Luccaburg

Castle hill of Luccaburg, from 1820 grave monument

The Luccaburg was an early medieval low castle near Loccum in Lower Saxony . It is named after the lineage of the Lucca family. It is assumed that the castle was built and used in the 9th - 12th centuries. It gave its name to the nearby Loccum monastery , the most important Cistercian founding in Lower Saxony.

location

The remains of the tower hill castle ( Motte ) of the Luccaburg is located in the middle of the Sundern forest area in the Fulde valley, about 1 km south of the Loccum monastery. At the time it was built, it was a swampy and difficult-to-access valley.

Construction

Reconstructed section through moat and wall

The remains of the former castle complex consist of a circular mound of earth. The mound, around 40 meters in diameter and around 3.5 to 4 meters high, consists of a mixture of clay, loam and sand. This was the result of superficial explorations in 1820 and 1893 and later excavations in 1914 in the presence of the prehistorian and castle researcher Carl Schuchhardt . Originally the hill was surrounded by a 7 meter wide and 1.5 meter deep moat . During the archaeological investigations, the remains of a 2-meter-thick circular wall made of sandstone slabs were excavated on the mound of earth 0.5 meters below the surface . The wall is circular and, with its 2.5 meter deep foundation, extends down to the ground. No other building remains were found on the hill. Due to the lack of a bailey, the Luccaburg is an atypical hilltop tower castle , the no longer existing (wooden) buildings were probably all housed on the hill platform. Finds of ceramic shards from the 11th and 12th centuries indicate that the hill plateau was settled earlier. In 2012 the Lower Saxony State Office for Monument Preservation had Luccaburg and its immediate surroundings digitally measured and a virtual 3D elevation model made. This represented a contribution by the State Office for the 850th anniversary of the Loccum Monastery in 2013.

Redesign to a grave monument

Following the investigations in 1820, the castle hill was redesigned as a grave monument for the prior of the Loccum monastery, who died in 1818. The original curtain wall was exposed in part and included in the design as a wall surface. A large-format, stone plaque on the wall commemorates Prior Carl Ludwig Franzen, who had paths, avenues and meadows laid out here in the Sundern forest.

history

Moat on the right

The castle was named for the dynasts of the Counts of Lucca, who appear in this room around the late 11th century. Around 1113 and 1130 a count Buchard von Lucca is mentioned in a document, who was count of Friesland . This also explains that the Luccaburg was built in stone-clad, modeled on the Frisian-Dutch hilltop castles, as the castle specialist from the Lower Saxony State Office for Monument Preservation, Hans-Wilhelm Heine, discovered. Count Buchard's daughter, Beatrice von Lucca, married Count Wilbrand von Hallermund , who thereby became his successor and heir. In 1163 he donated the surrounding land to Cistercian monks to found the Loccum Monastery . The castle is likely to have been abandoned before the monastery was founded.

The Luccaburg is mentioned in a story written in 1260. After that, the son of Count Wilbrand von Hallermund, Buchhard, died at a tournament . His body was first buried on the island of Alt Lucca and later reburied in the Loccum monastery. This description coincides with the island-like location of the castle in a river valley.

Surname

Because of its unusual sound, the origin of the term Lucca is not seen in Saxon but in Slavonic. There it could have meant meadow. As a result, Luccaburg would stand for Wiesenburg, which corresponds to its original location in the middle of the humid valley of the Fulde.

According to one theory, the Slavic naming is based on the fact that Wends of Slavic origin settled here in the Saxon settlement area in the 8th century. In historical research it is speculated that they were deported by Charlemagne from their ancestral home east of the Elbe to the Central Weser .

literature

Ernst Andreas Friedrich : The Luccaburg near Loccum , pp. 63–65, in: If stones could talk , Volume II, Landbuch-Verlag, Hanover 1992, ISBN 3-7842-0479-1 .
Hans-Wilhelm Heine : The Luccaburg near Loccum . In: Guide to Prehistoric and Protohistoric Monuments. Volume 49. Part II Excursions . Mainz 1981