Bran Castle

Bran Castle
	Bran Castle
Alternative name (s):	Bran Castle
Creation time :	13th Century
Conservation status:	receive
Place:	Bran
Geographical location	45 ° 30 '54.2 " N , 25 ° 22' 2" E Coordinates: 45 ° 30 '54.2 " N , 25 ° 22' 2" E
Height:	770 m

Bran Castle (also Törzburg , Romanian Castelul Bran , Hungarian Törcsvár ) is located in Bran in the Transylvania region in Romania .

The castle is presented to tourists as Dracula's Castle , although it only closely resembles its description from Bram Stoker's novel Dracula . The historical role model of the fictional character, the Wallachian prince Vlad III. Drăculea , probably never entered the castle.

Geographical location

Bran Castle is located on the so-called Dietrichstein rock , east of the Piatra Craiului Mountains , on a pass road between Transylvania and Great Wallachia - Drum național 73 - about 30 kilometers southwest of the district capital Brașov (Kronstadt) .

history

Teutonic Knights Castle

In 1211 gave King Andrew II of Hungary. The Burzenland the Teutonic Order , including the right to build there castles - only of wood, then later of stone. The order then built castles at five strategically important places, of which only the Marienburg (Romanian Cetatea Feldioara ) can be clearly identified. There is an opinion, based on several later documents, that the castle of Dietrichstein stood on the site of the later Törzburg at the time of the German Knights, probably named after a commander named Dietrich ( Latin Theodericus ). This castle was destroyed by the Mongols in 1242 .

Border castle of the Kronstadt Saxons

The place Törzburg was first mentioned in a document in 1357. On November 19, 1377, the Hungarian King Ludwig the Great allowed the residents of Kronstadt to build a border and customs castle on the Dietrichstein on the Königstein mountain , which was named after the place.

Törzburg remained under Hungarian rule until 1427. The castle was first besieged by the Turks in 1436. In 1498 it came into the possession of Kronstadt and in 1529 successfully survived a siege by Wallachian troops. In 1593, self-ignited gunpowder destroyed the powder tower. Two years later, the Transylvanian Prince Sigismund Báthory marched through Törzburg with an army of 40,000 men to help Michael the Brave , the voivode of Wallachia , against the Turks. Another unsuccessful siege of Bran Castle occurred in 1600 by Nicolae Pătraşcu , Michael's son. In 1612 the castle was handed over to Prince Gabriel Báthory without a fight , and in 1660 it was conquered by General Mikes Mihaly. In 1789 the Törzburg was besieged for the third time without success by a 5,000-strong Turkish army.

Their importance declined in the 19th century. In 1916 Romanian troops invaded Transylvania and captured the Bran Castle.

Royal residence (1920–1947)

After Transylvania was annexed to Romania , Kronstadt gave the castle to Queen Maria , the wife of King Ferdinand I , on December 1, 1920 , whose daughter, Princess Ileana , finally inherited it.

Museum in Communism and After

After the Second World War , Romania became communist and the state took over Bran Castle. Under President Nicolae Ceaușescu , it was expanded into a tourist attraction, which today still attracts around 560,000 visitors a year.

On May 26, 2006 the palace was returned to Dominic von Habsburg , his sisters Maria Magdalena and Elisabeth, and the heirs of Princess Ileana and her husband Anton Habsburg-Lothringen . Dominic Habsburg offered the Bran Castle to the Romanian state for 80 million US dollars. Since he turned down the offer, the new owners opened the Törzburg as a museum on June 1, 2009. Objects and furniture belonging to the Habsburg family are exhibited there, including a crown, a scepter and a silver dagger from King Ferdinand. A luxury apartment is rented out for overnight stays in the castle tower. The Ministry of Culture moved the original exhibits of the castle from its time in state ownership to a new museum in the neighboring customs house on the former border between Austria-Hungary and Romania.

Several times, including in mid-2014, the media reported that the castle was for sale. According to a representative of the castle, however, these reports are false and the castle is not for sale.

The castle, the “tea house” (Casa de Ceai) , as well as the associated open-air museum (Secția Etnografică Bran) and the former customs house are under monument protection.

Pictures, courtyard and rooms

Web links

Commons : Bran Castle - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Official website (English / Romanian)
Detailed article in the online lexicon on the culture and history of Germans in south-eastern Europe by Thomas Schares
Information and historical data on Bran Castle ( Memento from September 21, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
A matter of blood (article from the time )
Dracula Bran Castle (article from the star)
Virtual 360 Degree Tour of Bran Castle (Flash)

Individual evidence

↑ Is it true that Count Dracula lived in the famous Dracula's castle Bran in Transylvania? ( Memento from March 17, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
↑ Heinz Heltmann, Gustav Servatius (Ed.): Travel Guide Siebenbürgen . Kraft, Würzburg 1993, ISBN 3-8083-2019-2 , p. 517 .
↑ Harald Zimmermann: 800 years of the German Order in Burzenland. Association of the Transylvanian Saxony in Germany eV, January 11, 2011, accessed on May 25, 2019 .
↑ Harald Zimmermann (ed.): The German Order in Transylvania: a diplomatic investigation . Böhlau, Cologne; Weimar; Vienna 2011, ISBN 978-3-412-20653-6 , pp. 246 .
↑ Gabriel Adriányi, "On the History of the Teutonic Knight Order in Transylvania", pp. 9–22, in Hungary Yearbook. Magazine for the customers of Hungary and related areas , published by Georg Stadtmüller, editor Horst Glassl, volume 3, born in 1971, Hase & Koehler Verlag Mainz. Quote: After ten years, before May 7, 1222, a completely new donation to the Order was necessary. [...] In the first part of the new deed of donation, the text of the donations from 1211 and 1212 was repeated almost verbatim, [...]. The first privileges were the old ones, only the permission to build wooden castles and cities against the Cumans was changed to stone castles and cities ... (pp. 14-15). Accessed May 25, 2019 (as PDF. URL cannot be copied at the moment).
↑ ^a ^b Bernd Brzezinsky: Ordensburg Marienburg (Cetatea Feldioara). burgen-im-ordensland.de, accessed on May 25, 2019 .
↑ ^a ^b Friedrich Maurer: The occupation of Transylvania by the nations now inhabiting the country , BoD - Books on Demand, 2015, reprint of the original from 1875. ISBN 978-3-73400-560-2 , p. 136.
↑ Burgenwelt.org: History of Bran Castle, accessed on August 2, 2017
^ Daily newspaper Allgemeine Deutsche Zeitung für Romania , Bucharest, June 3, 2009, p. 1: Törzburg Castle reopened as a museum
↑ Christopher Middleton: Buy a stake in Dracula's castle. In: The Daily Telegraph . May 11, 2014, accessed August 29, 2015 .
^ David Barnett: Count Dracula's medieval mountain-top fortress not for sale owners say. In: express.co.uk. March 14, 2016, accessed August 20, 2017 .
↑ List of historical monuments of the Romanian Ministry of Culture, updated 2015 (PDF; 12.7 MB; Romanian).

[1] Is it true that Count Dracula lived in the famous Dracula's castle Bran in Transylvania? ( Memento from March 17, 2010 in the Internet Archive )

[2] Heinz Heltmann, Gustav Servatius (Ed.): Travel Guide Siebenbürgen . Kraft, Würzburg 1993, ISBN 3-8083-2019-2 , p. 517 .

[DrDr-3] Harald Zimmermann: 800 years of the German Order in Burzenland. Association of the Transylvanian Saxony in Germany eV, January 11, 2011, accessed on May 25, 2019 .

[4] Harald Zimmermann (ed.): The German Order in Transylvania: a diplomatic investigation . Böhlau, Cologne; Weimar; Vienna 2011, ISBN 978-3-412-20653-6 , pp. 246 .

[Adriányi71-5] Gabriel Adriányi, "On the History of the Teutonic Knight Order in Transylvania", pp. 9–22, in Hungary Yearbook. Magazine for the customers of Hungary and related areas , published by Georg Stadtmüller, editor Horst Glassl, volume 3, born in 1971, Hase & Koehler Verlag Mainz. Quote: After ten years, before May 7, 1222, a completely new donation to the Order was necessary. [...] In the first part of the new deed of donation, the text of the donations from 1211 and 1212 was repeated almost verbatim, [...]. The first privileges were the old ones, only the permission to build wooden castles and cities against the Cumans was changed to stone castles and cities ... (pp. 14-15). Accessed May 25, 2019 (as PDF. URL cannot be copied at the moment).

[Ordensland-6] Bernd Brzezinsky: Ordensburg Marienburg (Cetatea Feldioara). burgen-im-ordensland.de, accessed on May 25, 2019 .

[Maurer1875-7] Friedrich Maurer: The occupation of Transylvania by the nations now inhabiting the country , BoD - Books on Demand, 2015, reprint of the original from 1875. ISBN 978-3-73400-560-2 , p. 136.

[8] Burgenwelt.org: History of Bran Castle, accessed on August 2, 2017

[9] Daily newspaper Allgemeine Deutsche Zeitung für Romania , Bucharest, June 3, 2009, p. 1: Törzburg Castle reopened as a museum

[10] Christopher Middleton: Buy a stake in Dracula's castle. In: The Daily Telegraph . May 11, 2014, accessed August 29, 2015 .

[11] David Barnett: Count Dracula's medieval mountain-top fortress not for sale owners say. In: express.co.uk. March 14, 2016, accessed August 20, 2017 .

[12] List of historical monuments of the Romanian Ministry of Culture, updated 2015 (PDF; 12.7 MB; Romanian).