Burgscheidungen Castle
The Burgscheidungen Castle is a baroque palace in the same place in the Burgenlandkreis in Saxony-Anhalt . The complex, high above the Unstrut , goes back to a castle that was probably founded in the 8th century. The castle and the castle garden are now part of the Garden Dreams Saxony-Anhalt project .
history
Settlement in prehistory and early history
The castle hill towering over the place and the Unstrut was already settled in the Neolithic .
Alleged castle or royal seat of the Thuringian Empire in the 6th century
The Saxon historian Widukind von Corvey states in his history of Saxony from the 960s that the Thuringians under their King Herminafried were annihilated by the Franks in a battle " in a castle called Scithingi, which lies over a river called Unstrut " been beaten. This location appears for the first time in the written sources, more than 400 years after the events. With the Decem libri historiarum written by Gregor von Tours in the late 6th century, an almost contemporary source is available about the fall of the Thuringian Kingdom . In this, the decisive battle, which took place in AD 531, is generally located on the Unstrut without any further information. Widukind probably wanted to localize this information more precisely and brought this news into connection with an important and undoubtedly known castle on the Unstrut. For over 1000 years, this information has been updated and has become almost historical certainty. It was not until the second half of the 20th century that modern historians and especially archeology began to doubt the location of the battle at Widukind. During archaeological excavations on the castle hill by the State Museum for Prehistory in Halle (Saale) under the direction of Berthold Schmidt between 1960 and 1962, no finds and findings dating back to the Merovingian period were found. There are also no grave fields expected for such a center with rich grave equipment in the surrounding area. Even if there is hardly any knowledge about the location and shape of the royal seats of the Thuringians from Central Germany, the existence of such a royal court on or near the castle hill is very unlikely.
The castle in the Carolingian era
In a register of the tithe of the Hersfeld monastery , which was created between 881 and 899 , divorces were mentioned in a document as the place of Scidinge im Friesenfeld, which is subject to a tithing obligation . The place name was also taken from the Scidingeburg , the predecessor of the high and late medieval castle and today's palace. Except for parts of one in the 8th / 9th The ditch dated to the 17th century, which was cut during the excavations in the 1960s, has so far not been known to have any structural remains of the Carolingian castle.
The castle is owned by the Bamberg diocese
In 1043, Emperor Heinrich III. she gave his wife Agnes von Poitou the estate Scheidingen, which had fallen to him under inheritance law, as a morning gift . In 1069 this in turn donated the castle divorces to the diocese of Bamberg , which from then until 1803 continued to enfeoff various noble families as overlord .
From 1128 to 1667, the von Scheidingen ministerial family of the same name , which belonged to the honorable team of the castle, had their headquarters there. The preserved Renaissance building fabric dates from this time.
Castle divisions among the von Hoym family
In 1612 and 1625, the von Hoym brothers received their claim to castle divisions from Prince Johann Georg and Christian I von Anhalt, respectively, which had been granted in 1598, and in 1629, after the previous owners of Wiehe had died out, together with those of Wuthenau and representatives of the Schilling family, they actually received castle divisions enfeoffed. After the von Hoym brothers had contractually agreed with the co-owners Wuthenau and Schilling on the transfer of their shares, they were enfeoffed on January 26, 1630 by Prince Christian von Anhalt-Bernburg with castle divisions.
In 1699, the 19-year-old Braunschweig lady-in-waiting Anna Constantia von Brockdorff came to Burgscheidungen as the future wife of Adolph Magnus von Hoym . After prolonged bridal registry the marriage took place 1,703th Adolf Magnus von Hoym's marriage to Anna Constantia was not a happy one. In January 1705, Adolph Magnus was forced to consent to a divorce and so the marriage was divorced on August 8, 1705. The King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, August "the Strong" or August II (Poland) , chose her as mistress and later obtained her elevation from the emperor to the status of Countess Cosel as Countess Anna Constantia von Cosel .
The baroque renovation under the von der Schulenburg family
After an eventful history and different owners, Burgscheidungen passed to the von der Schulenburg family in 1722 , who then had the castle redesigned into a baroque palace by the Leipzig master builder David Schatz between 1724 and 1729 . Schatz was a student of the master builder Pöppelmann , who brought the Dresden Baroque to Leipzig. The internal and external expansion was not completed until 1732. The castle park, laid out like a terrace by Schatz, which is delimited by a small canal, also dates from this period. Burgscheidungen remained in the possession of the von der Schulenburg family until 1945.
From 1760 to 1761, the Leipzig court master and later chief tax collector, Christian Felix Weisse , who was a close friend of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing , Christian Fürchtegott Gellert , Conrad Ekhof and Gottlieb Wilhelm Rabener and became known as a poet and writer for young people , stayed from 1760 to 1761 as shareholders of the Count von der Schulenburg was. During his stay at Burgscheidungen, the tragedies "Crispus", "Mustapha and Zeangir" and "Rosamunde" were created; the comedies “The Housekeeper”, “The Mistrustful Against Himself” and the “New School for Women” as well as a translation of Tireus and the “Amazon songs” (1760).
The castle after the Second World War, in the GDR and after the fall of the Wall
The von der Schulenburg family were expropriated in autumn 1945 as a result of the land reform . Burgscheidungen Castle was left to the FDGB as a rest home in 1946 . From December 1950 it was used as a training facility for pioneer leaders, from 1951 under the name " Ernst Thälmann " as a state school for pioneer leaders of the FDJ . Later, the castle also served as a special school of the Central Council of the FDJ for foreign students.
From 1955 to 1990 the central training center " Otto Nuschke " of the CDU of the GDR was located in the castle .
In 1972 a memorial plaque created by the sculptor Bruno Kubas was placed in the courtyard for all Christians who had been victims of the Nazi dictatorship . The bronze plaque was removed by the Treuhandanstalt after 1990 , as was the traditional room inside the castle, which was dedicated to the same topic.
The castle today
The castle has been privately owned again since 2008. Since then, a café, overnight accommodation, a medieval fountain bar and a castle kitchen with an open fire have been built. Weddings and other celebrations take place regularly in the various magnificent halls of the castle. The castle served as a backdrop for the German comedy Der Nanny , which appeared in 2015 . Guided tours of the castle are offered on weekends.
The AfD group Der Flügel , classified as folk and nationalistic, held their so-called Kyffhäuser meeting at the castle in 2018.
literature
- Hermann Großler : Prehistoric graves and finds in the district of Burgscheidungen a. U. , in: Annual Journal for Central German Prehistory, 1899–1903
- Alfred Götze , Paul Höfer , Paul Zschiesche: The prehistoric antiquities of Thuringia , Curt Kabitzsch (A. Stubers Verlag), Würzburg 1909, page 58 ff ( online ).
- Paul Höfer: The Saxon Legends of the Thuringian-Franconian War 531 AD In: Journal of the Association for Thuringian History and Archeology, 1907, pp. 1-80
- Paul Höfer: Against old and new legends , in: Journal of the Association for Thuringian History and Archeology, 1909, pp. 276-316
- Wilhelm Pelka: Studies on the history of the fall of the old Thuringian Kingdom in AD 531 , dissertation, Gustav Fischer Verlag, Jena 1903
- Georg Schmidt : Burgscheidungen , printed as a manuscript in 1894, re-published by Max Niemeyer, Halle 1900
- Hermann Wäscher, Karl-Heinz Kukla: Castles on the lower course of the Unstrut: Castle divisions, State Museum Schloss Neuenburg, 1963
- Michael Erbe: Castle and Park Burgscheidungen in Unstruttal. Edited by Hans Berger, Union Verlag, Berlin 1975
- Harald Schreiber : Burgscheidungen - Small art-historical guide. VOB Eichsfelddruck, Heiligenstadt 1975
- Rüdiger Bier: 1500 years of history and stories of the manorial seats for church and castle divisions. Self-published, Rittergut Kirchscheidungen 2009
Web links
- Website of Schloss Burgscheidungen Betriebs GmbH
- Burgscheidungen Castle in the Wildenfels Castle Archives
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/bsb00000870/images/index.html?id=00000870&nativeno=421
- ↑ Ad Onestrudem fluvium http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/bsb00000747/images/index.html?id=00000747&nativeno=104
- ↑ See for example Hansjürgen Brachmann : The early medieval fortifications in Central Europe. Studies on its development and function in the Germanic-German area (writings on prehistory and early history 45), Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-05-001995-6 , on this p. 40 note 16; Heiko Steuer: ... In: Helmut Castritius, Dieter Geuenich and Matthias Werner (Hrsg.): The early days of the Thuringians. Archeology, language, history (Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde. Supplementary volumes 63), Verlag Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, New York in print, ISBN 978-3-11-021454-3
Coordinates: 51 ° 14 ′ 46 ″ N , 11 ° 38 ′ 19 ″ E