Ostburg (Waldstein)

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Ostburg
A wall of the east castle (Ludwig Zapf)

A wall of the east castle (Ludwig Zapf)

Alternative name (s): Bowl castle
Creation time : around 1150
Castle type : Höhenburg, summit location
Conservation status: individual remains of the wall can be seen. chapel
Standing position : Knighthood
Construction: Humpback cuboid
Place: Zell im Fichtelgebirge - " Großer Waldstein "
Geographical location 50 ° 7 '44 "  N , 11 ° 51' 18"  E Coordinates: 50 ° 7 '44 "  N , 11 ° 51' 18"  E
Height: 877  m above sea level NHN
Ostburg (Bavaria)
Ostburg

The Ostburg was the older of the two hill castles on the Waldstein in the Fichtelgebirge .

The Waldstein before the east castle was built

The Waldstein as an early resting place

During Karl Dietel's excavations in the 1960s on the Waldstein summit near the chapel ruin, medieval equipment and remains of Stone Age jugs and vases came to light. The finds consisted of Jurassic hornstone , banded gravel slate and slate rock . With the dating of the not very informative finds there are still problems today. It is believed that they date from the Middle or Neolithic. Dietel expressed the opinion that the Waldstein summit was not a permanent settlement, but a resting place for hunters and gatherers.

Theory of Ludwig Zapf: The pagan sacrificial site

Site plan of the alleged Wendish ramparts as a book illustration by Ludwig Zapf

Ludwig Zapf , an honorary citizen of Münchberg and a local researcher, came across the Ostburg a good 90 years before Dietel and recognized it as a Wendish hill fort. A large boulder with notches, which he interpreted as a sacrificial site , served as evidence . The notch-like grooves should have been used to drain blood. They later turned out to be natural weathering. The other walls and rocks worked by human hands could be assigned to the Middle Ages.

The early Middle Ages

Alleged sacrificial stone, but the notches are of natural origin

Archaeological finds from Dietel show that the first travelers settled there as early as the eighth to ninth centuries AD, some of whom their legacies are known to have. However, these first hikers have nothing to do with the construction of the east castle. In this context, Elisabeth Jäger researched the region's old roads .

The east castle

The construction of the first castle on the Waldstein, also known as the Ostburg because of its location, can be dated to the 12th century. This is evidenced by archaeological finds. In 1168 the castle was first mentioned in connection with a ghetto de Waltstein . The Lords of Waldstein broke away from the retinue of the Margraves of Vohburg and settled on the Waldstein . They can be documented from 1168 to 1206. The von Sparnberg lords , who descended from the von Waldstein clan, have also been attested since 1202 . They lived at Sparnberg Castle in a loop of the Saale between Hirschberg and Blankenberg . A man named Rüdiger from the Sparnberg line settled between 1200 and 1223 at the foot of the ancestral castle of his ancestors, the Waldstein. On November 10, 1223 he was named as a witness in Eger as "Rüdiger de Sparrenhecke" and was thus the first Sparnecker . In a document dated May 2, 1356, two forts on the Waldenstein are mentioned in addition to the castle in Sparneck . One can therefore assume that the Ostburg even after the construction of the West Castle served yet homely purposes. The “two forts Waltstein” were also called in 1373, but the older east castle was already abandoned and ruined by this time. After the castle was abandoned, parts of its masonry, some of which consisted of humpback blocks, were demolished and used to further expand the western castle. The church in Weißdorf , which was built by the Lords of Sparneck , also consists partly of humpback blocks from the east castle.

The Waldstein Chapel

The chapel on the Waldstein

In addition to a stable, a residential house and a protective wall that took advantage of the natural location, a chapel belonged to the buildings of the east castle. This Waldstein chapel was probably dedicated to Saint Wolfgang . This assumption is reinforced by the discovery of a so-called votive cattle . With the donation of the iron figurine, a farmer probably asked for the protection of his cattle. The chapel also had a cemetery, which Dietel discovered in the 1960s. He found a total of four graves in which a man, a woman and a child lay; one of them was empty. From one of these skeletons the parts below the rib cage were severed; the legs were missing. Dietel suspected that the skeleton was dismembered when the castle was expanded and that the disruptive parts were removed.

The chapel, which belonged to the diocese of Regensburg , was not left with the east castle, but served from Weißenstadt for a while . Church dedications were even celebrated. Part of the once painted walls of the chapel still stands.

literature

  • Karl Dietel : The Great Waldstein in the Fichtel Mountains , Saalfrank, Helmbrechts, 1968. (Between Waldstein and Döbraberg ; Volume 7)
  • Johann Theodor Benjamin Helfrecht : Ruins, antiquities and still standing castles on and on the Fichtel Mountains. Court 1795.
  • Ludwig Zapf : Waldstein Book Münchberg 1886.
  • Dietmar Herrmann: Around the Great Waldstein , Volume 16/2008 of the series of publications of the Fichtelgebirgsverein Das Fichtelgebirge

Web links

Commons : Ostburg  - collection of images, videos and audio files