Calbe Castle (Saale)
The Calbe Castle was a fortification and secondary residence of the Magdeburg archbishops in the city of Calbe (Saale) . For a time it was an important center of power in central Germany .
prehistory
965 of the old one was royal Calbe by gifting Kaiser I. Otto's in the possession of the Magdeburg Moritz pin passed. After the establishment of the monastery in 968 as an archbishopric , the archbishops (and Protestant administrators) were frequently present in Calbe for 612 years . This happened not only because of the “lovely landscape”, but primarily because of the increasingly violent emancipating Magdeburg citizens who were often at war with their masters. At the end of the 13th century, the old "Curia" no longer met the sovereign claims. In addition, the city had literally grown around the archbishopric and enclosed it.
Establishment of the castle fortress Calbe
After he no longer felt safe in his main residence in Magdeburg , Archbishop Burchard III. between 1314 and 1322 started against the will of the citizens to build a new "permanent Curia" in the northeast of Calbe.
The expansion of the new fortress did not take place after the murder of Burkhard. The beginnings of a castle fortress of the hated regent quickly fell into disrepair with active tutoring from the citizens. In 1364 Archbishop Dietrich von Portitz had the fortifications resumed. This time the residents of Calbe had nothing against it, as Dietrich did a lot for the development of the late medieval Calbe in his short reign . The castle consisted of an east, a south and a north wing. It became a landmark of Calbe and a popular place of residence for the sovereigns.
The castle-fortress served them as a
- second and summer residence ,
- Vanishing point in the event of rampant epidemics , because the air of Calbe has been particularly healthy since the city had survived the " Black Death " in the middle of the 14th century almost without victims,
- Stopover when traveling to Halle ,
- Place for negotiations with the Ascanian and Saxon regents, whose possessions were very close here
- Conference venue for the estates
and finally as
- Refuge in times of political crisis, especially when the Magdeburg or Halle residents became insurgent.
The Moritz-Schloss Calbe as a place of government, conference and refuge
Like the archbishopric " Moritzburg " in Halle , the Calbe Castle was consecrated to the patron saint of the Archdiocese of Magdeburg, Saint Mauritius (Moritz). In 1382 the building was not yet finished, as the merry Archbishop Ludwig von Meißen had to celebrate his Carnival in the town hall , where he fell to his death.
In 1414 the notorious rebellious robber baron Hans von Quitzow was imprisoned in the Calbe castle fortress. After two years he made his peace with the Elector Friedrich I von Hohenzollern and was able to return to Prignitz.
In the course of time the castle had become an impressive, magnificent building with walls, moats, towers and many Gothic oriels . In the 16th century, the palace was expanded with the addition of the west wing to a Renaissance square building with a square inner courtyard and seven defense towers .
There were two upper floors above the ground floor and two attics above. In the northeast corner of the building was the palace chapel , which served as a church for Huguenot immigrants in the 18th century . During the expansion of the regional principalities, the state parliaments of the Archdiocese of Magdeburg took place more and more frequently in Moritz-Schloss Calbe , because Calbe appeared less prone to revolts than Magdeburg.
The most powerful man in the empire at the time, Albrecht IV of Hohenzollern, Archbishop of Mainz and Magdeburg, sought refuge in this fortified castle during the Peasants' War . Before that, he had received letters from Martin Luther in 1517 and 1520 with the 95 theses and the humble and pleading request to abandon the indulgence practices, to which the prince reacted harshly. When a revolt broke out in Calbe in 1524, Albrecht hurriedly moved to the newly built Moritzburg in Halle.
After the state parliament in January 1541 in Moritz Castle Calbe and Albrecht's flight to Mainz, all dams broke, and on June 11, 1542 (the Sunday after Corpus Christi) the first Protestant service took place in St. Stephen's Church in Calbe .
In 1556, the next important state parliament for the state of Magdeburg took place in Calber Castle, where the decision was made to carry out the Reformation in the entire region and to secularize the church property . The former Catholic archbishops became Protestant administrators of the Magdeburg region in 1566 through a conversion of faith .
During the Thirty Years' War , the castle was conquered by Tilly's soldiers in 1625 . But especially after the storming by two regiments of the imperial family under Johann von Viermund in September 1630, the building was badly damaged, even in the castle church there were bloody slaughter.
In September 1646, when the war roller had moved away from Calbe, administrator August von Sachsen-Weißenfels celebrated his engagement to Anna Maria von Mecklenburg-Schwerin in Castle Calbe , to whose festive musical accompaniment Heinrich Schütz contributed as a guest.
Calbe Castle as the Prussian administrative seat
When the Magdeburg region became part of Prussia in 1680 , the castle ceased to be a center of political power. The first Brandenburg-Prussian sovereigns and kings visited “Castle and Feste Calbe” several times, including at homage celebrations.
Here now sat as manager of the rural district office to Calbe the Oberamt men in long lease . One of them employed the important early enlightenment , philosophy and linguistic historian Jacob Friedrich Reimmann as private tutor in 1690 and 1691 .
The palace building itself was given an increasingly simple exterior, the baroque decorations disappeared for reasons of economy. What was left was an unadorned square.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, the castle, in which the bourgeois tenants lived, had become the center of an extensive domain complex with agricultural factories .
The end
In the last days of the Second World War , the castle was damaged by fire and in 1951, despite protests from the population and experts, it was completely demolished to make way for a school. Some memorial stones from the castle courtyard could be saved. The Friedrich-Schiller-Gymnasium Calbe now stands where the castle used to be.
swell
- Adolf Reccius: Chronicle of the homeland (documented news about the history of the district town of Calbe and its immediate surroundings). Calbe / Saale 1936.
literature
- Gustav Hertel: History of the city of Calbe on the Saale. Berlin / Leipzig 1904.
- Gotthelf Moritz Rocke: History and description of the town of Calbe on the Saale. 1874.
- Dieter H. Steinmetz: In search of historical traces - a city tour in Calbe an der Saale. (see web link).
- The same, from the royal court Caluo 936 to the district town of Calbe 1919 - history of a central German city from the beginnings to the foundation of the Weimar Republic, Magdeburg / Calbe / S. 2010.
Web links
Coordinates: 51 ° 54 ′ 20.2 " N , 11 ° 46 ′ 46.4" E