Madenburg
| Madenburg | |
|---|---|
 Madenburg, Eberhardsbau (before the courtyard facade collapsed), pen drawing, mid-19th century. |
|
| Creation time : | early 11th century |
| Castle type : | Hilltop castle |
| Conservation status: | ruin |
| Construction: | Humpback cuboid |
| Place: | Eschbach |
| Geographical location | 49 ° 10 '5.7 " N , 8 ° 0' 29.1" E |
| Height: | 458.5 m above sea level NHN |
The Madenburg castle ruins are one of the largest and oldest castles in the Palatinate ( Rhineland-Palatinate ).
geography
The Madenburg was built as a hilltop castle on the eastern edge of the Palatinate Forest on a rocky spur of the Rothenberg protruding into the Rhine plain . The ruin, surrounded by forest, is about 250 m above Eschbach at an altitude of 458.5 m above sea level. NHN .
Surname
The name "Madenburg" probably originated from "Maidenburg" and suggests that it was named in honor of the "Maid", the Virgin Mary. Possibly the name is a translation of Parthenopolis ( Greek "virgin city"). The Madenburg was first mentioned as "Maddenberg" in 1176; At that time, a Hermann von Madenburg received compensation from the abbot for a manor sale made by Hermann's mother Ida von Madenburg to the Limburg monastery without his knowledge .
history
The castle was built in the early 11th century, most likely as an imperial castle . If it is identical to the Parthenopolis Castle, where the meeting of the princes to deliberate on the deposition of the Salian Emperor Henry IV , would have been mentioned for the first time in 1076. However, this has not yet been proven with certainty.
In 1080 the castle seems to have been owned by Diemars von Trifels together with the Trifels . He was a member of the noble family of Reginbodonen . In 1112 Archbishop Adalbert von Mainz conquered the Madenburg, which had previously belonged to the empire and the bishopric of Speyer, and only gave it to Emperor Heinrich V under duress in 1113 . In 1164 the Hohenstaufen became owners of the castle as bailiffs .
In the 13th century, the Counts of Leiningen and the Reichslandvogtei took over the Madenburg over the Speyergau as imperial governors . In 1241, the Episcopal Ministerial Eberhard von Wersau from Speyer , who was most likely serving as a gift as early as 1211/20 , took the nickname of Madenburg. It is not yet known whether the Speyer court office was in any closer connection with the castle. As the first Reichsministeriale, Konrad von Schüpf named himself after the Madenburg (Conradus de Mathenberc) in 1255 , but did not keep this title consistently.
Due to a documented division of the Leiningen family, the Madenburg became the property of Friedrich V von Altleiningen in 1317. In 1361 it was in the possession of Gerhard von Ehrenberg , the Bishop of Speyer, but was redeemed by the people of Leiningen. However, they pledged this again in 1365, this time to the knight Diether Kämmerer von Worms.
In 1372 the castle became an inheritance . The residents of Sickingen and Fleckenstein also belonged to the flatmates , of whom in 1408 Friedrich von Fleckenstein was the first family member named as a commoner of the castle. In 1415, according to other information in 1423, the castle was under Johann Schwarz-Reinhard III. divided by Sickingen and Friedrich von Fleckenstein. The early Gothic chapel of St. Nicholas was also mentioned.
Elector Friedrich the Victorious took the Madenburg on May 6, 1470 after a siege.
In 1488 knight Johannes von Heydeck was the sole owner of the castle after acquiring the shares of Fleckenstein and Sickinger, which was sold to Duke Ulrich von Württemberg in 1511 . It was then sold on by the Württemberg people to the Count Palatine and Bishop Georg von Speyer in 1516 . During the Peasants' War in 1525, it was conquered, looted and set on fire by rebellious peasants.
The castle was rebuilt and expanded under Bishop Philipp von Flörsheim . In 1550 he had the Philippsbau built and the episcopal archive , which was formerly located in the Kästenburg, was housed in it . Just two years later, Margrave Albrecht von Brandenburg-Kulmbach conquered the Madenburg.
Between 1581 and 1610 it was rebuilt as a fortified castle in the Renaissance style by Bishop Eberhard von Speyer . The renaissance buildings in the main castle include the Eberhardsbau, built in 1593, and the two magnificent stair towers from 1593 and 1594.
During the Thirty Years' War the castle was repeatedly attacked, in 1621 by Count Ludwig von Löwenstein-Scharfeneck and in 1622 by Count Ernst von Mansfeld , who took it after heavy bombardment. In 1634 the facility was conquered by French troops and in 1635 it was regained by imperial troops. After the castle had been conquered again by French troops in 1644, it was returned to the Speyer Monastery in 1650 after the conclusion of a peace treaty, whose bishop had it repaired in a makeshift manner.
In the Palatinate War of Succession (1688–1697), the castle was finally destroyed by the troops of the French King Louis XIV under Joseph de Montclar, despite its considerable military strength . It was no longer built.
In 1800 the ruin was sold to private hands and in 1826 it was sold for demolition to 38 citizens of Eschbach. In the following years it served as a quarry. The Madenburg Association was founded in 1870. He bought parts of the castle hill in order to save the ruins from final destruction. Intensive restoration work began in 1871 .
investment
Protection systems
The elongated castle complex runs roughly in a north-south direction. It is divided into the southern fore and the northern core castle , surrounded by a kennel . In the north, the castle was protected by two neck ditches with strong shield walls.
The access to the castle was secured by a gun bastion, with which the northern (younger) neck moat was partially built over. The northern younger shield wall is about 35 m long, 12 m high, up to 7 m thick and has stands for guns and firearms. The older inner shield wall, clad with humpback ashlars, is part of the main castle. On the west side of the older neck ditch between these two shield walls there are foundations of farm buildings.
Outer bailey
The castle gate can be reached through the western kennel, originally secured by gates at both ends, and the remains of a formerly strong gate bastion . This round bastion was built into the outer (western) kennel wall. Here in the area of the outer outer bailey is the renovated well house with the 64 m deep draw well in front of the castle gate .
The high Romanesque castle gate from the 12th century was later reduced in size and given a pointed arch . This gate leads to the inner outer bailey, the southern part of the complex.
In the west of the outer bailey, the early Gothic St. Nicholas chapel, which was built on a boulder, is still up to 2.5 m high with remains of the foundation wall with round and ogival windows. In the south, used to operate the castle restaurant, not faithfully developed former is arsenal . The restaurant itself was built into the remains of the foundation wall of some of the former farm buildings on the east side.
In the north, the outer bailey is bounded by the Philip's building, which is already part of the inner bailey and through which a gate with the coat of arms of Bishop Philip leads into the upper courtyard.
There was a cistern in the north-west corner of the courtyard .
Core castle
Bishop Philipp had the Philip's building, equipped with loopholes and windows, built in 1550. Some of the walls are still preserved, which give an idea of its former size; the overhead viewing platform can be reached through the southern of the two well-preserved Renaissance stair towers of the Eberhard building. They were built in 1593 and 1594. Of the renaissance building erected in 1593 by Bishop Eberhard von Speyer on the east side of the main castle, only the remains of the foundation walls can be found, which is why the northern stair tower stands free in the courtyard.
In the north, the old, approximately 3 m thick shield wall borders the core castle. Nor parts protrude of at its western end of the keep up. The west side took a multi-storey residential building, possibly the Palas , and the south of it lying cookhouse, of which the foundations are to find out the courtyard only. At the curtain wall still Romanesque windows are found and in the separation wall between the house and kitchen. The oven and two round arches on the south side of the kitchen house are still preserved.
In the middle of the courtyard, between the residential building and the northern stair tower, there is another cistern.
basement, cellar
To the south of the outer bailey there is a cellar carved into the rock inside the kennel , over which a building was originally built.
Madenburg rule or Madenburg office
The Madenburg rule had belonged to the Speyer monastery since 1530 and included the villages
After the last destruction of the Madenburg in 1680, the officials of this rule had their seat in Arzheim.
literature
- Alexander Thon (Ed.): "... like a banned, inaccessible magic castle" . Castles in the southern Palatinate. 2nd, improved edition. Regensburg 2005, pp. 100-105. ISBN 3795415705 .
- Alexander Thon, Ulrich Burkhart, Walter Appel, Dieter Barz and Hans Klose: Madenburg . In: Jürgen Keddigkeit , Alexander Thon u. a. (Ed.): Palatinate Castle Lexicon, Vol. 3 (= Contributions to the Palatinate History, Vol. 12). Kaiserslautern 2005, pp. 494-514.
- Wolfgang Hartmann: From the Main to Trifels Castle - from Hirsau Monastery to Naumburg Cathedral. On the traces of the Franconian noble family of the Reginbodonen in the Middle Ages . Publications of the History and Art Association Aschaffenburg, Bd. 52. Aschaffenburg 2004, ISSN 0433-843X .
Web links
- Entry on Madenburg in the scientific database " EBIDAT " of the European Castle Institute
- Madenburg: history, aerial view and floor plan
- Madenburg: castle complex
- Madenburg: Panorama
- Madenburg: pictures
- Reconstruction drawing in the medieval state
Individual evidence
- ↑ Map service of the landscape information system of the Rhineland-Palatinate nature conservation administration (LANIS map) ( notes )
- ^ Rudolf Schott: The battles in front of Freiburg im Breisgau, the conquest of Philippsburg and the sieges of several cities on the Rhine in 1644. Military history magazine , Volume 24: Issue 2. De Gruyter, 1978.