Lublin Castle
The Lublin Castle is today largely neo-gothic castle in Lublin in Poland . It is located northwest of the old town of Lublin and is in parts one of the oldest surviving residences in Poland. Originally the castle was built by King Casimir II . With the exception of the Romanesque tower and the Gothic chapel, the existing castle is a new building from the 19th century. The chapel is one of the most important medieval monuments in Poland.
history
From construction to 1830
Originally built in the 12th century on the hill was Wallburg by a Gród protected from wood and earth. The brick-built residential tower was built in the first half of the 13th century . The still existing residential tower is at the same time the tallest building of today's castle, as well as the oldest structure in all of Lublin. Under the rule of Casimir III. the stone castle was rebuilt in the 14th century.
During the Jagiellonian dynasty , members of the royal family often stayed in the castle. The castle was expanded and rebuilt to its present size in the 16th century under the direction of Italian masters from Kraków . The historically most significant event of the castle took place in 1569. That year, the Union of Lublin Treaty was signed at the castle . This was the founding act of Poland-Lithuania .
As a result of the wars in the 17th century ( Potop ) the castle fell into disrepair. Only the oldest areas, the residential tower and the Trinity Chapel, remained intact. After Lublin came under Russian rule through the Congress of Vienna in 1815, a complete restoration of the castle under Ignacy Stompf was carried out in the 1820s by Congress Poland on the initiative of Stanisław Staszic . With the exception of the residential tower and the Trinity Chapel, the castle was built in a neo-Gothic style. These buildings are completely different from the previous building and were intended to house a prison.
Use as a prison
The castle was to serve as a prison for 128 years, from 1831 to 1915 as a tsarist prison, then in independent Poland from 1918 to 1939.
During the German occupation of Poland from 1939 to 1944, the prison came under German leadership, who first interned the Jews of Lublin in the prison before they were deported to concentration camps. A small plaque at the castle entrance reminds of them. A total of between 40,000 and 80,000 people were imprisoned during these years. Most of them were Polish resistance fighters. Shortly before the Germans withdrew from Lublin, the last 300 prisoners were murdered on July 22, 1944.
From 1944 to 1954 the castle was used by the Soviet secret police and later by the Ministry of Public Security . During this time a total of around 35,000 Polish opponents of the communist regime were imprisoned. 515 prisoners were sentenced to death here and executed in 333 cases .
museum
In 1954 the prison in the castle was finally closed. After reconstruction and renovation, the main department of the Lublin Museum has been housed in the castle since 1957. The Polish painter Jan Matejko is represented with two monumental paintings on Polish history, there is also an icon collection and, since 1979, the Pod Zegarem memorial .
Castle chapel
The Trinity Chapel was probably built in the eastern part of the castle complex in the 14th century . In the first decades of the 15th century, King Władysław II Jagiełło commissioned the wall paintings of the chapel. The paintings, which were completed in 1418, are still original and, according to the name of one of the paintings, were created by a Ruthenian master named Andrej . The mixture of Western and Eastern Orthodox styles makes the paintings a historical monument that is also internationally recognized.
Residential tower in Lublin Castle
Trinity Chapel
Władysław II kneels before the Blessed Virgin Mary. Detail of a Ruthenian-Byzantine fresco in the Gothic Chapel of the Holy Trinity, 1418.
Jan Matejko: Arrival of the Jews in Poland 1096
literature
- Reinhold Vetter: Lublin (Zamek / Burg) in: Poland. History, art and landscape of an ancient European cultural nation. DuMont Art Guide , 3rd edition, DuMont Buchverlag, ISBN 3-7701-2023-X , Cologne 1991, p. 504f.
- Marta Denys, Dariusz Kopciowski, Agnieszka Martinka, Jacek Studziński, Jadwiga Teodorowicz-Czerepińska, Stanisław Turski: Lublin - The Guidebook . Lublin 2012, ISBN 978-83-7548-119-8 , pp. 32-34 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h A Brief History of Lublin Castle. (No longer available online.) In: eng.zamek.lublin.pl. Archived from the original on August 15, 2011 ; Retrieved September 15, 2010 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b c Isabella Gawin: Poland's south. Rump, Bielefeld 2005
- ↑ Joseph poprzeczny: Odilo Globocnik, Hitler's man in the East . Ed .: McFarland. 2004, ISBN 0-7864-1625-4 , pp. 230 .
- ↑ Historia zamku Lubelskiego . Archived from the original on October 6, 2007. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved May 20, 2013.
- ↑ Tomasz Torbus: Poland . Ed .: Hunter Publishing, Inc. 1999, ISBN 3-88618-088-3 , pp. 86 .
Coordinates: 51 ° 15 ′ 1.9 ″ N , 22 ° 34 ′ 18.3 ″ E