Wolgast Castle
The Wolgast Castle was a castle in the town of Wolgast in the northeast of today's federal state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and domination seat of the Dukes of Pomerania-Wolgast . It was located on a small island in front of the city in the Peene River between the mainland and the island of Usedom , which is still known as the " Castle Island " to this day. The castle, which was one of the most important Renaissance buildings in Northern Germany , existed from 1496, the beginning of the renovation of the previously existing castle, until it was finally destroyed around 1820. The remains of the castle were used as building material for other buildings, a ruin exists for this reason Not. Only a few items of the exterior and interior furnishings have been preserved in various exhibitions. A reference to the former castle can be found in the Wolgast city coat of arms , which shows a castle tower between two griffins .
history
prehistory
As early as 1113/1114 the residence of ducal family members on the Peene island in front of Wolgast was documented. According to a few finds from Slavic times, a castle wall and a corresponding wooden castle can be expected there. Around 1200 there were reports of the Danish occupation of the castle, next to which a German town was founded a short time later.
When the country was first divided into Pomerania-Stettin and Pomerania-Wolgast in 1295, Bogislaw IV had to look for a new residence, while his stepbrother Otto I stayed in Stettin. This was the beginning of the history of the Duchy of Pomerania-Wolgast.
Established as a ducal residence
Wolgast Castle was built in 1298 as a stone castle from an early medieval castle wall built on the castle island . After 1330 the castle was rebuilt and expanded by Duke Barnim IV and his brothers Bogislaw V and Wartislaw V , who ruled in Western Pomerania .
The conversion to the residential palace of the Pomeranian dukes began in 1496 during the reign of Bogislaw X. and included the construction of three assembly halls and a representative building with a stair tower. Under Duke Philip I , the castle was expanded and modernized from 1536 onwards, and in 1547 he had fortifications built by the Saxon fortress builder Enderlein Hess .
In 1555 the tapestry (4.5 × 7 m), later called "Croy carpet", was brought to Wolgast's residence house. In December 1557 the castle was badly damaged by fire. Reconstruction began a year later and was further modified in 1559. He also had a new coat of arms stone made, which of the three still existing is not listed. The renovation started here was not completed until 1563 under the sons of Philip I. In this context, a modernization was carried out through the implementation of contemporary structural elements, which primarily included the construction of a spiral stone. This was made in Pirna by the Saxon master builder Hans Kramer and later brought to Wolgast by water.
Under Philipp's third son Ernst Ludwig , who succeeded him in 1569 after the end of the custodial government in the rule of Pomerania-Wolgast, there were further modifications. From 1576 to 1577, a new dance hall was built in advance of Ernst Ludwig's wedding with Sophia Hedwig von Braunschweig-Lüneburg . In addition, the castle got a water pipe and a library . Towards the end of the 16th century there was also a mint in the castle for a short time , in which the copper Wolgast pennies and silver shillings were minted. During the reign of Philipp Julius , the last Duke of Pomerania-Wolgast, there were also minor structural changes, such as the erection of a colonnade, the figurative design of the portals, including early baroque sandstone figures by a Danzig stonemason between 1612 and 1614 .
With the death of Philipp Julius in 1625, Bogislaw XIV , Duke of Pomerania-Stettin, also took control of the Pomerania-Wolgast region. This ended the time as the ducal headquarters for the city of Wolgast. Bogislaw XIV was also the last Pomeranian Duke, so that with his death in 1637 and the effects of the Thirty Years' War , the decline of the Wolgast Castle began. As early as 1628, the castle captain Christoph von Neuenkirchen was captured during the fighting for Wolgast between the Danes and Wallenstein . The castle was looted and damaged by Danish and Imperial troops.
The funeral sermon in the castle church for the Swedish King Gustav II Adolf , who died on November 16, 1632 in the battle of Lützen , which was held in Wolgast in June and July of the following year as part of the laying out of his body, was the last official act. which took place in the castle.
Decay and destruction
After the Treaty of Westphalia and the beginning of Swedish rule in Pomerania, the palace was the residence of the royal family several times when they were in the country. Particularly from the 1650s, stays by Karl X. Gustav are documented, for which the castle was partially repaired.
In the 1660s and 1670s, Wolgast Castle was temporarily the seat of the Governor General of Swedish-Pomerania Carl Gustav Wrangel and the Swedish-Pomeranian government as well as the court court , whose seat was moved from Greifswald to Wolgast. After Wrangel's defeat by Brandenburg troops at the Battle of Fehrbellin, the city of Wolgast was besieged in September 1675 . A cannonball hit the magazine in the castle's powder tower , which was largely destroyed due to the resulting explosion. The fortress commander Andreas Dubislaff von Blixen fell out of favor because of the handover of the castle and the city to the Brandenburgers near Wrangel. After the peace treaty of 1679, the Swedish-Pomeranian government and the governor general moved to Stettin , and the court returned to Greifswald. This ended Wolgast's time as a residential or government city.
Over the next 150 years, the remains of the castle fell into disrepair. In 1711 the copper cover of the Bogislaw tower was removed. There were also partial demolitions for the use of the building material for other buildings, for example for the rebuilding of the Wolgast St. Petri Church after the city fire of 1713 and for the construction of a mansion on the estate named after Carl Gustav Wrangel in Wrangelsburg . Several paintings and drawings, including by Caspar David Friedrich, show the state at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century. In 1798 the Swedes finally sold the remains of the castle to the city of Wolgast as a quarry. Presumably as early as 1820, all parts of the castle above ground had been removed. From 1843, the grain wholesaler August Wilhelm Homeyer had a warehouse built on the site, some of which existed until 1938. During excavations at the end of 2008, in addition to smaller objects from the castle furnishings, part of the foundation of the stair tower was found.
Only a few details have survived about the interior of the palace, which included paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder and around 50 tapestries . The only surviving tapestry is the Croÿ carpet , which is owned by the Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald and is on permanent loan for the exhibition at the Pomeranian State Museum . There it is safely stored in an air-conditioned glass vtrine. Apart from illustrations, only heraldic stones from the individual building phases have been handed down to the present day from the various epochs, some of which can be viewed in the St. Petri Church, the Szczecin Museum and the City Museum in Wolgast. Another coat of arms stone from 1551 was brought to Greifswald at the beginning of the 19th century and is today in the main university building , as is a plastic sandstone relief of Duke Ernst Ludwig. The library of the evangelical parish of St. Petri contains some volumes from the former castle library.
literature
- Helmut Backhaus: The Wolgast Castle as a Swedish-Pomeranian residence. In: Land by the Sea. Pomerania in the mirror of history. Böhlau-Verlag, Cologne 1995, ISBN 3-412-14094-5 , pp. 493-506.
- Hellmuth Bethe : On the building history of the former ducal palace in Wolgast. In: Baltic Studies. New episode 40/1938, pp. 87-95.
- Norbert Buske , Sabine Bock : Wolgast: Ducal residence and castle, churches and chapels, port and city. Thomas Helms Verlag Schwerin 1995, ISBN 3-931185-05-2 .
- Festschrift of the city of Wolgast, 1295 founding of the Duchy of Pommern-Wolgast, Wolgast, 1995
- Eginhard Dräger: Wrangelsburg and the Wolgast Castle. Wolgast's coat of arms. In: Pomerania. Journal of Culture and History. Issue 4/1998, ISSN 0032-4167 , pp. 20-27.
- Roderich Schmidt : Wolgast - residence and burial place of the Pomeranian griffins. In: Pomerania. Journal of Culture and History. Issue 3/1996, ISSN 0032-4167 , pp. 32-48. Reprinted in: Roderich Schmidt: The historic Pomerania . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne, Weimar and Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-412-27805-2 , pp. 152-178.
- Ralf-Gunnar Werlich: Wolgast. In: Courtyards and residences in the late medieval empire. Volume 1/2: Residences. Thorbecke, Ostfildern 2003, ISBN 3-7995-4515-8 , pp. 642-643.
- Jörg Ansorge, Giannina Schindler: excavation report Wolgast Schlossinsel Fpl. 7. State Office for Culture and Monument Preservation, Schwerin 2008 ( digitized ).
Web links
- Literature about Wolgast Castle in the State Bibliography MV
- Virtual representation: Old Duke Castle Wolgast on the castle island (usedomedia.de)
- Reconstruction drawing by Wolfgang Braun
Film contribution
- Wolgast's lost castle. In: NDR -Nordmagazin from December 16, 2019.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Joachim Krüger: Between the Empire and Sweden: the sovereign coinage in the Duchy of Pomerania and in Swedish Pomerania in the early modern period (approx. 1580-1715). LIT Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-8258-9768-0 , pp. 80-83.
- ↑ Cast steel for the Berliner Hochbahnen ( Memento of the original from January 5, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Coordinates: 54 ° 3 ′ 19.9 ″ N , 13 ° 46 ′ 55.8 ″ E