Maineck Castle

The stylish beer garden in the courtyard of Maineck Castle

The Maineck Castle (also Maineck Castle ) is an estate in the Altenkunstadter district of Maineck (Schloßberg 1). It is located at 465  m above sea level. NN on the northern outskirts of the village, directly on the Main . Not much is left of the former castle; the core of the complex is the cathedral district office building. As early as 1333, the former castle, which over the centuries has come closer and closer to a small castle due to numerous renovations, was the official seat of the cathedral priest of the Bamberg monastery . As a protected architectural monument , the administrative building is managed by the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation under monument number D-4-78-111-53 . Due to archaeological findings in the area of ​​the office building, which are in connection with the medieval core of the building, the complex as a whole is also a ground monument with the number D-4-5833-0143 . Since 2008 there is a café in parts of the complex Beer garden.

etymology

The castle name Maineck is composed of the suffix -eck with the defining prefix Main . Names of this system were especially common in the first half of the 12th century. Today's town of Maineck got its name from the castle and was previously called Neunkirchen.

history

Maineck Castle was probably built as a round castle in the first half of the 12th century. Its destruction is documented for the year 1323. The then lord of the castle, Albrecht Förtsch the Younger, had the castle rebuilt, but renounced the ownership in favor of Bishop Johann Wulfing von Schlackenwerth and the church. In return, he got it back for himself, his sons and their male heirs as a castle hat , so that they could use their income to serve the Bamberg church in times of peace and as a defensive structure in the event of war.

In 1333 the then cathedral provost and later bishop Leopold II von Egloffstein acquired the castle "Mewnekk" together with its lands, five fiefs and six other residences with farms. With the consent of Bishop Werntho Schenk von Reicheneck , he transferred the castle to the cathedral provost and the subsequent cathedral provosts. In doing so, he fulfilled his vow of August 20, 1331 to make a foundation for the Dompropstei if he survived the robbery that day. In 1383 the castle was mentioned as "Meyneck die Vesten". By a judgment of March 5, 1408, after a dispute with the cathedral dean and the cathedral chapter, cathedral provost Johann II von Heideck received Maineck castle as property. The castle was destroyed in the Hussite Wars in 1430, as well as in the Peasants 'War in 1525. The cathedral chapter put the damage in the Peasants' War on April 5, 1526 at 1000 guilders . On May 24, 1427 the heavily damaged tower of the castle was demolished on behalf of the cathedral chapter. On December 7th, 1530 the order was given to examine and determine the damage to the castle again in order to receive fair compensation from the prince-bishop. Likewise, a house was to be built again for the episcopal bailiff. The claim for compensation was submitted to the prince-bishop in 1532, but nothing happened for over a decade. On April 9, 1540, the cathedral chapter asked the prince-bishop again to pay for the damage to Maineck Castle in order to enable reconstruction. A similar claim was made again on March 20, 1543. After another warning on March 22, 1543, the bishop finally relented and on April 16, 1543 approved a compensation payment of 300 guilders. The reconstruction, to which the prince-bishop again contributed 180 guilders, began in 1544. The construction work was probably completed on February 25, 1545 with the construction of the chimney .

During the Second Margrave War from 1552 to 1554, the office building was burned down by the troops of Albrecht II Alcibiades . The exact extent of the destruction is not known. The castle probably remained in its ruinous state for over 20 years and was only rebuilt in the mid-1570s. This is supported by the fact that the coat of arms of Bamberg Cathedral Provost Marquard II , who was active until 1575, was attached from the mountain above the gate. Old documents show that the bridge and the pigsty were repaired in 1579, but it is not clear whether it was the bridge over the Main or the castle bridge. Three years later, the roof of the renovated property was covered and the interior partially redesigned. A buttress arch was installed in the new room , the inside and outside walls were whitewashed, screed was laid in the hall and the room was paneled . Just one year later, the roof and windows had to be repaired. In the years 1583 to 1585, minor construction work was carried out again on and in the castle, most of which had a design character; a new cattle house was built. In 1586/87 repairs to the manor house as well as the horse stables and the gate tower became necessary; the bridge over the moat was repaired. Further maintenance measures have been handed down for the years 1588/89, 1589/90, 1600/01, 1602/03, 1605/06, 1608/09, 1617/18, 1619/20 and 1620/21.

The effects of the Thirty Years' War on Maineck were rather minor. In the years 1623/24, 1626/27, 1630/31 and 1639/40 minor war damage had to be repaired, while the bridge in front of the castle gate was replaced by a drawbridge , as it had a higher defense value. Other damage such as smashed doors was repaired between 1640 and 1645 and improved guards were made. The manor house suffered the worst damage during the war in 1647/48, when Swedish troops smashed numerous interior rooms and badly damaged the roof, the gables and the outer walls. The repair work began in 1649 and lasted, with numerous interruptions, until 1667. When a strong storm tore down the roof in the rear of the house that year, Bishop Philipp Valentin Voit von Rieneck ordered on August 29, 1668 that the building should be closed by the Kastner and the bricklayer and carpenter of the cathedral chapter was to be visited before further construction work should be undertaken. The three experts worked together to create a plan to save the building. On June 6th, 1670 the decision was made to completely renovate the office building. The bishop made 200 guilders available for this purpose. Nevertheless, in the following decades up to around the 1720s, only minor construction measures for the maintenance of the office building and the outbuildings were carried out without fundamentally renovating the office building. In the following 60 years, in the course of numerous renovation work, increased emphasis was placed on the appearance of the building; the measures were taken taking into account the current architectural styles. For example, stucco was installed in some rooms ; the purely functional wooden drawbridge in front of the wall was replaced by a massive arched bridge. In 1783 the old office building was demolished. The court architect Lorenz Fink drew up the plans for the new building in 1792. Construction work, which was completed in 1796, probably began in the same year.

The Bamberg mathematics professor Johann Baptist Roppel reported the following about the entire facility and the village of Maineck in 1801:

“The Domprobsteischloß is on a round hill surrounded by a dry moat, but it is no longer habitable (demolished in 1783!). In addition to this there is a cathedral provost house and a cellar house, 6 built-up half courtyards, a drip house owned by Jews, 3 other drip houses, a sheep house and a shepherd's house, which are part of the cathedral provost and are controllable by the Maineck office, and 6 houses provided with stalls. 10 drip houses and two farmsteads are Weismainer Kastenlehen, two houses with Städeln are Weismainer parish fiefs, two houses with Städeln and two drip houses are Wallenfels Senioratslehen. "

- Johann Baptist Roppel

From 1803 the former administrative building became the seat of the Royal Bavarian Forestry Office . Hans and Emma Straßgschwandtner acquired the property from the Free State of Bavaria in 1970 and renovated it over the following decades. In 2008 the family opened a café with a beer garden in the courtyard in the rooms of the old horse stables and the old chapel.

List of holders of the Maineck cathedral provost office

Cathedral Provost Leopold II von Egloffstein acquired Maineck Castle for himself and his successors in 1333. It became the center of a small cathedral provost office. The following table is given to the owners of Maineck, with gaps due to missing records. With the secularization in Bavaria , the office was dissolved.

Surname	Term of office	Remarks
Leopold II of Egloffstein	1333-1335	Lived and worked at his residence in Maineck, presumably until he was appointed Prince-Bishop of Bamberg
Johann II of Heideck	1390-1415
Marquard II from the mountain	1559-1575
Wolfgang Albrecht of Würzburg	1600-1608	† March 24, 1610
Johann Christoph Neustetter called striker	1619-1630	† November 9, 1638
Melchior Otto Voit from Salzburg	1638-1643	Prince-Bishop of Bamberg for almost a year (appointed August 25, 1642)
Jerome of Würzburg	1644-1649	† March 23, 1651
Philipp Valentin Voit from Rieneck	1650-1653	On January 12, 1653, appointed Prince-Bishop of Bamberg
Franz Karl von Stadion	1652-1684	† March 23, 1685
Otto Philipp von Guttenberg	1685-1721	† February 11, 1723
Lothar Joseph Graf von Stadion	1769	† October 20, 1770
Adalbert Philipp von Hutten	1770-1786	† April 6, 1788
Philipp Ernst Heinrich Karl Anton Leonhard Freiherr Voit of Salzburg	1787-1789	† April 7, 1789
Karl Dietrich Joseph von und zu Guttenberg	1790-1792	† April 6, 1794
Johann Philipp Anton von Schaumberg	1793-1799	† February 17, 1801
Joseph Karl Georg von Hutten	1800	† May 3, 182

List of officials of the Maineck Cathedral Provost

Like the previous list, this one is sketchy in terms of terms of office.

Surname	Term of office
Christoph Armb with his son Balthasar	1577, 1579 (?)
Georg Herold	1581-1608 / 1609
Wolfgang Otto Scholderer	1617-1626 / 27
Moritz Schönfelder	1639-1646
Christoph Burkhard	1647-1670 / 71
Bernhard Benedikt Burkhard	1672-1698 / 99
Johann Adam Graff	1721 / 22-1736 / 37
Johann Straub	1737 / 38-1756 / 57
Johann Jakob Rahm	1757-1773 / 74
Adam Adalbert Supper	1774 / 75-1790 / 91
Christian Bausemann	1791 / 92-1800 / 01

architecture

It is unclear what the previous buildings of the castle-like complex looked like. Before the Hussite War and after the reconstruction up to the Peasants' War, it must have been a traditional castle complex with a round shape. Up until 1525 the complex had a striking, perhaps donjon-like tower. In the south, east and northeast, the complex was surrounded by a deep moat. This is only preserved in the northeast with a width of 16 and a depth of 2.5 meters. During road construction work, the rest of the trench was illegally filled in and the arch bridge was mostly buried in the ground. In the west and north, the area is protected by a steep drop. The moat in front of the gate in the south was first a wooden bridge, later a wooden drawbridge and has been spanned by an arched bridge since 1746 . A 20 meter deep groundwater well with a pulling device was used for the water supply .

The main building of the facility is the office building built between 1792 and 1796 in the west in a north-south direction directly on the steep slope of the site. The ground plan is a beveled rectangle in the south, as the round castle wall connects there. In the north the house does not reach the castle wall, there is the fountain with a diameter of 2.10 meters, which is covered with a stone slab. The office building with basement, ground floor and first floor has a hipped roof . On both gables there are two bat dormers with sloping tow dormers above , the western side of the roof also has two bat dormers and the east side three gable dormers . There is a chimney at each end of the gable . The door and window frames are made of smoothed sandstone, the rest of the masonry is plastered. The upper floor protrudes slightly and is separated by a thin, ribbon-shaped sandstone cornice.

The arched castle gate adjoins the office building in the south . Directly next to it, a single-storey, hipped outbuilding extends along the inside of the castle wall in a northerly direction. It is divided into several smaller rooms and used to be home to stables. Nothing is left of the former castle wall in the north.

literature

• Dominikus Kremer: Maineck - History of a high princely Bamberg village , Vier-Türme-Verlag, Münsterschwarzach Abbey, 1983.
• Hellmut Kunstmann: The ring of castles around Wernstein in the Obermaing area. Commission publisher Degener & Co, Neustadt an der Aisch 1978, ISBN 3-7686-4083-3 , pp. 140–153.
• Georg Söhnlein: Maineck - once the official seat of the cathedral provost of Bamberg . In: Encounter with Franks / 2, Bamberg, Heinrichs-Verlag, 2008.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} ( page no longer available , search in web archives: Schloss, Schloßberg 1, Maineck ), geodaten.bayern.de, accessed on February 7, 2012
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah ai aj ak al am} Kunstmann (1978), pp. 140–150
3. ↑ Söhnlein (2008), pp. 76-77
4. ↑ ^{a b} History ( Memento from August 8, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), schloss-maineck.de, accessed on February 8, 2013
5. ↑ ^{a b} Kunstmann (1978), p. 150
6. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Kunstmann (1978), p. 151
7. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l} Kunstmann (1978), pp. 152–153

Coordinates: 50 ° 7 ′ 0.3 "  N , 11 ° 18 ′ 4.7"  E