Ockstadt Castle

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The Ockstadt Castle (also Frankenstein Castle ) is a heavily fortified palace of the 15th century in Ockstadt , a district of Friedberg in Wetteraukreis in Hesse .

Ockstadt Castle, tower of the main castle, modern castle building in the background
Modern castle building in the SW of the core castle
View into the outer bailey
Bridge between the outer and main castle
North-western round tower of the inner castle
North-eastern round tower of the inner castle

history

Ockstadt is first mentioned in the Lorsch Codex in 817 as Huccenstat or Hucgenstat , and around 1222 as Okstat . First in the possession of the Lords or Counts of Cleeberg , the place came to the Lords of Eppstein , since at least 1374 the possession of the Lords of Cleen has been proven in the place. 1386 Konrad was of Cleen of Palatine Ruprecht I. with the Veste Ockstad including pre Castle invested .

Gottfried von Cleen probably had a new castle built before 1495 to replace an older structure. In that year he made them a fiefdom for Emperor Maximilian in order to get them back immediately. With the extinction of the Lords of Cleen in 1522, the castle fell to Hans IV von Frankenstein zu Sachsenhausen , who was married to Irmela von Cleen. Their son Gottfried (1512–1567) had the imperial fiefdom confirmed by Emperor Maximilian II in 1566 and founded the Frankenstein-Ockstadt line. With the complete possession of Ockstadt since 1525, the Frankensteiners had built up a small, imperial rule. During the Thirty Years' War there is said to have been a brief siege of the castle, but this did not result in any destruction. However, the fortification had become militarily useless and fell into disrepair in the following time

Gottfried von Frankenstein had the facility rebuilt in the years 1714–1726. The elongated house was built in the southwest of the main castle , and the farm buildings in the outer bailey also come from this construction phase (1714 and 1726). In 1741, when the gate was built in the north wall, an access road to the main castle was created, which previously could only be reached via the eastern outer bailey. Since then, the brewery has also occupied a significant part of the northern fortification. Due to the demolition of another outbuilding in the north of the outer bailey for the construction of the forestry office (1860), the course of the fortification there is less clear. After the castle was no longer inhabited by the von Frankenstein family from 1765, it began to decline. The rule lasted until 1806 and then fell to the Grand Duchy of Hesse .

During the Second World War , the Max Planck Institute maintained a research facility here, for which a strong concrete ceiling was installed in the southwest tower. It was sold in private ownership in 1976. After a few years of deterioration, the complex is now in a renovated condition.

investment

The castle is an important example of defense architecture around 1500 and shows similarities to buildings by the Landgrave Hessian architect Hans Jakob von Ettlingen . As a landgrave bailiff and through an activity in the Marburg office from 1490–96, Gottfried von Cleen should have known him well. It takes a rectangular to slightly trapezoidal shape with a size of 140 × 80 m and is divided into a larger main castle in the west and a smaller outer castle in the east.

The complex was surrounded on at least three sides by trenches that were fed by a stream in the south. It remains to be seen whether there was a ditch on the north side towards the village of Ockstadt, as the Bachgasse there refers to it in its name, but had to accommodate a substantial part of the through traffic. The trenches were probably filled in as part of the redesign at the beginning of the 18th century. In the south of the facility a clearly recognizable wall is still preserved, which separated the later backfilled trench from the lending trench that passed there .

Main castle

The oldest part of the main castle is likely to be a slender, centrally located, now free-standing round tower, which is sometimes referred to as the keep . Another preserved tower stump south of this and the wall connections recognizable from the existing tower indicate that it was formerly part of a rectangular or square (older?) Core castle in the form of a fort castle . A large part of the south-western fortification of the main castle is taken up by the elongated castle building from the early 18th century. The rather simple one-storey building is located on a high embankment and has a hipped roof . Leaning against the north wall is the brewery , which is also a rather simple, cubic building covered by a mansard roof. A two-arched stone bridge from the 18th century forms the access from the outer to the main castle, with a baroque statue of Nepomuk on the starting pillar.

Outer bailey

The outer bailey, which is somewhat smaller than the main bailey, originally had gates on all four sides, of which the southern one is still preserved today. The wall was only subsequently added to the corner towers of the main castle and the wall was largely covered with barn-like buildings in 1714 and 1726. After a thorough renovation, it now houses homes for the disabled. The northern round tower has been preserved from the former two towers of the outer bailey and was integrated into one of the buildings.

Attachment

The main castle is protected at the corners by four round towers with a diameter of 10 m protruding into the moat. On the south side they had three storeys, whereby the lower storeys are now covered by the filled trench. On the north side the situation is unclear due to inserted pedestrian openings. Of the two storeys that can be seen today on all sides, there are alternating small mouth slits and windows in recessed firing niches, while large slit mouth slits in the basement. Channels above or next to these ensured that the smoke was extracted. The high tower and the tower stump in the main castle also have slotted mouths, and the high tower also has those in the shape of an upside-down T, so that these too could have been built between 1480 and 1495 at the same time as the fortification.

The curtains between these towers also had mouth holes, but these were walled up around the beginning of the 16th century when a wall was poured on the inside. Something similar can also be observed in Babenhausen . The wall is still preserved on two sides and has a wall passage 5 m wide. The reason for this subsequent reinforcement against artillery fire could have been conflicts between the Frankensteiners with the Burggrafschaft Friedberg, which was mostly reformed at that time, or Landgrave Philip I of Hesse , because the Frankensteiners adhered to the Catholic faith.

The assignment of a tower stump to the north a few meters outside of today's castle complex, which may have belonged to an older complex of the Lords of Cleen, is unclear.

literature

Web links

Commons : Schloss Frankenstein (Ockstadt)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Codex Laureshamensis III, p. 251, No. 3771 with No. 3767a
  2. ↑ Ludwig Falck : Mainzer Regesten 1200–1250: on the history of the city, its spiritual and secular institutions and residents. Mainz 2007 (=  contributions to the history of the city of Mainz  35.1), p. 248f. No. 443.
  3. ↑ Talburg Ockstadt, Friedberg community (Hesse). Castles, palaces, mansions. (As of September 27, 2018). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
  4. ↑ Knappe p. 334.
  5. ^ Elmar Brohl: Fortresses in Hessen. Published by the German Society for Fortress Research eV, Wesel, Schnell and Steiner, Regensburg 2013 (=  German Fortresses  2), ISBN 978-3-7954-2534-0 , p. 141.
  6. ^ Elmar Brohl: Fortresses in Hessen. Published by the German Society for Fortress Research eV, Wesel, Schnell and Steiner, Regensburg 2013 (=  German Fortresses  2), ISBN 978-3-7954-2534-0 , p. 141.
  7. ↑ Knappe p. 334; Müller (Ed.): Palaces, castles, old walls , p. 125.
  8. ^ Elmar Brohl: Fortresses in Hessen. Published by the German Society for Fortress Research eV, Wesel, Schnell and Steiner, Regensburg 2013 (=  German Fortresses  2), ISBN 978-3-7954-2534-0 , p. 145.
  9. ^ Elmar Brohl: Fortresses in Hessen. Published by the German Society for Fortress Research eV, Wesel, Schnell and Steiner, Regensburg 2013 (=  German Fortresses  2), ISBN 978-3-7954-2534-0 , p. 144.
  10. ↑ State Office for the Preservation of Monuments Hesse (ed.): Borngasse (at no. 42), tower trunk of the former Cleen castle In: DenkXweb, online edition of cultural monuments in Hesse

Coordinates: 50 ° 19 ′ 51 ″  N , 8 ° 43 ′ 9.5 ″  E