Annenberg Castle

Annenberg Castle
Annenberg Castle
Alternative name (s):	Annaberg
Creation time :	13th Century
Castle type :	Hilltop castle
Conservation status:	Mostly preserved
Standing position :	Noble Free
Construction:	Curtain wall
Place:	Laces
Geographical location	46 ° 37 '49.1 "  N , 10 ° 50' 21.5"  E Coordinates: 46 ° 37 '49.1 "  N , 10 ° 50' 21.5"  E
Height:	1039  m slm

Tony Grubhofer : Annaberg (around 1899)

The fortified Annenberg Castle (occasionally also Annaberg Castle ) is a castle-like castle in Latsch in South Tyrol . It is 1,039 meters at the Sonnenberg above the fraction Goldenrain belonging Weiler Tiss, but belongs to the cadastral St. Martin am Vorberg.

There is evidence that the castle stands on a prehistoric settlement site.

description

It is a hill fortress that was built on a rock cone and consists of the core area, the surrounding wall and the St. Anna chapel outside.

The core consists of a three-storey building ( Palas ) in the form of a rectangle. Its north-facing side (towards the mountain slope) is broken or sloped at the north-west corner and merges into the adjoining two-story semicircular building. At the southeast corner there is a stair tower that resembles a keep . The free area between the semicircular structure and the tower is enclosed by a crenellated wall. Access is from the east side through the curtain wall south around the building to the door in the west side of the main building. The buildings of this ensemble are plastered with gray mortar .

The rock cone with the buildings is surrounded a little deeper by a square circular wall that is equipped with notches. At each corner there is a three-quarter circle tower, three of which (southwest, northwest, northeast) were equipped as medieval wall towers with wooden intermediate floors and have wall notches and, in some cases , mouth notches. The south-eastern tower is designed as a special feature of a battery tower, it is filled with earth and has a regular crenellated crown . The gate in the curtain wall is relatively small and not protected by a drawbridge. From the northeast corner tower, the curtain wall collapsed to the west for two thirds of its length. The slope behind was secured against slipping by a concrete wall provided with anchors . A plaster made of lime mortar was applied to the ring wall, some of which is still there. The castle chapel dedicated to St. Anna stands on a plateau on the north side. The original choir stalls and the altar created by Sebastian Scheel in 1517 are now in the Tyrolean State Museum in Innsbruck . On the north flank of the rock cone was a building outside the wall ring, of which only remnants remain today. (Possibly security constructions of the entrance, which was otherwise unprotected.) The castle and the farm below are owned by the Manfred Fuchs family , entry is not possible.

history

In the 13th century (the exact date of construction is unknown, the building is first mentioned in 1252) the lords of Burgus-Wangen, an old, noble family from Burgeis , built a permanent residential tower here. There is no knowledge of the appearance or dimensions of this first construction. Presumably through the sale of all possessions belonging to those of Burgus-Wangen between the Töll and Laas , the castle came to Count Meinhard II of Tyrol in 1290 . This gave in 1295 Reeves of Matsch half the castle into fiefs . In 1315 (or 1318) belehnte King Henry the viscount on Castle Tyrol Heinrich Partschin (actually Heinrich from the tower of Merano and Partschins) from the family of Tolde Meran (the turn of the 1,165 mentioned Ernesten Anneberg and then in Conrad von Annenberg de Turi mentioned in 1270) with the other half of the castle under the condition to acquire the part of the Matscher bailiffs and then take them as a fiefdom. Heinrich von Partschins then settled in the castle and from then on called himself "von Annenberg" again. In 1327, Vogt Egno von Matsch lent his half of the castle to Heinrich von Annenberg, initially for eight years. By purchasing this part, the Annenberger later became the sole owner of the castle and had the dilapidated residential tower with a porch repaired in the first half of the 14th century. Heinrich von Annenberg died in 1362. His sons Heinrich, Konrad, Anton and Johann divided the inheritance, the Annenberg Castle fell to Anton von Annenberg. His son, also Anton von Annenberg, founded a library consisting of manuscripts and incunabula at the castle in 1470 . This consisted of around 250 books, which, however, were scattered to the wind after the Count Mohr died out. To date, only 29 volumes have been assigned to this library without any doubt.

At the turn of the 15th century to the 16th century, the castle was greatly expanded by the Lords of Annenberg and a curtain wall with four towers was built, also in response to the great devastation of the Swabian War . This curtain wall was probably the model for the similar wall around Goldrain Castle that was built around 1606 .

After the extinction of the Barons of Annenberg, the castle fell in 1695 to the Counts Mohr, who also owned by Obermontani Castle and Castle Untermontani and the castle Latsch were. Then the barons von Haussmann acquired the castle, which they owned until 1813. The decay began as early as the end of the 17th century. This increased after the building had passed from the hands of von Haussmann to rural property and the neglect had increased further. In the following years it was in the hands of several owners and more or less left to itself. This ultimately turned it into a ruin, the stair tower and roofs of which had collapsed.

Restoration measures only began in 1896 after the kuk Rittmeister Martin Stocker had acquired the castle. In 1910 the building was auctioned and so came into the hands of the kuk Hauptmann Schörger, who continued the work and in 1912 had the hall and the stair tower raised by one floor. At the same time, the hall was made habitable again.

In 1923 the building became the property of Paolo Drigo, from whose hands it passed in 1928 to the Counts Bensa (or Benza) from Genoa , who continued the maintenance work and Annenberg owned it until 1972. They then sold the castle to the veterinarian Karl-Heinz Politzar, after whose death it came to the Fuchs family in 2010.

literature

• Josef Weingartner : Tyrolean castles . Innsbruck 1962
• Oswald Trapp : Tiroler Burgenbuch. Volume I: Vinschgau . Publishing house Athesia, Bozen 1972, pp. 170–175.
• The Vinschger , issue 18/10 from May 12, 2010
• Market town of Latsch (Ed.): Latsch and its history Tappeiner, Lana o. J.

Web links

Commons : Schloss Annenberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Entry on Annenberg in the monument browser on the website of the South Tyrolean Monuments Office

Individual evidence

1. ↑ This designation is historically incorrect, as the owners can be proven to have called themselves "von Annenberg".
2. ^ Hannes Obermair : Bozen Süd - Bolzano Nord. Written form and documentary tradition of the city of Bozen up to 1500 . tape 1 . City of Bozen, Bozen 2005, ISBN 88-901870-0-X , p. 351, no.714 .
3. ^ Christian Lackner : Books for the nobility: Anton von Annenberg, a Tyrolean nobleman of the 15th century, and his library . In: Tiroler Heimat 69, 2005, pp. 105–119.