Philippseck Castle

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Philippseck was a modern fortress-like palace complex on the Schlossberg above Münster , a district of Butzbach in the Wetterau district in Hesse . It was built by Landgrave Philip III. from Hessen-Butzbach . Only very small remains of the complex have survived.

Valentin Wagner : View of Philippseck, inscribed on the top left: Princely house of philipps Eck in 1633
Floor plan and elevation of Philippseck Palace. Anonymous steel engraving from 1851 based on an older model.

history

Between 1609 and 1643, Münster belonged to the Landgraviate of Hessen-Butzbach as part of the Landgraviate of Hessen-Darmstadt . According to his own plans, Landgrave Philipp III. Between 1626 and 1628 the fortified castle was built on what was then the "Gehberg" as a plague and escape castle near his residence in Butzbach .

After Philip's death, the castle fell back to Hessen-Darmstadt, but was passed on to the Hessen-Homburg branch line until 1681 . From 1688 until her death, the landgrave widow Elisabeth Dorothea von Sachsen-Gotha-Altenburg alternately used the castle in Butzbach and Philippseck as a widow's residence, after her death her son Heinrich von Hessen-Darmstadt until 1741 .

But Darmstadt's interest in the remote facility was low and the maintenance costs high. Philippseck was auctioned for demolition in 1773/74. Parts of the cellar were preserved until the 1970s and were used as storage space.

Philippseck belonged to the area of common law , which was valid here without the superimposition of particular law. This retained its validity even while the membership of the Grand Duchy of Hesse in the 19th century, until 1 January 1900 by the same across the whole German Reich current Civil Code was replaced.

In 2007, the peripheral areas of the facility could be examined by the archaeological monument preservation of the Wetteraukreis during construction. A model of the system on a scale of 1: 100 is in the museum of the city of Butzbach .

investment

The core of the castle consisted of a castle building on a triangular floor plan with an inner courtyard and several risalits . The flanks had a length of 73 m each. The upstream moat systems formed an irregular twelve-pointed star. The building type is represented several times in the fortress literature of the 16th and early 17th centuries ( Buonaiuto Lorini 1607; Johann Wilhelm Dilich 1640). The only comparable facility in Germany is the Wewelsburg , which was built in 1604–1607 . There are other examples in Venetian-influenced Croatia and Italy.

Even in the fortress architecture of that time, the triangular shape was classified as difficult to defend, since enemy artillery fire could not be adequately countered by the bastions. The central bastions on the flanks of Philippseck are an attempt to compensate for this weakness, but due to the size of the platform only smaller guns could be set up there. Lorini already pointed out that the triangular shape was the smallest possible construction of a fortress.

The basement was free-standing across the entire area and provided with rectangular, transverse arrow slits. Several inventories from the 17th and 18th centuries, which are kept in the Hessian State Archives in Darmstadt , give evidence of the rich interior furnishings of the buildings. The slender tower at the head of the inner courtyard is also unusual. It contradicts the principle of modern fortress construction for minimum height development. It probably had the purpose of establishing a visual and signal connection to the Butzbach city fortifications.

The entrance with gate passage and gate was on the north side. The structure on the south-west flank of the castle was probably extended beyond the line on the north side in order to better protect the gate.

A view by the draftsman Valentin Wagner is known from the time of its creation . Another elevation and floor plan has been preserved on a steel engraving from 1851, which probably goes back to an original from the 18th century.

Little is known about the external works. They can be seen in Wagner's drawing and can now be partially explored using aerial archeology . Accordingly, the rampart slope of the castle hill formed the outer defensive ring. On top of it was a wall that served as a parapet. The area between the rampart and the palace building was likely to have been deepened like a trench to protect the building from direct fire. A small pleasure garden belonging to Landgrave Philipp and a tower-like building to protect the entrance to the castle are still occupied. A fair has been held in front of this gate since May 1, 1633.

literature

  • Elmar Brohl : Landgrave Philipp III. von Hessen-Butzbach and Valentin Wagner's drawings of the fortress. In: Holger Th. Gräf and Helga Meise (eds.): Valentin Wagner. A draftsman in the Thirty Years War. Exhibition catalog Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt 2003, ISBN 3-921254-92-2 , pp. 71–82.
  • 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. 28.
  • Marcus Jae / Jörg Lindenthal / Dieter Wolf : Remnants of the "refuge" Schloss Philippseck of Landgrave Philipp III. From Hessen-Butzbach. In: Hessen-Aräologie 2007 , Wiesbaden 2008, pp. 149–153.
  • Ulrich Schütte: The castle as a fortification. Fortified castle buildings from the early modern period. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1994, ISBN 3-534-11692-5 , pp. 235f. and Fig. 164.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Arthur B. Schmidt: The historical foundations of civil law in the Grand Duchy of Hesse . Curt von Münchow, Giessen 1893, p. 100, note 6 and p. 9, 11.
  2. ↑ Buonaiuto Lorini: Della Fortificationi libri cinque. Venice 1607, Libro Terzo p. 150.
  3. ↑ Johann Wilhelm Dilich: Perilogia or report Vestungs gebeuwen. Frankfurt am Main 1640, plate 236.
  4. ↑ Elmar Brohl: Landgrave Philipp III. von Hessen-Butzbach and Valentin Wagner's drawings of the fortress. In: Holger Th. Gräf and Helga Meise (eds.): Valentin Wagner. A draftsman in the Thirty Years War. Exhibition catalog Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt 2003, p. 73f. with other sources.
  5. ↑ HStAD Order. D 4 No. 67/7; HStAD order D 4 no. 61/1
  6. ↑ Elmar Brohl: Landgrave Philipp III. von Hessen-Butzbach and Valentin Wagner's drawings of the fortress. In: Holger Th. Gräf and Helga Meise (eds.): Valentin Wagner. A draftsman in the Thirty Years War. Exhibition catalog Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt 2003, p. 74f.

Coordinates: 50 ° 23 ′ 29.7 "  N , 8 ° 37 ′ 1.3"  E