Ratzeburg Castle
The Ratzeburg Castle gave its name to today's city of Ratzeburg in south-eastern Schleswig-Holstein . The castle, which emerged from an abodritical fortification, was one of the residences of the Duchy of Saxony-Lauenburg . It was located on the western foothills of the Ratzeburg old town island and was completely destroyed at the end of the 17th century.
history
The castle was probably an under Polabenfürst Ratse built circular castle of the 11th century back. The first documentary mention took place in 1062, when the complex went to Duke Ordulf from the tribe of Billunger in the course of the Christianization of the Slavic area . After violent clashes, the ownership structure between the Wends and Christians changed several times in the following decades. From 1093 the Slavic tribes in the region were finally defeated and Ratzeburg passed into Saxon possession. Under Heinrich von Badenide , the Slavic hill fort was expanded into a stone fortress and for a short time was the center of the County of Ratzeburg . After the end of 1227, Ratzeburg went as a fief to the Askanians , who founded the Duchy of Saxony-Lauenburg .
The Ratzeburg served together with the Lauenburg Castle as the residence of the duchy. In the following centuries it was gradually expanded and converted into a fortified castle. Since the late Middle Ages, it has been a fortified complex, which has been expanded from numerous individual buildings to form a large aristocratic seat surrounded by walls, moats and palisades ; similar to the Schwerin Castle, which also emerged from a Slavic ring castle . After the Lauenburg Castle was destroyed in 1656, the Ratzeburg Castle was the only remaining larger residence of the duchy. Among other things, it was the birthplace of Franziska Sibylla Augusta von Sachsen-Lauenburg . In the course of the Thirty Years' War the Ascanians came to the Schlackenwerth dominion in Bohemia and from then on resided mainly outside the duchy. The castle there was built and equipped with great effort, while the buildings in the ancestral land to the north were neglected. After the Ascanians died out, the duchy fell to the principality of Lüneburg . Ratzeburg was now surrounded by a modern belt of fortifications, for the construction of which the castle was largely abandoned from 1690. The fortress on the edge of the Danish sphere of influence aroused the displeasure of the Danish King Christian V , who had Ratzeburg almost completely destroyed in 1693 by a bombardment lasting several days. The remains of the castle also fell victim to the shelling. The city was rebuilt until the 18th century, but since the ducal house no longer needed a permanent residence in Ratzeburg, no new construction of the castle was attempted.
present
There are hardly any traces left of the castle today, although some remains of the foundation have survived in the ground. The former location of the castle is still called the castle meadow , where the dimensions of one of the earlier towers are marked in the ground. Although the actual Ratzeburg Castle has been destroyed for centuries, there is another castle-like building in the cathedral district with the mansion of the Dukes of Mecklenburg , which was built in the middle of the 18th century as a secondary residence of the Dukes of Mecklenburg-Strelitz in their Ratzeburg exclave. This building now houses the district museum, in which, among other things, the history of the city of Ratzeburg and its destroyed castle is explained.
literature
- Hans Maresch, Doris Maresch: Schleswig-Holstein's castles, manors and palaces. Husum Verlag, Husum 2006, ISBN 3-89876-278-5 .
- Carsten Porskrog Rasmussen, Elke Imberger, Dieter Lohmeier , Ingwer Momsen (ed.): The princes of the country. Dukes and Counts of Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2008, ISBN 978-3-529-02606-5 .
Web links
- Reconstruction drawing by Wolfgang Braun
Coordinates: 53 ° 41 ′ 58.8 ″ N , 10 ° 45 ′ 55.6 ″ E