Colditz Castle

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Colditz Castle on the Zwickauer Mulde in July 2011
Colditz Castle - entrance to Colditz Castle with the alliance coat of arms of August and Anna in the direction of the Castle Bridge in October 2005

Colditz Castle is a Renaissance - castle in Colditz in Saxony Leipzig district . It gained international fame through its use as a prisoner-of-war camp for Allied officers during World War II . It is located between Hartha and Grimma in a spur above the Zwickauer Mulde , has one of the first zoos on today's German territory with its first mention in 1523 and has been part of the State Palaces, Castles and Gardens of Saxony (gGmbH) since 2003.

Building description

Ground plan of the complex, yellow early 16th century, red: 19th century, blue: around 1600

Large parts of the complex date from the early Renaissance (around 1520) with the inclusion of late Gothic elements. The complex was mainly built in two stages, the Gothic predecessor building in the form of a ring complex, which can still be seen today in the location and division of the buildings of the prince's court, and the decisive construction activity of the Renaissance complex under Elector Friedrich the Wise , which is visible today , with a bridge is connected to the city of Colditz .

Fürstenhof

Colditz Castle - back lock - oldest part in July 2011

The rear castle - the prince's court - is a closed building ensemble, consisting of cellars, churches, princes, kitchens and hall houses, which are grouped around an oval courtyard. The main entrance is through a Gothic gate, the so-called Whisper Arch, which allows passage between the former Zwinger and the rear courtyard.

The Wendelstein parapet on the second floor of the southern Fürstenhauswendelstein has a remarkable relief that was made around 1525. Thematically it belongs to a second relief on the parapet of the basement house spiral stone. Both show stylized women sitting on a throne and holding a vessel in their three-fingered hands. The female figure has wings on her back and her feet resemble plants. Behind the figure stands a soldier holding the old Wettiner coat of arms . In addition to the central figure, other figures can be seen. In the cellar house, two boys carry a snail-like vessel or animal. In the Princely House two boys wear something like a club. Next to the relief there is the inscription from Psalm 127 : 1  EU : NISI DOMINUS CUSTODI ERIT CIVITATEM ( If the Lord does not build the house, those who build it work for free ). The shape and craftsmanship of the reliefs are similar to those at Hartenfels Castle in Torgau and in Albrechtsburg Castle in Meißen.

Basement house

The exposed on the ground floor walls during excavation work are from the Roman construction and show the presence of a possible Palas on. After the hospital moved out in 1996, two superimposed painted ceilings were found during security work and dismantling of the modern economy formwork on the entire first floor. The earlier of the two was a clay peg ceiling from 1521 (painted by “Hans Jheger from altenburg and Caspar painter zu grym”) and a chessboard-like wooden coffered ceiling from around 1590 hung underneath. Frogs, birds, snails and hares are distributed on the tips of the cartouches.

  • Colditz Castle - the two superimposed ceilings (1521 and around 1590) from the 16th century in the cellar house - October 2005

  • Colditz Castle - ceiling detail (around 1590) in the Jagdstube Kellerhaus October 2005

  • Sandstone relief basement house Wendelstein (16th century)

House of Lords

Parts of the lower storeys of the Princely House date from around 1460. The slender bay window with the right-angled windows that are closely connected to one another and the ribbed vault on the second floor also date from this era. The building received its current height and shape around 1520 under Elector Friedrich the Wise , who set up his spacious living rooms here on the second floor with a view of the zoo and the inner courtyard and was designed by Lucas Cranach the Elder. Ä. let equip.

Castle chapel

Interior of the castle chapel (status May 2011)
Altarpiece (1584) in the palace chapel, now in the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg

The predecessor of the castle chapel was a Lady Chapel from the 12th century. Its Romanesque foundations, consisting of hall, choir and apse, were exposed in front of today's altar in autumn 2012. The Trinity Church, visible today and extending through three floors , was a rectangular room with two lofts , spanned by three cross vaults and built before 1420 , until the facility was used as a state institute . The church is accessed through the church gate made of Rochlitz porphyry tuff . The figural jewelry made of Elbe sandstone was removed around 1984. You could see Jesus Christ and the Arma Christi . The sculptures are currently being restored. The later furnishing of the church interior with three galleries came from the 19th century and was based on the requirements of the number of inmates of the state institution.

The altarpiece created for the palace chapel by Lucas Cranach the Younger and Wolfgang Schreckenfuchs was damaged in the Thirty Years' War , the heart-shaped central panel with the crucifixion of Christ is now in the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg . For the use of the chapel by the state institution, the altar was given an image of a kneeling sick person before Christ ( Christ at the Bethesda pond , around 1863).

Official House

Sophia von Brandenburg had the civil servants' house with the square gate built as a court pharmacy in 1603. Next to it is the aforementioned Gothic archway as access to the rear castle.

1. Gatehouse

The gatehouse facing the city dates back to the early 16th century with the garment and has an openwork stepped gable . The castle is accessed from here via a stone bridge, which was built in 1584.

Farm yard

The youngest part of the castle - today a youth hostel

On the farm yard, which ends in the east with a tall building from the 19th century that is now used as a youth hostel, one of the two stables for forty horses with several loose floors was set up in a south-facing direction from 1523. Above it was a tower that was used as a prison and a ditch in which the dogs trained for hunting were housed in stables.

Zoo

The oldest depiction of Colditz Castle on a painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder . It shows the castle around 1523 with its lost Renaissance gables

As early as 1523 there was a one-kilometer-long enclosed thirgarten directly adjoining Colditz Castle . This zoo was one of the early plants of its kind in Germany. The zoo was expanded twice by Elector Christian I in 1587 and 1591 and land was purchased for it. In the zoo, about 400 were Dam - and deer animals set which in a set hunting were shot. In 1591, master builder Hans Irmisch began building a pleasure house (finished in 1600 by David Uslaub ), which was surrounded by 20 managed ponds, water features and a kitchen building. Birds were caught at the so-called Vogelherd and crab breeding was carried out at the inlets and outlets of the ponds. In 1624 the zoo was enlarged by a third under Johann Georg I. After that, its dimensions were so huge that a local pastor counted it among the seven marvels of the country . From 1800 the zoo was converted into a state forest with the conversion of Colditz Castle as well as the Wermsdorfer Forst according to contemporary requirements of the royal Saxon forestry, which it is still today. The pleasure house had to be demolished a few years earlier because it was in disrepair.

history

1046-1803

After the first mention of the Burgward in 1046 in the deed of gift of the Burgwarde Colditz, Rochlitz and Leisnig by Emperor Heinrich III. to his wife Agnes von Poitou , the following Emperor Heinrich IV. presented his servant Wiprecht von Groitzsch with the Burgward in 1084 , who expanded the complex into a castle. Thimo I. von Colditz was elevated to the position of Reichsministerialien in 1158 by Emperor Barbarossa . Thus the castle belonged to the Reichsgut ( Pleißenland ). In 1309, when the fortress surrendered, Colditz Castle became the property of Margrave Friedrich the Free . In 1429 the castle was destroyed by the Hussites and rebuilt in 1464 by Elector Ernst , who died here in 1486 on his return journey from the Reichstag in Frankfurt am Main as a result of a hunting accident.

The builder Friedrich the Wise, painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder. Ä.

Colditz experienced its first heyday as a hunting lodge under the art-loving and world- experienced Saxon Elector Friedrich the Wise (1486–1525). After a city fire caused by the baker Clemens Bock in 1504, which devastated large parts of the city, the town hall, the church and the castle, the castle was rebuilt, extensively expanded and refurbished after 1506 and especially around 1520 in the style of the early Renaissance . The famous Electoral Saxon court painter Lucas Cranach the Elder worked here. Large parts of these buildings, v. a. in the Princely House, have been preserved up to the painting of the beamed ceilings and are to be restored in the coming years (probably from 2020). Around 1520, part of the forest near the castle was cut off and used as a zoo, a highly representative and elaborate complex that was comparable to Friedrich's buildings around Lochau Castle (today Annaburg) . Lucas Cranach the Elder used the castle as ingenious background scenery in his famous painting The Golden Age in 1523 .

In 1566, Elector August ordered further more homely changes to the castle, as he wanted to move into the castle himself, which did not begin until 1582. In 1583 Lucas Cranach the Younger was in Colditz to “grind six times” a large wild boar that had been killed by the Elector .

Sophie of Brandenburg around 1582

Colditz Castle experienced a second heyday under the Saxon Elector Christian I (1586–1591) and his wife Sophie von Brandenburg (1568–1622) . Between 1587 and 1590 the zoo was considerably expanded twice. The area of ​​the Zwinger directly below the castle building was also expanded into terraced pleasure gardens. After the death of her husband, Electress Sophie moved into her widow's residence in Colditz from 1602 to 1611 and continued the building work. A (still preserved) terraced vineyard with an elaborate staircase and grottoes was laid out opposite the castle in the north. In 1624 the zoo was last expanded by about a third to the east, now near the village of Zschirla.

Elector Friedrich August I of Saxony, known as August the Strong, who was also King of Poland as August II , was the last Saxon ruler to visit Colditz Castle with his hunting party. In 1787 the entire inventory was sold, and in 1800 most of the zoo was converted into a state forest.

1803-1829

In 1803 the castle became the workhouse of the Leipziger Kreis for up to 200 inmates, who were largely regarded as "innocent", that is, they weren't actually criminals, but rather belonged to the fringes of society and should be trained to work. Eleven officials and a preacher took care of them. In 1829, the Dresden commission for the procurement of general penal and care institutions, as part of a Saxony-wide restructuring of penal and lunatic asylums, made the decision to separate the incurable mentally ill, who had been housed in the former Waldheim breeding, orphanage and poor house , from the prisoners and to set up Colditz Castle for it.

1829-1933

In 1829 the prisoners were moved to the Zwickau breeding and workhouse and the castle became a state supply institution for the incurable mentally ill with up to 400 patients. Christian August Fürchtegott Hayner was the first director of the institution, who had also developed the novel concept including a garden that was used to relax the inmates . The most famous patient between 1871 and his death in 1899 was Ludwig Schumann, a son of Robert Schumann , who was deeply stupid . In 1864, instead of the stable and farm buildings in the front courtyard, a new hospital was built in the neo-renaissance style. In 1924 the state nursing home for the mentally ill was closed and thirty-five mentally weak people in particular need of security were brought to the closed psychiatry in Waldheim. Due to the Saxon Welfare Act of 1925, a so-called state correctional institution was set up in Colditz Castle from April 1926, incidentally the only one in all of Saxony. Seventy-two proofreaders from the Sachsenburg correctional facility and twenty correctors from the Dresden-Leuben district facility were housed . The inmates' violations of the law consisted of repeated begging or vagrancy , for which they had already been convicted several times. In Colditz, the rule was with the aim of educating work- shy and idlers to a regulated way of life through strict discipline and compulsory work . By 1930, the number of inmates rose to 320 people, who were relocated to the Bräunsdorf educational institution near Freiberg when the palace was converted by the National Socialists in 1933 . The most prominent inmate of this time was Elsa Asenijeff .

1933-1945

At the beginning of the National Socialist era, the Colditz concentration camp was used as a protective custody camp from March 21, 1933 to August 18, 1934 - around 600 system opponents such as Bruno Apitz , Carl Friedrich Goerdeler and Hermann Liebmann were imprisoned there. The prisoners were housed in the so-called work house and slept on straw huts with two blankets. The urgency had to be done in buckets, two prisoners each had a towel. From 1936 to 1937 the castle served as a warehouse for the Reich Labor Service , housed parts of the city museum and various NSDAP formations. From January 1, 1938, a state sanatorium and nursing home with around 360 beds was reopened on the site, although it had more of the character of a pure nursing home. Predominantly long-term and heavy-duty nursing cases from other Saxon institutions were recorded and looked after (better: kept). More than half of the patients received a very inexpensive, calorically inadequate fat and meat-free special diet , so that the mortality rate in the pre-war period was well above the average in Saxony. During the period of its existence, a total of 83 patients died, most of them of marasmus and tuberculosis , up to the closure on October 5, 1939 . A memorial in the palace has been dedicated to these dead since 2017. It is located in the basement of the Saalhaus and was designed by the Leipzig artist Thomas Moecker.

POW camp Oflag IVc

From October 31, 1939, a prisoner-of-war camp named Oflag IVc was set up as a special camp for officers . The name comes from Of fiziers was he . The headquarters was in the outer courtyard. The prisoners lived in the back yard in the former princely houses. Outside, the flat terraces surrounding the prison buildings were guarded by armed guards and secured with barbed wire. The prisoners made a series of escape attempts, about which several books and films were published after the war and which made Colditz Castle very well known, especially in Great Britain .

On April 16, 1945, American soldiers captured Colditz Castle and freed its occupants.

From 1945

After the American occupation was replaced by the Red Army in June 1945, the palace was used in October and November 1945 as a collection point for dispossessed and displaced landowners and their families. From 1946, Colditz Castle housed a hospital with an internal medicine department, an ear, nose and throat and eye ward, which was relocated in 1996. The so-called Bad Boys , the former prisoners of Colditz Castle, already made their first visits during the GDR era .

  • Colditz Castle 1650

  • Colditz Castle , painting by Ernst Ferdinand Oehme , 1828

  • Colditz Castle 1840

  • Witnesses from the former state institute

  • Detail of the installation for the euthanasia victims

  • Colditz Castle as Oflag IV April 1945

  • Captive French officers in the courtyard of Oflag IV

  • Colditz Castle as a hospital in 1975

From 1996

After 1996 extensive renovations took place by the Free State of Saxony. Since 2003, the castle has been one of the state palaces, castles and gardens of Saxony and houses, among other things, the Escape Museum, an exhibition about the escape attempts of the Allied officers. In April 2007 a youth hostel opened in the castle and in 2010 the State Music Academy of Saxony . From 2011, the Free State of Saxony decided to invest a further 1.2 million euros in the castle in order to adapt the appearance both in the entrance area and in the long-distance effect to the other buildings of the castle . From 2013 to 2015 the palace chapel was restored for almost 2 million euros.

Colditz Society

In 1991 the Colditz Society was founded in London . 120 former prisoners from England, France and Poland meet twice a year in London and are in constant contact with the castle administration. In 2010 they found out about the sick willow in the castle courtyard, which had been planted in 1956 and was now suffering from massive pest infestation. The members of the association donated part of the cost of a round bench around the newly planted linden tree. There is a regular publication of the association for members, in which their work is reported.

Colditz Castle Society V.

In 1996 the company Schloss Colditz e. V. (GSC) founded. The society has around 60 members and strives for the cultural, museum and commercial use of Colditz Castle. The society maintains contacts with the Colditz Society.

exhibition

In the exhibition on the history of Oflag IV C , which was renewed by the palace administration in 2017 , the adventurous escape attempts of the Allied officers are presented, thus establishing the special status as a “high security prisoner of war camp ”.

Media reception

The great international fame results in particular from the book The Colditz Story by the successfully fled British Pat Reid , in which he later processed his experiences, and from the 2005 film Colditz - Escape to Freedom by Stuart Orne. Through the depiction of escape attempts in several films and a television series, the castle became particularly well known in England. In addition to films from the 1950s and the TV series from the 1970s, the castle also served as a filming location for parts of an episode of the British TV series Top Gear . In England there is a board game called Escape from Colditz , in which clever British officers lead the Teutonic jailer by the nose and then flee from Colditz by throwing the dice. In the real-time tactics game Commandos 2: Men of Courage , the castle is the scene of a mission in which the player has to free the protagonists he controls from custody, steal secret documents and then flee.

Filmography

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Cornelius Gurlitt : Descriptive representation of the older architectural and art monuments of the Kingdom of Saxony. Headquarters Grimma . Meinhold and Sons, Dresden 1897, p. 43ff.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Georg Dehio: Handbook of the German Art Monuments. Saxony II. Administrative districts Leipzig and Chemnitz . Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-422-03048-4 , p. 159 ff.
  3. ↑ ThürHStA Weimar, Ernestinisches Gesamtarchiv, Reg. Bb 970 fol. 103
  4. ↑ a b c d e f Regina Thiede, Renate Lippmann: Colditz Castle . Edition Leipzig, Leipzig 2007, ISBN 978-3-361-00620-1 , p. 14.
  5. ^ Johann Samuelersch, Johann Gottfried Gruber: General Encyclopedia of Sciences and Arts. Part eighteenth. Johann Friedrich Gleditzsch, Leipzig 1828, p. 244, ( online ), accessed on July 6, 2011.
  6. ^ A b c Sonja Schröter: Psychiatry in Waldheim / Saxony (1716–1946) . Mabuse Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 978-3-925499-83-8 , p. 62.
  7. ^ Ragnhild Kober-Carrière: The gardens of the Colditzer castle . In: State Office for Monument Preservation Saxony (Ed.): 30 years of garden monument preservation in Saxony . Sax-Verlag, Beucha 2007, ISBN 978-3-86729-019-7 , p. 100-109 .
  8. ↑ a b Olaf Beyer: The State Correctional Institute Colditz opened 85 years ago - work-shy should be brought up to a regulated way of life. A castle for tramps and beggars . Leipziger Volkszeitung, April 11, 2011, p. 22.
  9. ^ A b Klaus Drobisch , Günter Wieland : System of the Nazi concentration camps. 1933-1945 . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-05-000823-7 , p. 109, ( online ), accessed on July 4, 2011.
  10. ^ PR Reid: Colditz. The full story . Pan Books, London 2002, ISBN 978-0-330-50999-2 , pp. 6ff.
  11. ↑ Scientific research on the Holocaust of the German Bundestag, printed matter 19/1980, p. 10.
  12. ^ Roland Mischke: The bad boys of central Saxony. Colditz Castle with a legendary past, a dreary present and an uncertain future . Frankfurter Rundschau, May 4, 1996, p. 6.
  13. ↑ Heinrich Lilie: State enterprise initiates renovation measures in Colditz. The association has been successfully fighting for the preservation of the building millions for the castle for 15 years . Leipziger Volkszeitung, Osterländer Volkszeitung, June 28, 2011, Se. 4th
  14. ↑ ch: Colditz Society from London provides seating under the linden tree in the courtyard. Round thing. English finance new bank . Leipziger Volkszeitung, Muldentaler Kreiszeitung, June 8, 2011, p. 20.
  15. ↑ no information: Information about the society Schloß Colditz ., Internet presence of the association, Colditz 2007, p. 109, ( Link ( Memento of the original from July 23, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this note. ), Accessed on July 4, 2011. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.schloss-colditz.com
  16. ↑ not specified: Program information: Top Gear feature - interview with Richard Hammond. , BBC website: ( Link ), accessed July 5, 2010.
  17. ↑ Jürgen Marks, Catherine Meyer, Alexander Wendt: Late revenge of the bad boys . Focus Magazin, Munich, April 15, 1995, ( online ), accessed July 4, 2011.

literature

  • Regina Thiede: Colditz Castle . Edition Leipzig, Leipzig 2013, ISBN 978-3-361-00687-4 .
  • Regina Thiede: "Defined vagabonds, scapegoats and rabble". On the social and building history of the state workhouse in Colditz Castle (1803 to 1829) . In: Yearbook / State Palaces, Castles and Gardens of Saxony, 17 (2012), pp. 112–128.
  • Regina Thiede: The furnishing of the electoral apartments in the royal house of Colditz Castle. In: Yearbook / State Palaces, Castles and Gardens of Saxony, 14 (2007), 59–68.
  • Regina Thiede, Yvonne Heine: The rediscovery of the horse pond at Colditz Castle . In: Yearbook / State Palaces, Castles and Gardens of Saxony, 15 (2008), 75–81.
  • Albert Peter Bräuer: Colditz Castle . Seemann, Leipzig 1983.
  • Georg Grahl: The Colditz Castle Building and Zier represents this sheet content for . Tietze, Leipzig 1710 ( digitized version )
  • Thomas Schmidt, Regina Thiede: The Colditzer Castle Chapel. In: Yearbook State Palaces, Castles and Gardens of Saxony Volume 16, Dresden 2009, pp. 112–123
  • Colditz Oflag IVc prisoner of war camp 1939–1945. Edited by Municipal Museum, Colditz 2004.
Special newspaper articles
  • Haig Latchinian : Trumpeter Ludwig Güttler gives offspring a master class at Colditz Castle - When star trumpeter Ludwig Güttler (73) gives his master classes in Colditz, these are great moments in the still young history of the State Music Academy of Saxony: On Monday the LVZ was allowed to go behind the scenes of the The former Marstall look at Colditz Castle, in which the Free State and the Music Council have invested almost four million euros since 2010. The maestro chats about Queen and Putin, the Frauenkirche and the Escape Museum, training and imagination, harmony and feelings of happiness. Online article on lvz.de and under the heading "The great trumpeter" in: Leipziger Volkszeitung , Muldental edition, April 25, 2017, page 27 (full-page newspaper article = "Topic of the day")

Web links

Commons : Colditz Castle  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 51 ° 7 ′ 50.8 "  N , 12 ° 48 ′ 26.9"  E