Rosenthaler residential tower
The Rosenthaler residential tower was a residential tower near the Anger of today's Berlin district of Rosenthal , which came from the second half of the 13th century. The remains of the field stone foundations discovered in 1998 east of the Rosenthaler Dorfkirche were declared a ground monument in 2012 .
History of the property
Little is known about the time when the medieval village of Rosenthal was founded. In 1356 the place was first mentioned as Rosendalle . In the land book of Charles IV of 1375 the exact ownership structure was listed. The most important rights in Rosenthal owned the von Krummensee family , such as part of the lease, the Bede , the carriage service and the high jurisdiction. These rights were confirmed to the family in 1416 and in the Landschossregister of 1451. The Niederadel seat in Rosenthal, which was forgotten until 1998 , is therefore attributed to the von Krummensee family, who have lived here for a long time. In 1547 the castle passed to Michel Happe von Hapberg. He created the foundations for a manor by buying it out . In 1567, Elector Joachim II acquired the village and manor for his lover Anna Sydow . In 1574 the castle was withdrawn and handed over to the von der Gröben family . After that it had different owners. From 1694 the castle was regal again , that is, owned by the Hohenzollern and assigned to the Niederschönhausen Domain Office . King Friedrich I had a small pleasure palace and a park built on the grounds of the estate. A floor plan on a map from 1707 and a drawing by Jean Baptiste Broebes from the period between 1701 and 1710, which was published in 1737, have been preserved of this complex . Both representations differ greatly from one another. Archaeological excavations suggested that the map from 1707 was just a draft. A description of the castle from 1754 describes it as completely disintegrated. On a map from 1780, the palace and garden have disappeared. The area was then used as a manor with changing buildings. After 1990 everything was demolished except for three listed buildings from the 19th century.
Excavations 1998
In 1998 the housing company Gewobag, as the property owner, commissioned archaeological investigations, as they had submitted a building application for a residential park for the entire property.
During the excavations from April 14th to August 28th, 1998, numerous remains of the castle's foundations were documented. Two thirds of the 20,000 square meter site were not archaeologically relevant, as the area up to the construction of the north trench was a damp lowland that was not considered to be buildable. The excavation was limited to the immediate courtyard area in front of the former farm workers' barracks and the area from the manor house to the northern border of the property. With the remains of a cellar, traces of medieval settlement were also found. A square beam construction was paneled with split planks and partly covered with wooden floorboards. The remaining wooden parts were charred and thus well preserved. A dendrochronological investigation revealed the felling date 1230. This means that the cellar was probably one of the first houses that German immigrants built in the area that was then settled by Slavs .
Only a few meters away, the 5 × 5 meter stone foundation of a residential tower was discovered. The wall thickness varied between 80 and 100 cm. The up to 70 cm thick field stones on the inside were hewn and smoothed. The only binding agent used was clay. The southern part of the foundation was destroyed by a splinter trench (trench in a zigzag shape ) built in the Second World War . About two meters from the foundation of the residential tower was another field stone foundation that was originally connected to the cellar. The missing piece was removed when a sewer pipe was laid. From this extension, probably the rest of the stair tower, an entrance leads to the cellar. Numerous remnants of utensils and oven ceramics, iron objects, animal bones and other field stones that were formerly part of the foundation were recovered from the filling. This finding points to a residential tower that served as a residence for a nobleman. The pottery found in the excavation and the lower layers dated the tower to the second half of the 13th century. Since the grounds of the manor were considerably redesigned several times, there were hardly any traces of a fortification surrounding the tower. Only about ten meters of wattle fence and remains of a field stone wall were detected. The end of the tower could be determined with some certainty: The ceramics found in the uppermost layers came from the end of the 17th century, from which it was concluded that the demolition of the building and the paving of the still visible remains in connection with the construction of the castle were around 1690 stood. It could not be determined whether the tower was used exclusively as an apartment in its almost four hundred years of existence. In any case, it was rebuilt or repaired several times. For example, the cellar entrance was probably walled up in the 14th or 15th century, and there was ceramic from the 16th century in the masonry that was used for repairs here.
Designation as a ground monument
The Gewobag building project, for which the archaeological investigations were commissioned, was ultimately not implemented. Gewobag sold the property to the construction and real estate company NCC . This planned row and semi-detached houses. However, NCC was also interested in depicting Rosenthal's medieval history. Therefore, the field stone foundation was exposed, restored and made generally accessible. NCC also had an information board set up. On November 28, 2012 at 10 a.m. the ground monument was opened by the District Councilor for Urban Development Jens-Holger Kirchner together with representatives of the construction and real estate company NCC Deutschland GmbH, the Lower Monument Protection Authority and the Dorf Rosenthal e. V. inaugurated. The access to the ground monument is located between the properties at Hauptstrasse 145 D and 145 C.
Comparable systems
In contrast to defense towers, residential towers were less intended for defense. This early form of the skyscraper rather showed the superior social position of the owner compared to the other villagers. In Rosenthal, a two-story half-timbered building was erected on a five by five meter foundation in the vicinity of other buildings. The Rosenthaler residential tower is the only find of its kind in the region that has been preserved. In the 1960s and 1970s, a further tower in Berlin-Mariendorf and a 100 years younger tower in Berlin-Tempelhof were found. Their remains were removed in the course of construction work. In the Brandenburg area, excavations in former medieval villages have so far not resulted in such a find.
literature
- Uwe Michas: Leveled after four hundred years - Former noble residence in the residential tower of Berlin Rosenthal . In: Yearbook of the Archaeological Society Berlin-Brandenburg 1998 . Stuttgart 1999, p. 104-105 .
- Uwe Michas: Medieval and Baroque findings on the former Gutshof Berlin-Rosenthal . In: Jörg Haspel, Wilfried Menghin (Ed.): Miscellanea Archaeologica - Festgabe for Adriaan von Müller on his 70th birthday - Contributions to the preservation of monuments in Berlin . Special tape. Berlin 2000, p. 102-112 .
- Uwe Michas: Three field stone cellars in Berlin . In: Jörg Haspel, Wilfried Menghin (Hrsg.): Miscellanea Archaeologica - Festgabe for Heinz Seyer on his 65th birthday - Contributions to the preservation of monuments in Berlin . Special tape. Berlin 2005, p. 102-112 .
- Uwe Michas: Friedrich I. and Rosenthal Castle . In: The Mark Brandenburg . No. 39 . The Mark Brandenburg. Publishing house for regional and contemporary history, 2000, ISSN 0939-3676 , p. 8-12 .
- Ines Elsner: Friedrich III./I. of Brandenburg-Prussia (1688–1713) and the Berlin Residence Landscape: Studies on an Early Modern Court on Travel - A Residence Handbook . Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-8305-3142-5 , pp. 375 ff .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Archaeological sensation in Rosenthal . In: Berliner Zeitung , September 25, 1998
- ↑ a b Uwe Michas: Excavations in Rosenthal . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 4, 1999, ISSN 0944-5560 , p. 51-56 ( luise-berlin.de ).
- ↑ Werner Heegewaldt, Mathis Leibetseder: Shaped landscape. Archival sources on castles, mansions and gardens in the state of Brandenburg . Ed .: Brandenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv. be.bra Wissenschaft verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 978-3-937233-13-0 , p. No. 4105 .
- ↑ Bernd Wähner: The nobility drew attention to themselves with a residential tower. In: berliner-woche.de. December 6, 2010, accessed October 7, 2017 .
- ^ Michael Springer: Current newspaper for the Pankow district. In: pankower-allgemeine-zeitung.de. November 25, 2012, accessed October 8, 2017 .
Coordinates: 52 ° 35 '57.35 " N , 13 ° 22' 43.46" O