Juval Castle

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Juval Castle
Juval Castle

Juval Castle

Alternative name (s): Castel Juval
Creation time : Around 1278
Castle type : Hilltop castle
Geographical location 46 ° 39 '5.7 "  N , 10 ° 58' 4.7"  E Coordinates: 46 ° 39 '5.7 "  N , 10 ° 58' 4.7"  E
Height: 1000  m slm
Juval Castle (South Tyrol)
Juval Castle
Juval Castle, the gate tower in the middle distance belongs to the oldest surviving part of the complex
Gate tower with the glass roof that protects the exhibits of the Tibetan collection in the inner courtyard

The Juval Castle is a medieval castle with a Romanesque nucleus in South Tyrol ( Italy ). It is located on a hill at the entrance of the Schnalstal , a side valley of the Vinschgau , at about 1,000 m above sea ​​level near Naturns in the municipality of Kastelbell-Tschars .

etymology

The name Juval , which appears in different spellings over time, such as Jufal, Jufahl, Juvale, Juwaal or Jufaal, could come from the Latin iugum altum , iugum vallis (iugum means yoke, transition, collar) or from iuvalis , to Yoke, appropriate transition, or from the Rhaeto-Romanic ju-val , which means outside, down in the valley . The sometimes encountered reference to the sacred name Mons Jovis ( Jupiter's mountain ), which was used for domed, head-like mountain formations at important road connections, is unlikely. It seems certain that the name of the castle was only later used for the ridge and for the scattered settlement there.

history

Traces of prehistoric settlement

During construction and road works at various points on the castle rocky slopes of Juval, remains of settlements were found and examined, which suggest a settlement continuum from the Neolithic to the end of the Bronze Age. The rock platform will have offered itself as a vantage point and a defensible location, which is also where the only accessible valley access to the Schnalstal valley passed. About the role of the rock plateau during these settlement activities can only be speculated, since possible traces were lost during the construction of the castle.

middle Ages

The castle is mentioned for the first time in 1278 in a document. Her owner Hugo von Montalban is named after this castle: dominus Hugo de Juval […] curia super castro Juval and Hougelinus de Juval . A Carolingian-shaped stone cross carved into a niche in the defensive wall and two wickerwork stones made of marble with ornaments typical of the early Middle Ages and the Carolingian period, which are attributed to the 12th century, allow the conclusion that there was a fortified structure before. The Lords of Montalban , a Guelph family of servants who only settled in Tyrol in the 11th century , had several fiefs in the Central Venosta Valley, owned half a dozen of the most important castles (Montalban, Kastelbell , Schlandersberg, Galsaun, Schnals, Untermontani and Juval) and practiced through them high jurisdiction gives rise to a dominant position. All of Juval's farms were part of their property. While their most important representative, Schwicker III., With Count Albert III. of Tyrol apparently well understood and was even Podestà of Trient around 1235 , the Montalbans quickly lost their influential position under the rule of Count Meinhard II . Juval Castle is mentioned in 1293 as belonging to the sovereign property.

As a result, the castle was initially awarded against Burghut , from 1315 it appears as a fief :

  • 1293 Äblin de Parschinnes
  • 1298 and 1300 Christian de P (ar) schinnes (Partschins)
  • 1313 Wilhalmus de Prunnenberch
  • from 1315 Albert von Camian (allegedly a natural son of Meinhard II), around 10 Bernese. During this time, invoices show that the castle was being repaired.
  • Friedrich Zobl received the castle as a fiefdom, it came through his daughter and heiress Beatrix
  • 1340 to her husband, the court notary Albrecht von Aichach. During this time the castle was costly rebuilt.
  • In 1351 it was given to the Bavarian knight Erhard von Häl, also known as Einhard von Holen, as a fief under the government of Ludwig von Brandenburg .
  • After his death in 1363, Princess Margarete left the castle to Ulrich von Matsch . The Habsburg Rudolf the Donor immediately took it from him and passed it on to his favorite Rudolf von Ems, who came from Austria.
  • In 1388 he was followed by the powerful lords of Starkenberg , who later showed themselves to be empty pockets in the aristocratic revolts against Friedrich .
  • The castle was taken from them in 1422 by Duke Friedrich, who four years later gave it to Peter von Liebenberg in exchange.
  • From 1440 the castle was administered by lordly caretakers who, during the time of Siegmund the Mint Rich and Emperor Maximilian I , repeatedly carried out structural measures, but were unable to stop the castle from falling into decline. From 1492 the residents of Tschars tried unsuccessfully to win the caretaker of the castle and the Carthusian monastery in Schnals for a Waal construction project . It was not until the intervention of Emperor Maximilian I, who appointed his follower Hans Hendl as a mediator, that the Tschars community continued to help, so that it could finally begin the lengthy construction work on the 11 km long Tschars Schnalswaal.

Hans Sinkmoser

Ferdinand I gave the castle to his councilor and secretary Andre Teubler in 1526 as a man's fief. His son Johann died in 1537 without heirs, and Gaudenz von Madrutz was enfeoffed with the castle. But just a few months later, Ferdinand I ordered an estimate of the fief that resulted in 897 guilders for the castle estates. The castle itself was not included in the estimate because of its dilapidation.

After some back and forth, the castle was acquired in 1540 by the then owner of the Tyrolean cellar office , Hans Sinkmoser. He belonged to a Swabian noble family who immigrated to Tyrol. His father was the mayor and his brother was the mayor of Hall . The cellar office was the economic and administrative center of the country, which was responsible for the control of the money and taxes in kind and to which the taxes and jurisdiction were subordinate. Sinkmoser was also often a competent appraiser and in this function became aware of Juval Castle. He immediately set about converting the castle in the Renaissance style into a representative residential palace, which has largely retained its shape up to the present day. Hans Sinkmoser was followed in 1566 by his son Josef and his cousin Anton, who soon found themselves unable to continue this legacy due to financial reasons and returned it to the sovereign in 1581.

The influential and wealthy Hendl family followed in their footsteps and was awarded the dignity of count by Emperor Leopold in 1697 . Originally not from the nobility, the Hendl were Burgmannen and administrators at the castles Fernstein , Ehrenberg and Neustarkenberg and demonstrably since 1474 gentlemen at Goldrain Castle . However, the Hendls did not live in the castle themselves and did not make any significant investments. After the Tyrolean Wars of Freedom , in which the Hendls were heavily involved financially, they could no longer maintain their economic strength and offered the castle for sale. An auction went off without a bid, but a few days later the brothers Joseph and Mathias Nischler, farmers from the immediate vicinity, contacted Juval and acquired the entire property on September 15, 1815 for 13,151 guilders. They sold the Juvalgut in 1823 to the couple Martin Torggler and Karlina Siller, who lost it four years later in bankruptcy proceedings in which Joseph Blaas from Latsch was awarded the contract for 6,719 guilders. For a time the castle was used by the farming family with their two sons as a stable, barn and apartment. In 1839 an application was made to the authorities for a division of the farm, which was granted. Between 1880 and 1890 two farmsteads were built behind the castle, to which the families moved and for the construction of which mainly the masonry of the castle was used.

William Robert Rowland

William Robert Rowland, who was born in Vienna in 1869 as the son of an Englishman and an Austrian and who had acquired coffee, rubber and tobacco plantations in Sumatra (at that time the Dutch East Indies) and Malaysia (under British colonial rule), put a stop to the far advanced decline worked as a freelance author and journalist. Having become aware of the castle through some circumstance, Rowland commissioned Paul Ladurner from Mals on December 2, 1913 , to negotiate on his behalf to acquire the ruin. On March 27, 1914, the castle changed hands for 10,000 crowns. His plans to extensively renovate the castle were initially thwarted by the First World War . Rowland was interned on a South Sea island and his property was confiscated. After the war the property was released and Rowland received substantial compensation. When he returned to Europe, he began to put his plans into practice. Under the planning and construction management of the Merano architect Adalbert Wietek , the castle was renovated in five years from 1923 onwards, with resistance and even construction stops on the part of the responsible monument office in Trento had to be overcome several times.

Rowland was not only interested in the castle proper, he was particularly fond of the property's farms, where he kept cattle, raised poultry, and grown apples and vines. In 1930 he rounded off his property by purchasing the lower courtyard. In addition to his secretary, Gertrud Fleischmann (he married her in 1937 after his wife Martha died in 1931), he permanently employed around 20 people on his property. This situation came to an abrupt end at the beginning of 1939: Rowland had to leave the country overnight and settled in Munich. There are only rumors about the reasons and the immediate cause, but his sympathies for the Germans may have played an important role. The castle was confiscated by the Germans in mid-1943 and used as a shoe and lingerie factory, in which around 40 prisoners had to do their work under catastrophic conditions.

Reinhold Messner

After Rowland's death on February 19, 1948, the property was transferred to his widow Gertrud on January 18, 1949. She moved into the servants' house of the castle, because the castle itself was already so ruinous at this point that it was no longer habitable. In 1954 she married her husband's cousin, Werner Eiselt, moved to Innsbruck with him and sold the entire property on March 2, 1954 to the engineer Hans Klotzner from Merano. His intention to restore the castle to the point where it remained habitable was not implemented. It continued to deteriorate and was discovered in 1983 by the South Tyrolean extreme mountaineer Reinhold Messner , who contacted Klotzner and bought the castle on July 18, 1983 for the equivalent of 60,000 DM. The castle was restored and since then has not only served as the mountaineer's residence, but also houses his Tibetan collection and other collectibles. The castle and collection, which now form the Messner Mountain Museum Juval , can be visited.

literature

  • Magdalena Maria Messner: Jewel Juval. Chronicle of a complete (art) work , diploma thesis University of Vienna, 2011.
  • Oswald Trapp : Tiroler Burgenbuch. Volume I: Vinschgau . Publishing house Athesia, Bozen 1972, pp. 200–208.
  • Alois Trenkwalder: Juval Castle and its lord RR Rowland (1913–1953) . In: « Der Schlern » 63, 1989, pp. 192–196.

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. Magdalena Maria Messner: Juwel Juval , p. 17