axes along Kastanien- and Burgallee were realigned with the construction of Philippsruhe Palace 1701–1725 at the latest. Today's Jakob-Rullmann-Strasse essentially corresponds to via praetoria , Pastor Hufnagel-Strasse runs in the former ditch in front of the south-eastern front of the fort.

Wolff was able to prove the remains of a Main ford southwest of the fort. The ford was later replaced by a bridge over the Main, the stumps of which were found in 1886 and 1893 250 m above the mouth of the Kinzig near the present day harbor basin of the Waterways and Shipping Office. However, the associated road led to the vicus on the Salisberg to the north and represented an axis of the fort there.

Piles of the Roman Main Bridge when they were found in 1886 or 1893

Historical classification

Due to the lack of interior development and the lack of a ditch on the west side, it was suspected that the Kesselstadt fort was occupied for a short time or that the construction work was even abandoned during construction. The lack of finds from the fort area (the finds shown at Wolff originate largely from the Salisberg fort, which was only discovered later) could support this thesis, but overall leads to uncertainties in the historical classification of the fort.

With an area of ​​14 hectares, Kesselstadt is far larger than the usual Alen and Cohort forts on the Upper German-Raetian Limes (for comparison: the next smaller forts are the Alenkastelle of Aalen and Okarben , each with six hectares). It is only surpassed by the legionary camps on the Rhine and a fort in Rottweil . The unity seems to be more in the area of ​​the legions or their vexillations . This strong troop presence, the massive stone construction with intermediate towers and the location on the Mainknie and the Kinzig estuary suggest that Kesselstadt Fort was part of a strategy that was discarded after a short time. The only possible event in the early Limes period would be the uprising of Lucius Antonius Saturninus against Emperor Domitian in 89 AD, as a result of which larger troops were distributed to smaller camps.

The function of monitoring the Mainknee was subsequently taken over by the much smaller fort on Salisberg, which was probably intended for a cohort or even just one numerus . This belongs to an earlier Limes line from Nidderau -Heldenbergen via Mittelbuchen to the Main near Hanau, as has been proven by new discoveries of two Roman forts near Hanau-Mittelbuchen .

Monument protection

The Kesselstadt fort is a ground monument according to the Hessian Monument Protection Act . Investigations and targeted collection of finds are subject to approval, and accidental finds are reported to the monument authorities.

See also

• Salisberg Castle
• List of forts on the Upper German-Raetian Limes

literature

• Dietwulf Baatz : On the dating of the Roman military camp Hanau-Kesselstadt. In: D. Baatz: Buildings and catapults of the Roman army. Mavors XI, Steiner, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-515-06566-0 , pp. 66-73.
• Dietwulf Baatz: The Roman Limes. Archaeological excursions between the Rhine and the Danube. 4th edition. Gebr. Mann, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-7861-2347-0 , p. 171.
• Wolfgang Czysz : Hanau-Kesselstadt. Rom. Kesselstadt and Salisberg castles. In: Dietwulf Baatz and Fritz-Rudolf Herrmann (eds.): The Romans in Hessen³ . Licensed edition of the 1989 edition, pp. 334–336. Nikol, Hamburg 2002. ISBN 3-933203-58-9
• The same, excavations in the Kesselstadt fort in Hanau, Main-Kinzig district. Find reports Hessen 17/18, 1977/78 (1980) pp. 165-181.
• Peter Jüngling : Hanau-Kesselstadt. Roman military installations and vicus . In: Guide to archaeological monuments in Germany 27. Hanau and the Main-Kinzig-Kreis , Theiss-Verlag (Stuttgart 1994) pp. 174–178. ISBN 3-8062-1119-1
• Peter Jüngling: The time of the Romans . City time 7 Kesselstadt - spotlights on two millennia - 950 years of first mention of Kesselstadt (Hanau 2009), ISBN 978-3-937774-73-2 , pp. 14-21.
• Ferdinand Kutsch : Hanau. Part 2 , Frankfurt am Main 1926 (catalogs of West and South German antiquity collections 5) pp. 93–106.
• Barbara Oldenstein-Pferdehirt : The Roman auxiliary troops north of the Main. Research on the Upper Germanic Army I. In: Yearbook of the Roman-Germanic Central Museum 30, 1983, pp. 303-348, esp. Pp. 316f. and p. 333.

Excavation report of the Reich Limes Commission :

• Georg Wolff : The Kesselstadt fort. The Upper Germanic-Raetian Limes of the Roman Empire, Section B No. 24 (1898).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wolff 1898.
2. ↑ Czysz 1980, p. 167.
3. ↑ Czysz 1980, pp. 176-178.
4. ↑ Wolff 1898, Czysz 1989, pp. 334-336.
5. ↑ Wolff 1898 p. 1.
6. ↑ Czysz 1989 p. 336.
7. ↑ Marcus Reuter : The small Roman fort of Hanau-Mittelbuchen and the course of the eastern Wetterau Limes under Domitian. In: E. Schallmayer (Ed.), Limes Imperii Romani . Contributions to the specialist colloquium “Limes World Heritage Site” in November 2001 in Lich-Arnsburg. Saalburg-Schriften 6, 2004 (Bad Homburg v. D. H. 2004), pp. 97-106. Also internet source ( memento of the original from November 15, 2016 in the internet archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .