Olausburg
The Olausburg (also: Olavsburg and Olafsburg as well as other variants) is a no longer existing Lübeck building .
history
The Olausburg is mentioned for the first time in the treasury book of the years 1316–1338: For the year 1329, income of ten marks is recorded for the wine that the councilors consumed at meetings at the Olausburg. How long the structure existed at that time cannot be determined. There is no evidence of its establishment.
The Olausburg, named after Saint Olav , was, as far as this can be determined from the relatively few written evidence, always the property of the council. However, it served mainly the patrician families of the city, but especially the circle society , as a place for meetings and celebrations. Since it was founded in 1379 , the circle society has held its annual general meeting on the Olausburg on Trinity Day , the Sunday after Pentecost, to which Heinrich Rehbein and oral tradition say they went in a pageant on horseback that lasted two days and the one after the end According to the rules of procedure, the members' wives also came to the party with a dance on the first day. The second day began with a service in the Katharinenkirche , followed by a celebration in the Olausburg with the women. There was no overnight stay in the castle.
Both Heinrich Rehbein and the tradition describe that the annual winter meeting of the circle society also took place in the Olausburg on the Monday after the 1st Advent . For this purpose, the members and their wives went to the castle in an elaborate, solemn pageant with a sleigh. However, there are doubts about this: According to the statutes , the winter assembly was primarily a memorial service for the deceased members of the society in the Katharinenkirche and not associated with celebrations or feasts. A stay in the Olausburg would not have been necessary, nor would a sledge parade have suited the serious character of commemoration of the dead.
The council also used the Olausburg for its own purposes. On June 12 and 13, 1502, for example, he had a large banquet held there, which was financed with the collected fines of 24 years.
In 1534 a crowd - identified in the only description of the event as supporters of the 64 and 100 , i.e. the elected citizens' committee , which was in conflict with the council - invaded the Olausburg and devastated the building. It is unclear whether this was an expression of displeasure against the circle society as a representative of the patrician elite, or whether the rebellion was directed against the council as the owner of the castle. What is certain, however, is that contrary to later interpretations of the events, the Olausburg was not razed. The report only mentions that the vandals broke out the glass windows and shutters, smashed benches and cupboards, stole table tops and destroyed or stolen other furnishings, so that the circle society had to cancel its spring meeting.
After this incident, the Olausburg was apparently not repaired, but left to decay. After the disintegration of the circle society and the changes in the structures of the Lübeck society after the Reformation and the Wullenwever period, there was probably no longer any interest in the building. Rehbein saw the ruins of the Olausburg in 1560; Nowhere is it noted when they were finally removed.
The site
It is unclear where the Olausburg was. Strangely enough, the knowledge of their exact location soon disappeared completely from the memory of the people of Lübeck, so that in a book from 1693 no attempt was made to indicate the location and at the end of the 18th century only Mühlentor and Wakenitz could be mentioned as approximate points of reference.
The information in the historical sources is very vague. It is only clear that the castle stood outside the old town island between Hüxtertor and Mühlentor on the banks of the Wakenitz or on an island in the river. Rehbein, who saw their remains himself, describes their location with the words: The Olafsburg was outside the city between the Hüxter- and Mühlentor on the Wakenitz, almost next to the roundabout at the Hüxtertor, surrounded by water like an island with a drawbridge.
Rehbein's description suggests a location on or in the Krähenteich, to which the Wakenitz widens between Hüxtertor and Mühlentor. The expansion of the Lübeck city fortifications from 1535 to the Lübeck bastionary fortifications in the 17th century and the construction of the Elbe-Lübeck Canal at the end of the 19th century completely changed the area in question, so that today no clear reference points can be identified on site. Two places can be reconciled with this description. On the one hand the south side of the Hüxterdamm , which crossed the Wakenitz, which was very wide before the canal was built, and at the eastern end of which there has been a round fortification wall, the Rondell mentioned by Rehbein, since the first half of the 16th century . The Olausburg could have stood between this circular wall and the art of brewing water . The proximity to the brewing water art is also reflected in a note in her account book from 1462, where it was stated that 8 long arches, which belonged to her large water wheel, lay in the ditch that surrounded the Olausburg. They were probably prefabricated arched side parts for the wooden wheel, which were stored in the water of the moat to preserve it. This only makes sense if the Olausburg was in the immediate vicinity. At the same time, there is another problem: If the castle was on an island on Hüxterdamm, it cannot have been surrounded by the moat mentioned in several sources. In addition, on the Diebel city view from 1552 between Hüxtertorrondell and Wasserkünsten along the dam, nothing can be seen that could be interpreted as the ruins that still existed in 1560 (although the rondel and Absalonsturm could cover the remains). This results in the second possibility: The Olausburg was perhaps not on an island next to the Hüxterdamm, but in front of the roundabout at the northern end of the Krähenteich on the east bank of the Wakenitz, where a ditch branching off from the water flowed around the building and placed it in an island-like position could. At the same time, this location would have been outside of the picture that Diebel's cityscape captured. There the castle, if it was really originally a defense structure, could have acted as protection for the Hüxterdamm, which has been connecting both banks since 1289. Even in the Cosmographia by Sebastian Münster (1550), whose view of Lübeck from the east by the woodcutter David Kandel must have been made before 1535 because the ramparts that were built up after 1535 are still missing, there is no such building despite otherwise fewer errors and an overall great attention to detail .
Since no remains were found during the construction of the Elbe-Lübeck Canal that could be associated with the Olausburg, the considerations about its location remain speculative for the time being. Completely unrealistic in any case some arisen in the 19th century assumptions, according to which some island Wakenitz upstream more than three kilometers Spiering Horst or the opposite peninsula Rabbit Mountain was the site of Olausburg. There is no evidence for either assumption, the only thing that is correct is that the mayor of Lübeck Gotthard V. von Hoeveln maintained a larger house on Spieringshorst at the end of the 16th century. The elaborate, festive parades of the circle society on horseback or with sledges, which would only make sense if it was a longer route - which actually speaks clearly in favor of a facility not located directly in front of the Hüxtertor - cannot be used as an argument for list these places far in front of the city. References to these moves can only be found in Rehbein and in the legendary later tradition, so they are already decorated rear projections. In addition, the set procedures of the spring assembly left no time for a longer journey on the second day of the celebrations: The participants went from a joint service in the Katharinenkirche directly to dinner at the Olausburg.
Shape of the structure
Less is known about the appearance and size of the Olausburg than about its location. The meetings and celebrations held there suggest that there was at least one spacious, representative hall. The moat and drawbridge indicate that the Olausburg was once really used for defensive purposes and that it was accordingly massive. It is fitting that in 1502 a tower is also explicitly mentioned. An abortion facility is also mentioned. According to a tradition that can no longer be traced back to its origins , the castle complex, which was visible behind the figure of the young men in the Lübeck Dance of Death of 1463 , which was destroyed in 1942 , represented the Olausburg. This claim cannot be verified. The castle is quite far away from the silhouette of Lübeck that can be seen in the background and can therefore not be associated with the area around Mühlentor and Hüxtertor. The dimensions of the structure are also too large for a system that has disappeared without any remains. In addition, it is clearly a castle on a hill, which cannot be reconciled with the location on or on the Wakenitz. Nevertheless, it is at least conceivable that the castle depicted, for which no other model can be identified in the Lübeck area, emulated the Olausburg in its characteristic features, so that contemporaries would clearly have recognized it despite the discrepancies based on artistic freedom. However, there is no evidence of this.
literature
- Hanseatic City of Lübeck (ed.): The architectural and art monuments of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck , Volume I, 1st part. Published by Bernhard Nöhring, Lübeck 1939
- Wilhelm Brehmer : Contributions to a building history of Lübeck - 5. The fortifications of Lübeck , in: Journal of the Association for Lübeck History and Antiquity Volume 7, Issue 3, p. 241 ff. Edmund Schmersahl successor publisher, Lübeck 1898
- Ernst Deecke : Lübische stories and legends , Boldemann, Lübeck 1852
- Sonja Dünnebeil: The Lübeck Circle Society: Forms of self-representation of an urban upper class. Archives of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck, 1996
- Peter Sahlmann: The old imperial and Hanseatic city of Lübeck - Vedutas from four centuries , 2nd edition, Lübeck 2008
- Carl Friedrich Wehrmann : Das Lübeckische Patriziat , in: Journal of the Association for Lübeckische Geschichte und Altertumskunde Volume 5, P. 293 ff. Edmund Schmersahl Verlag, Lübeck 1888
Individual evidence
- ↑ Sahlmann, p. 39 ff.