Wörth Castle (Wörth am Main)

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lili rere
The last remnant of the castle: the former tower with a modern battlement
The tower with three Renaissance portals (one not visible) seen from the factory site.
The Wörther Castle on a historicizing mural based on a map from 1783 (location: Old Town Hall)
Epitaph of the Wolf von Mörle called Beheim , died 1539, pillar south side of the main nave in the collegiate church of St. Peter and Alexander in Aschaffenburg
The lock converted into a wood factory (photo taken around 1900). The administration building in the foreground stands in place of the Palas, which was demolished in 1860

The Wörth Castle (also Electoral Castle Wörth ) was a castle in the town of Wörth am Main in the Miltenberg district in Bavaria , Germany that emerged from a medieval Niederungsburg . In the middle of the 19th century it was converted into a factory and most of the time it was demolished.

location

The castle was located on the left bank of the Main at the southern end of Wörth am Main. It was separated from the old town by a wall, outer bailey (later castle garden) and moat .

history

The west wing from the land side, left in the background the keep; the two factory chimneys were installed in the late 19th century. Detail of a lithographed postcard from 1907

Wörth am Main, first mentioned in 1291 as oppidum meum Werde (Werde = island) in a document from the Lords of Breuberg , certainly already owned a castle at that time. This itself is only named eight years later, together with the place, as a fiefdom of the Archbishop of Mainz in the hands of the von Breuberg family. At that time Gerhard II von Eppstein was Archbishop and Elector of Mainz . With Gerlach von Breuberg , the family of charms from Breuberg had reached the height of their power.

From the Regesten archbishops of Mainz of 1381 is reported that Archbishop Adolf I of Nassau-Wiesbaden-Idstein his Wörther and Obernburger bailiff Richard Elmen a Wörther Burglehen annually ten guilders and in 1382 a debt of 500 guilders to the Bede the Wörther castle intends to repay. In 1391 his successor Konrad II von Weinsberg pledged the archbishopric castle and office of Wörth and Obernburg with all rights of use and income to Heinrich von Gonsrade , his burgrave of Miltenberg. The only exceptions were the highest fine, which was still due to the archbishop, and 100 guilders, which the city had to pay annually to Aschaffenburg and which were to be paid to Gerhard von Hefftersheim . In the 15th century, the Wörther Castle temporarily sank into a robber baron's nest.

Around 1530, Archbishop Albrecht von Brandenburg pledged Wörth Castle to his court marshal Wolf von Mörle , who had it wonderfully rebawed in the German style (i.e. in the late Gothic style ) . The castle was badly damaged in the Second Margrave War in 1552. The castle experienced its brief heyday in the 20s of the 17th century under Count Adam Philipp von Kronberg , who had the aristocratic seat expanded as a four-sided Renaissance complex based on the model of Johannisburg Castle , including the old keep, only shortly afterwards in the confusion of the thirty-year- old War in turn to be destroyed. Another renovation was carried out by the barons and cousins ​​Johann Reinhardt and Franz Adolph Philipp von Hoheneck , since 1669 as the successor to the Kronberg city lords in Wörth, after a severe flood of the Main in 1682 . After the regional extinction of this Hoheneck line around 1719, the Wörth pledge was no longer awarded by Kurmainz. The castle thus lost its function as a residence.

After the Battle of Dettingen in 1743, French troops holed up in Wörther Castle, with the soldiers walling up all the windows. The buildings continued to fall into disrepair, which even extensive structural repairs between 1777 and 1794, initiated by the Princely Rent Office Breuberg , could not be stopped. The flooding of the Main in February 1784 left particularly severe damage when the manorial rooms on the upper floors served as emergency quarters for over 100 citizens and 51 head of cattle. In 1799 it was sold by the Electoral Mainz court chamber by auction to Johann Michael Ostner zu Neustadt , princely Löwenstein forest master and with it transition into civil ownership. The castle was finally auctioned for sale or demolition by his heirs in 1843. The wing on the mains side was demolished in 1860; The alliance coat of arms of Philipp Franz von Hoheneck and Maria Margarethe von Dalberg , flanked by two stone lions, was preserved and is now in the ground floor hall of the old town hall. The fabric of the former south wing still existed until it was demolished by the then owner SAF in 1999.

description

The keep around 1910 with the original tent roof

At the time of the auction on June 10, 1843 , the castle on the Main was described for sale or demolition as follows: “consists of four connected wings, is two floors high, made of stone, contains approx. 40 spacious rooms and halls, two large ones vaulted cellars and four connected large storerooms. The foundation of the castle contains 58.5 square rods and the courtyard 32.5 square rods, in the latter there is a fountain. Around the castle within the curtain wall are about 84 Ruthen gardens. This castle seems to be ideally suited for the construction of a factory or a large store. ”The castle took exactly this fate and was partly demolished and partly converted into factory buildings.

The approximately 20 m high keep (also the gate tower ; area 6.85 × 6.65 m²) was preserved in the middle of the factory building, but is not open to the public today. It has a plastered sandstone masonry with hump square edges and stone elements. Originally the tower had a tiled tent roof, which was replaced by a crenellated wreath over arched frieze after a fire in 1916 .

At the end of the 17th century, the Wörther Castle must have been an imposing building directly on the Main.

Extract of a picture from the old town hall of Wörth am Main: on the left the old castle with the castle garden in front, on the right the medieval Wörth am Main. North is on the right

Todays use

Wörth am Main by night: the tower of the castle (right) is illuminated in the winter months. On the left in the background the Clingenburg

The castle no longer exists today and its remains are largely overbuilt by company buildings. Only the former donjon with renaissance portal in the heart of the factory grounds still reminds of the courtly history at this place.

literature

  • Otto Berninger: The flood of the Main in 1784. In: Mainschifffahrts-Nachrichten 19, 2002, pp. 19-48.
  • Werner Trost: The Wörther City Palace . In: Ders., Wörth am Main. Chronicle of a small Franconian town , volume 2. Bürgererverein eV, Wörth 1991, pp. 406–421.

Web links

Commons : Schloss Wörth  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolf von Mörle called Beheim († February 3, 1539 in Aschaffenburg). Feudal owner of Wörth Castle, court marshal in the service of Kurmainzer , childless; in the vicinity of those from Reifenberg and Echter von Mespelbrunn . Inscription of the epitaph: A [nno] d [omini] 1539 uf the eighth day Chri [stostom] - is the noble festival - wolf home maschall verschiden, the god g [enad] . The three-quarters round figure of the knight is shown in Maximilian armor standing on a lion with his coat of arms: Main coat of arms of the von Mörle gen.Beheim: Divided and half-split by red, silver and black, topped with a red-covered golden rose, crest: two bull horns. In addition, the four ancestral coats of arms on the sides: Top right: the family coat of arms of the von Mörle family. Beheim. Bottom right: a crooked black fish in silver (Fischborn family coat of arms). Top left: two golden diagonal bars in red ( Hutten family coat of arms ). Bottom left: a three-leaf silver clover in black ( Trohe family coat of arms ) (based on: Alfred F. Wolfert: Aschaffenburger Wappenbuch, drawings: Joachim von Roebel, Aschaffenburg 1983, p. 49)
  2. ^ HStA Munich, Section I, Mainzer Urk. 3475, = Böhmer, Regg. the ebb. from MainzI, No. 228
  3. ↑ StA Würzburg, books with various contents 21. Sheet 191f, cf. Chapter “City Foundation” in this volume.
  4. ↑ The Regesta of the Archbishops of Mainz after 1374/75 StA Wü , MIB 9 fol. 268 [02] (1381), StA Wü, MIB 10 fol. 045v (1382), StA Wü, MIB 12 fol. 111 [01] (1391)
  5. ↑ Trost 1991, p. 408.
  6. ↑ Zimmerische Chronik , Vol. 2. Ed. By Karl August Barack. 2nd ed., Mohr, Freiburg 1881–1882, pp. 333ff.
  7. ↑ Trost 1991, p. 415f.
  8. ^ Trost 1991, p. 417.
  9. ↑ Customs administrator Franz Ivo Kirchner complained about this in a petition made to the electoral government in Mainz in 1786 (StA Wü, Aschaffenburg archives files No. 17 / XLI 1 / I-II; cf. Berninger, Das Mainhochwasser von 1784 , p. 46). The high water mark 1784 The height of the Mine den 29 Hornung can still be seen on the gate walls.
  10. ↑ The painting in the old town hall, created in 1906 after an unclear map by the geometer Johann Weygand from 1783, mistakenly shows a three-wing system.
  11. ↑ The small Bavarian tail was 10 feet or about 2,92m long for the Quadratrute about 8.5 m 2 in size
  12. ↑ The castle wall was also the southern end of the town wall.
  13. ↑ General Gazette for the Kingdom of Bavaria, Announcement 766 , Munich 1843, eleventh year, p. 268

Coordinates: 49 ° 47 '45.1 "  N , 9 ° 9' 41.3"  E