Lubwart Tower

The Lubwart Tower, renovated in 2011, from the east.

The Lubwart Tower is a keep and watch tower of a former moated castle , and a landmark of the city of Bad Liebenwerda . It is a listed building and is one of the oldest towers in the state of Brandenburg . The Lubwart Tower is the structurally remaining remnant of the former Liebenwerda Castle .

location

The Lubwart Tower is on an island northeast of the old town, today's center of Bad Liebenwerda. The buildings around the tower originally formed the main castle. Today the district museum is located in the northern building, the previous building of which was the servants' house. To the east of it was the main guard. Today the town hall stands at this point, but the old vault has been preserved and is used by a restaurant. The main building in the south was originally the manor house. The district court is located in the successor building and closes the square with a modern extension built in 2002. The lanes of Bundesstraße 183 run across Burgplatz around the Lubwart Tower.

construction

The Lubwart Tower is an approx. 31.5 meter high tower with a rectangular base. The base, like the foundation, is made of natural stones up to a height of 1.0 meters that come from the former quarry on the Rothsteiner Felsen, a few kilometers north of Bad Liebenwerda .

history

The plastered Lubwart castle tower in the Renaissance castle, topped up with a round.

Keep

No name of the tower is recorded in documents, but it is popularly referred to as Lubwart , a dialect variant of the place name Liebenwerda. The former dungeon was built around 1207, so the time of as German Ostsiedlung designated national expansion . Within a few decades, six more castles were built on the left bank of the Black Elster with similar or even identical towers, namely in Mückenberg , Elsterwerda , Saathain , Würdenhain , Wahrenbrück and Uebigau , but only the Lubwart Tower has been preserved.

The entrance was about twelve meters high on the east side of the tower. The upper floors, which could be reached via ladders and walkways, probably served as storage space. Below the entrance was the dungeon , into which the inmates were lowered via a winch through the fear hole . There was a massive barrel vault above the entrance floor. Access was possible via a covered high entrance on the east side. At an unknown point in time, this entrance was walled up and an entrance was opened from the castle tower at the Palas.

Castle tower

Remnants of the Renaissance plaster under the concrete plaster.

Elector August and his wife Anna arranged for it to be converted into a splendid Renaissance palace between 1568 and 1579. In 1543 the Lubwart Tower was given a new hood after the tower had been raised by several floors with a round. The bricks were covered with a renaissance plaster.

Fire ruin

On July 26, 1699, the Lubwart Tower burned down after a lightning strike. Another fire on April 26, 1733 devastated the entire palace and led to the abandonment of the palace complex. Because loose stones kept falling from the Lubwart Tower, the upper rows of stones from the tower were removed in 1830. The castle ruins continued to be used, the local court moved into the manor house, and a schnapps distillery moved into the house of the entourage.

In 1907 officials of the district court felt disturbed by the ruins of the Lubwart Tower and demanded that it be torn down. Citizens of the city managed to save the tower under the leadership of the district architect Jost. In 1913 the city of Liebenwerda bought the tower for RM 1 per square meter of floor space, or 86 marks. Together with the district builder, the city began planning to use it as a local history museum, an idea that Jost published in the magazine Schwarze Elster in 1907 . The very ambitious plans, which would have resulted in a complete redesign of the tower in the spirit of the time and its merging with the entourage, were not implemented due to the First World War . However, Jost began with safety measures, which were also made necessary by the re-routing of the road around the tower, which was established in 1914.

The south side of the Lubwart Tower around 1910. The southern entrance is still open. The roof approach of the high entrance is clearly visible.
Until 1914, the road only ran north around the tower. The eastern high entrance was locked.

Renovations

The first renovation began in the mid-1920s and ended in 1930 when it was opened as a lookout tower. However, the facade was not renovated. Gargoyles were built on the window arches in the tower head, which were supposed to bring the rainwater out from the newly built platform.

In the mid-1960s there was again the problem of loose bricks falling from the facade onto the street. The museum director and monument protector Karl Fitzkow campaigned for the preservation of the tower and organized the necessary construction and equipment. In 1968/69 the facade of the tower was renovated by simply applying a concrete plaster.

The original floors above the barrel vault were restored in 2010 and the entire ascent was renewed.

The rainwater flow remained a problem. The water disposal of the platform via the spouts installed by Jost led to water entering the masonry under the round. Increasingly, the concrete structure was also leaking, which was repeatedly poorly repaired until the 1990s. The basic problem of moisture remained. Therefore, renovation work was necessary that brought a long-term solution. In a 2004 appeal for civic engagement, the then museum director Ralf Uschner and Gerd Günther, employees in the Lower Monument Authority, made the need for renovation clear. A few months later, the City Marketing Association called for a fundraising campaign and set up a working group on the “Lubwart Tower Renovation”. The working group organized a survey and developed ten variants for the Lubwart Tower. The variant of restoring the historically documented castle tower was favored. However, for reasons of cost, this variant was not accepted for pre-selection. The architect Bernhard Leisering created various variants, three of which were then proposed for voting in the city parliament. The parliament decided on a variant without a roof, in which the drainage in the upper area is newly regulated and the outer skin is renovated.

In 2010 the renovation of the floors and stairs began. The tower received new floors at the same height as the original floors. The floor slab above the tower room was removed and a new drainage system was installed through the tower via pipes. The tower room was given up. In 2011 the renovation of the exterior began. Due to the positive experience with the renovation of the brick-view refectory in Dobrilugk Monastery , the Lubwart Tower was also renovated with brick-view. Renaissance plaster was found in many places. This very rare finding was definitely worth protecting. The secured plaster was painted over in such a way that the tower now appears to be completely exposed to brick, except for the upper oval. The upper oval, which had its function from the Renaissance as an extended castle tower, is plastered to represent the epoch of the Renaissance castle. In 2011 a memorial plaque was installed for Euphemia von Oels as part of the “FrauenOrte im Land Brandenburg” project sponsored by the Brandenburg Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs, Women and Family.