Meiningen city fortifications
The Meininger fortification was until the late 18th century a complex defense system of walls , towers, ramparts, moats and Ravelinen with which the city Meiningen was surrounded and protected. The moat system as the only part of the city fortifications that has existed to the present day is the best preserved moat system in Thuringia as a ground monument .
history
Meiningen, which has existed since the 7th century at the latest, was first mentioned in a document in 982 as a royal estate and at that time it was the capital of a mark, an administrative unit in the Grabfeld district and the location of a tithe . Favored by its location at a ford of the Werra and several trade routes, the place quickly gained in importance and was already provided with a simple fortification due to the Hungarian invasions . From 1007 Meiningen belonged to the Würzburg Monastery , which had the first massive fortification built in the 11th century with the construction of Meiningen Castle as a moated castle . Constant attempts by other powers to wrest the Meiningen exclave from the Würzburgers prompted the Würzburg bishops to extensively fortify Meiningen. At the beginning of the 13th century, Meiningen, which had meanwhile become a town, was surrounded by a moat system consisting of two moats and a wall in between. From the middle of the 13th century, the inner city wall with battlements , the two gate towers , the "Middle Gate" and some defense towers were built including the moated castle. In the 15th century, the outer city wall or the kennel wall with half-shell rondelles was built to strengthen it . To complete the city fortifications, the third moat with rampart was built as a further moat in 1554–1555 and two upstream ravelines and the powder tower in 1670–1675 to protect the bridges over the moats and the gate towers . Other fortification work took place in 1644/45 during the Thirty Years' War as a result of sieges . With the double city wall, the gate towers and ravelines, the moat system in the south, east and north and the Werra / Mühlgraben river system in the west, Meiningen had an effective and strong city fortification.
City wall and towers
city wall
An important part of the Meiningen city fortification was the city wall, which was built in several phases between the 13th and 15th centuries directly behind the inner moat and the mill moat. It was built mostly with limestones that were quarried around the city. The city wall consisted of a double wall ring with 25 semicircular roundels, a kennel between the walls and battlements . Their length was around 2 km. The city wall was almost completely razed during the demolition at the end of the 18th and early 19th centuries . The walls at the city gates were first torn down in 1778–1782.
Towers
The exact number of defensive towers that can no longer be determined, but at least more than a dozen , belonged to the city wall, some of which were round towers that strengthened the western city wall in particular. The mighty keep of the Würzburg city castle (Burg Meiningen) stood close to the city wall east of the castle in the north-west of the city. The tower also housed a prison. It was demolished in 1685 during the construction of Elisabethenburg Castle , the natural stones of which were used as building material. The Powder Tower was built in 1672 on the southwest corner of the wall at the mill race and was demolished with the 1817 Armory connected. The tower had loopholes like loopholes and a defense platform with loopholes on three floors . In the 19th century, the round tower, which is still preserved today, was given a conical roof and windows after a renovation. A park opposite and on the other side of the Mühlgraben is named after the powder tower (powder lawn). In 1673 the bridges over the two inner moats in front of the lower and upper gate tower were reinforced with two round towers each as gate fronts.
City gates
In the final stage of development, the city fortifications had four city gates. The two gate towers “Upper Gate” in the south and “Lower Gate” in the north and the “Middle Gate” in the west were built in the same period as the city wall . The gate towers formed the two main entrances to the city. They were built in the usual architectural style of the Franconian region around Würzburg (see the still-preserved tower in Bad Neustadt ). The 20–30 m high towers had a square floor plan, a central gate passage, weir bay windows , loopholes and a tail roof similar to a dome shape . The upper gate tower also had a lantern . This tower was badly damaged by fire in 1639 during the Thirty Years' War . In front of the upper gate tower, a baroque show gate decorated with Mars and Pallas-Athene sculptures was built in 1741 , which was removed again in 1876 due to traffic obstruction. The upper gate tower was demolished in 1787 and the lower gate tower in 1817 due to dilapidation.
The “Middle Gate” as a further entrance into the city was on the western city wall facing the Werra. It received a tower structure in 1495 and a gate kennel in 1502. It was badly damaged by artillery fire during a siege in 1642. The middle gate was torn down together with the city wall. The “New Gate” as the fourth entrance was built in the middle of the eastern city wall at the beginning of the 18th century and was also demolished as part of the demolition. In its place there is now access to the old town via Untere Kaplaneistraße.
Moat system
The moat system known today as "Bleichgräben" was built at the beginning of the 13th century and initially consisted of two moats and a wall. Later a third outer city moat and a second very wide wall, called the "Schütt", were added. The moat system enclosed the city in a semicircle in the south, east and north. The moats are fed by the Mühlgraben, which branches off from the Werra as a tributary south of the old town and directs the water into the moats from the southwest corner of the city wall. To the northwest of the old town, the trenches unite in the area of today's castle park to form a small river that flows into the Werra at Volkshausplatz (formerly Am Unteren Rasen). The moat system got the name "bleaching trenches" from the barchent and linen weaving, with which Meiningen achieved a great economic boom in the high Middle Ages and the numerous master craftsmen had their cloths and fabrics bleached on the ramparts in peacetime. The bleaching trenches also drove the upper mill by the upper gate tower and the lower mill (today the location of the historic waterworks) on the wall in front of the lower gate tower. In the 19th century, the outer third city moat was filled. The two remaining bleaching trenches with ramparts are today a ground monument.
In the west, a tributary of the Werra , the Mühlgraben and the Werra itself offered further protection in front of the city wall . The Mühlgraben led along the western city wall past the Middle Gate and flowed into the Werra shortly before the former castle and today 's Elisabethenburg Palace . With a branch he supplied the moat and the castle mill located there with water. The moat was later renamed Schlossgraben. With another branch, the Mühlgraben operated the Mittelmühle located in front of the Mittlere Pforte on a river island. The Mühlgraben with its branches has been completely preserved to the present day, except for the branch to the castle, which has now been piped.
Castles, Landwehr and Ravelinen
- The Meiningen as lowland castle of the Würzburg bishops emerged as the first solid mounting structure in the 11th century to protect the city. It was in the northwest of the city by the city wall. The bishops installed their own castle men here . In 1432 it was destroyed by the citizens of Meiningen in an uprising. Rebuilt in 1512, it was rebuilt several times. After the keep and all the ancillary buildings had been razed, in 1692 the remaining main building, known as the "Bibrasbau", was integrated into Elisabethenburg Palace as the north wing. Burggasse is still named after the castle today.
- The Landeswehre castle , built around 1100, was north of the city on a mountain cone in the Werra valley. The summit castle owned by the bishops secured the Würzburg exclave with the city of Meiningen and the village of Walldorf as well as the trade routes. The national weirs were destroyed in the Peasants' War in 1525 and not rebuilt. Their remains were later used to build Elisabethenburg Palace. All that remains to this day is the stump of the keep. Landsberg Castle has been in place of the castle since 1842 .
- Another early castle of the Würzburgs to secure the city was the Habichtsburg on the trade route "Alte Frankfurter Straße" a few kilometers west of Meiningen and south of the state weirs in the Hassfurt. After the trade route was relocated, the Spornburg lost its importance, came into private ownership and fell into disrepair by the 14th century at the latest. The moat , a few remains of the castle wall, the keep and a well have been preserved. The castle complex is now a ground monument.
- The Spornburg Spitzberg in Welkershausen, northeast of Meiningen, on the eastern slope of the Werra Valley, was also built by the Würzburgers. Together with the Landeswehre castle opposite, it effectively secured the Werra valley north of Meiningen. The castle was later sold to the Counts of Henneberg due to financial concerns . But at the beginning of the 14th century these threatened Meiningen and Walldorf from there, so that the Würzburg bishop Otto II took this castle in 1340 after a siege and had it completely razed. The ramparts can still be seen today.
- In the Middle Ages, the Upper and Lower Landwehr were built across the valley to the north and south of the city. The land weirs were deep trenches with thorn hedges. They are still clearly recognizable in the cityscape, especially the Lower Landwehr. The "Landwehrstrasse", the street "Obere Landwehr" and the long and steep stairway "Untere Landwehr" are reminiscent of them.
- In 1675 a ravelin was built in front of the two gate towers and bridges to provide additional protection for the entrances to the city . They were enclosed by moats and equipped with drawbridges. The ravelines have been completely removed by overbuilding.
Softening
From 1778, at the time of enlightened absolutism, a targeted demolition of the Meiningen city fortifications took place. The now useless fortifications were a hindrance to the expansion of the city and were perceived as a relic of the past that was not worth preserving and that was restrictive. First, in 1778–1782, parts of the city wall in the area of the gate towers and the central gate were grinded in order to obtain construction freedom there for planned city expansion. At that time, part of the outer city moat in the area of the lower gate tower was partially filled with demolition stones, whereupon the “Sächsischer Hof” inn was built in front of the gate and Karlsallee in the direction of the palace gardens. The stones of the fortifications, which were demolished in the following years, were used extensively by the citizens as building material. With these stones, new buildings and bridges were also built. At the beginning of the 19th century, the outer third city moat was filled in and Halbestadtstrasse was built on it, today's Neu-Ulmer-Strasse as a bypass road for the old town. The outer wall, the Schütt, became building land. In addition to residential buildings, the former district court and the lodge house were built there . A promenade was laid on the inner wall between the two bleaching trenches .
The moat system without the third outer moat, the powder tower, small remnants of the western city wall at the “Baumbachhaus” and the renovated remnants of two half-shell rondelles of the eastern Zwingermauer have been preserved to the present day.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g Kuratorium Meiningen (ed.): Lexicon for the history of the city of Meiningen . Bielsteinverlag, Meiningen 2008, ISBN 978-3-9809504-4-2 .
- ↑ a b Bernd W. Bahn: Meiningen before the first documentary mention. In: Contributions to the town history of Meiningen (= Südthüringer Forschungen. Vol. 17, ISSN 0585-8720 ). Staatliche Museen, Meiningen 1982, pp. 8–15.
- ↑ Armin Ender: The Landsberg near Meiningen. In: Contributions to the town history of Meiningen (= Südthüringer Forschungen. Vol. 17, ISSN 0585-8720 ). Staatliche Museen, Meiningen 1982, pp. 51–64, here p. 51.
- ↑ a b c d Chronicle of the City of Meiningen from 1676 to 1834, Volume 1. Meiningen, 1834.