City fortifications Koblenz

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Site of the Roman fort from the time of Emperor Augustus at the Castor Church in 2008
Map of the Roman and medieval city walls of Koblenz
City fortifications of Koblenz 1632 - copper engraving of the siege by Swedish troops in the Thirty Years War of 1632
Remains of a fortified tower and part of the medieval city wall in Koblenz
Map of Koblenz with Prussian city fortifications 1888
The "Mainzer Tor" of the Prussian city fortifications around 1880
Demolition of the soldering gate in 1899
Rhine Casemate Corps and King's Hall

A fortification in Koblenz had existed since the beginning of the Roman colonization. Under the rule of the Archbishops of Trier , it was expanded further in the Middle Ages . At the beginning of the 19th century , the Prussians gave the city ​​a new and powerful fortification when building the Koblenz fortress . This was given up in 1890 because of the advancing war technology.

Roman city fortifications

A first fort was built at the time of Emperor Augustus (27 BC - 14 AD) at the confluence of the Moselle and Rhine to secure the Mainz - Cologne - Xanten Rhine road. The first evidence of this early Roman fort was made in November 2008 when a sensational find was made during construction work for the 2011 Federal Horticultural Show at the Kastor Church and an ancient moat was discovered. The four meter wide and still 2.5 meter deep moat of the 100 by 100 meter large fort is the missing evidence of the early Roman settlement of Koblenz, which was previously searched in vain for 150 years in the area of ​​the old town . The Romans called their settlements " Apud Confluentes ", which means something like "By those who flow together".

After the fall of the Limes , Emperor Constantine (306–337) had the area of ​​today's old town provided with a mighty wall ring with 19 round towers and a fixed gate. The foundations of the old castle still consist of the remains of one of the round towers. Other remains can be found under the choir of the Florinskirche, at the Liebfrauen rectory and partly in residential buildings on Kornpfortstrasse. The Roman city wall was preserved until the early Middle Ages . Remnants of the wall and the streets of Altengraben, Plan, Entenpfuhl and Kornpfortstraße in Koblenz's old town still bear witness to the late Roman fortifications.

Kurtrier city fortifications

With the beginning of the rule of the Archbishops of Trier in the 11th century, Koblenz protected the still existing Roman city ​​wall . Under Archbishop Arnold II of Isenburg , work on the decisive expansion and strengthening of the city wall began around 1250, but was mainly carried out under Archbishop Heinrich II of Finstingen in the years 1276 to 1289. The old castle was built at the same time as the new city wall, as a fortress against the citizens of Koblenz, who were striving for more independence. The new city wall was completed with interruptions at the beginning of the 14th century. The new city wall now also protected the Kastor Church and the branch of the Teutonic Order on the Rhine . Right next to the Old Castle, Archbishop Balduin of Luxembourg began building the Balduin Bridge over the Moselle in 1342 . Archbishop Otto von Ziegenhain included the castle in the strong new fortifications of the city with the construction of the western round tower and the bridge gate to the Balduin Bridge. The course of the wall marked the delimitation of the city of Koblenz until the 18th century, until the construction of the electoral palace . The city wall was further strengthened and fortified in 1655 and 1734, most recently with the help of the builder Balthasar Neumann .

The city wall was about nine meters high and one meter thick, reinforced by regular round arches, provided with various towers and gates . There was a battlement on the wall . It ran from the Ochsenturm on the Moselle (at the height of today's Moselle railway bridge ) along Weißergasse to Löhrstraße / Fischelstraße, further through Kleinschmittsgäßchen across today's central square (the water tower wall was there until 1964) to the Schanzenpforte and from there to the corner tower at Rhine (around the current tower of the Prussian government building ). The wall line along the Moselle was provided with the linden, swan and corn gate. With the wooden, Jewish and ferry gate, parts of the Roman city wall were used up to the old castle. The most important land gate was the Löhrtor at Löhrstraße / Kleinschmittsgäßchen, which was expanded into a double gate system in 1390. Small houses were built on the inside of the wall over time; these “wall houses” were very modest buildings that were mostly inhabited by lower social classes. The last of these houses (in the street "Schanzenpforte") was only demolished in the 1990s and the city wall exposed at this point. Only short sections of the medieval city wall in the streets of Schanzenpforte and on Kleinschmittsgäßchen have survived, but they are only partially visible due to the surrounding buildings. The tower visible on Kleinschmittsgässchen gives an impression of the outside of the former wall. It was restored in 2003 and is now rendered true to the original. The section of wall at the Schanzenpforte that was exposed after the demolition of the last wall house reveals the construction of the parapet walkway supported by a round arch on the inside.

An interesting source of the history of the medieval city wall are the building invoices stored in the Koblenz city archive .

With the construction of the electoral palace at the end of the 18th century and the creation of the new town, the eastern part of the city wall was demolished. After the French revolutionary army conquered the city of Koblenz in 1794 in the first coalition war, all fortifications were transferred to it. The city wall of the Electorate of Trier was almost completely laid down.

Prussian city fortifications

In the course of the Wars of Liberation, Prussia annexed the city in 1814. Before the end of the war, on March 11, 1815, the "Order to re-fortify the city of Coblenz and the Ehrenbreitstein Fortress" was issued by King Friedrich Wilhelm III. The construction of various ski jumps on the right bank of the Rhine began immediately . Only after the annexation had become legally binding through the resolutions of the Congress of Vienna did the actual construction and expansion of the fortifications begin.

Although the Prussian interior minister Friedrich von Schuckmann and the finance minister Hans Graf von Bülow had jointly issued special regulations, according to which land for the fortress construction should only be taken over against compensation, there were numerous complaints and accusations of arbitrariness, which were only stopped after State Chancellor Prince von Hardenberg personally took care of this. This particular u. a. that the compensation commission set up in 1816 was no longer headed by the overwhelmed district administrator Carl Burret (1761-1828), but instead the government secretary Ignaz Heil (~ 1775-1824) was entrusted with it in March 1818. Up until 1821, the city of Koblenz alone had received compensation of 113,186 thalers. In 1826 most of the compensation was paid. In the years that followed, the Koblenz Fortress , one of the most extensive fortress systems in Europe, was built according to the most modern findings of the so-called "New Prussian" or " New German fortification manner ".

In the Prussian fortress concept, the fortification of the city of Koblenz played a subordinate role from the start and thus reveals a Prussian peculiarity that is in contrast to the baroque fortress construction of Koblenz. Only after the important positions on the Karthauser ( fortress Kaiser Alexander ), the Ehrenbreitstein ( fortress Ehrenbreitstein ) and in Lützel ( fortress Kaiser Franz ) had reached an initial stage of development, the city walling began in March 1819. When connecting to the Moselle, the Kurtrier specifications (at Saarplatz) were kept, the remains of which were partly integrated here and the wall, consisting of 6 jutting angles, was drawn to the Rhine south of the castle (today the Pfaffendorfer bridge driveway ). Three multi-storey casemate buildings housed gates at the connection to the Rhine as well as Mainzer Strasse and Löhrstrasse. There was another wall gate at Weißergasse, where there was also an elevated gun position ( cavalier ). The mighty casemates served as barracks and could be defended with guns. The approximately 13-meter-high and 40-meter-wide earth wall had a free-standing moat wall and in the present, up to 20-meter-wide trench, there were defensive structures ( caponiers ). The Moselweißer Schanze (former name: Fort Blücher) is also included in the fortification of the city . With the Rhine connection barracks , the Mainzertor barracks and the Löhrtor barracks , the three large wall gate systems accommodated soldiers after the completion of the Prussian city fortifications.

The execution was characteristic of the Prussian fortress construction innovation. With their re-evaluation of the fortification instruments, the Prussian engineers made a major contribution to the reform of international fortress construction in the 19th century . Along the river bank, the city was decorated with a stately wall several meters high with loopholes. The mouth of the Moselle was reinforced by casemates in the area of ​​the Deutschordenskommende. With the construction of the Rhine railway in 1857, the wall was breached for the first time. The Moselle railway bridge, built according to plans by Hartwich and Schwarz, took into account the military requirements, as can be seen from the remains of the bridge towers. The same applies to the Rhine railway bridge (Pfaffendorfer bridge) built between 1862 and 1864.

The following engineer officers were involved in the construction of the Prussian city fortifications in the construction phase until around 1832:

End of the city fortifications

Lack of building sites

As early as 1835, the Chamber of Commerce pointed out in an annual report the lack of urban building sites due to the narrow city fortifications. Since building was not allowed in the outer fortress district (outside the city wall), the rents for the few large squares that existed rose rapidly, which put shackles on the growing industry. A petition submitted to the king by the city council and the Chamber of Commerce was rejected in 1866. It was not until the Reichs-Rayon Laws of 1871 that half-timbered houses with thin walls could be built from a distance of 600 m from the city wall. A local statute of July 17, 1878, however, also prohibited this possibility.

Only when Mayor Emil Schüller took office in 1888 did the situation change, as he continuously advocated the removal of the city wall and demanded that the Minister of War Heinrich von Goßler call it. The first breach in the city wall came about when the Mainzer Tor was closed in spring 1889. The Weiser Tor and the Schiffertor on the Rhine Ship Bridge followed in the same year.

After the war ministry also expressed its intention in 1899 to sell the city walls on the banks of the Rhine and Moselle to the city, the city assembly asked Cologne city architect Josef Stübben to draw up a city expansion plan. Mayor Schüller submitted this to the War Ministry in the spring of 1890. A cabinet order of March 13th then ordered the long-awaited abandonment of the city fortifications; only the building restrictions around the Fort Grand Duke Constantine and the fortress of Emperor Alexander in the Karthaus district remained.

In the same year the city acquired the city walls of the Rhine and Moselle between Deutschem Eck and Rheinkavalier or Bassenheimer Hof for 14,842 marks . At that time the name Deutsches Eck was still used for the Teutonic Order and the Basilica of St. Castor . Further purchases followed until 1896.

Demolition of the city fortifications

The city wall along the Rhine and Moselle were demolished from 1890, while the rest of the ramparts and the fortifications followed from 1896. Since the building ban in front of the city wall also fell, the settlement area was able to break out of the narrow city limits for the first time. The southern suburb was built south of the wall . The Rhine facilities were extended to the Deutsches Eck and administrative and hotel buildings were built on. Today the Moselle and Friedrich-Ebert-Ring run in the area of ​​the former wall. The Herz-Jesu-Kirche was built at the height of the Löhrtor from 1900 . After a donation of 100,000 marks from Julius Wegeler , the municipal festival hall was built in the area of ​​the former Mainz Gate from 1898 .

A city gate of the Rhine Casemate Corps is still preserved in remains . The building is near the wine village and serves as the substructure of the Pfaffendorfer bridge . The artillery slots were subsequently enlarged and added. From the connection to the Moselle there are still embankment walls (Saarplatz), some of which date from pre-Prussian times. Small parts of the city wall (in the area of ​​Moselring 8) and of the Moselbrückentor are visible. There are fortifications at the Teutonic Order and the crenellated wall at the Electoral Palace . This wall was broken through in two places during construction work for the 2011 Federal Horticultural Show . This created an axis from the new rail stop in Koblenz Stadtmitte via Schlossstrasse through the castle itself to the Rhine.

In 1964, the water tower wall on the central square that was created after the Second World War was torn down, a part of the medieval city wall that was still there. Today a medieval defense tower from 1276 at the Altlöhrtor and a section of the city wall from the 13th century in the Schanzenpforte has been preserved.

In the course of the new version of the Rhineland-Palatinate Monument Protection Act 2008, all remains of the Koblenz city fortifications have been included in the list of monuments of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate as protected cultural monuments .

Monument protection

The remains of the city fortifications are a protected cultural monument under the Monument Protection Act (DSchG) and entered in the list of monuments of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate . They are distributed throughout the city .

The remains of the city fortifications have been part of the Upper Middle Rhine Valley UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2002 .

literature

  • Max Bär : From the history of the city of Koblenz. 1814/1914 , Krabbensche Buchdruckerei, Koblenz, 1922.
  • Energieversorgung Mittelrhein GmbH (ed.): History of the city of Koblenz . Overall editing: Ingrid Bátori in conjunction with Dieter Kerber and Hans Josef Schmidt
    • Vol. 1: From the beginning to the end of the electoral era . Theiss, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-8062-0876-X
    • Vol. 2: From the French city to the present . Theiss, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-8062-1036-5
  • Thomas Tippach (Diss.): Koblenz as a Prussian garrison and fortress city, economy, infrastructure and urban development . 2000 (series: urban research, series A: representations volume 53), ISBN 3-412-08600-2
  • Klaus T. Weber (dissertation): The Prussian fortifications of Koblenz (1815–1834) . (Series: Art and Cultural Studies Research) 2003, ISBN 3-89739-340-9

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ An early Roman fort discovered - the city's history turned upside down - the ancient moat at the St. Kastor basilica points to the time of the Emperor Augustus in: Rhein-Zeitung , November 19, 2008
  2. ↑ founded in Koblenz on the Rhine: BUGA makes history in: spd-koblenz.de 20 November, 2008
  3. ↑ Max Bär: Building the Wall in Koblenz. Bills 1276–1289 (= publications of the Society for Rhenish History 5), Leipzig 1889.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h Bär: From the history of the city of Koblenz 1922. P. 163–172.
  5. ^ Weber: The Prussian fortifications of Koblenz, 2003, pp. 90–93.
  6. ^ Udo von Bonin: History of the engineer corps and the pioneers in Prussia . 2: From 1812 to the middle of the nineteenth century. Berlin 1878. Friedrich Wilhelm Hansch: History of the Royal Saxon Engineer and Pioneer Corps (Pioneer Battalion No. 12) . Dresden 1898. Klemens Mersmann: History of the Royal Prussian Guard Pioneer Battalion . 2nd Edition. Berlin 1910. Military weekly paper [years 1816–1868] . Berlin. Ranking and quarters list of the Royal Prussian Army for the year ... [1817–1868] . Berlin. Archives: Garrison military church books, 18th and 19th centuries. Evangelical Central Archive in Berlin and Secret State Archive of Prussian Cultural Heritage .
  7. ↑ Informational directory of cultural monuments. Kreisfrei Stadt Koblenz , pp. 2, 3, 5. Source: http://www.gdke-rlp.de/ (accessed on January 12, 2009)
  8. ↑ General Directorate for Cultural Heritage Rhineland-Palatinate (ed.): Informational directory of cultural monuments - District-free city of Koblenz (PDF; 1.3 MB), Koblenz 2011

Remarks

  1. ↑ Law on Restrictions on Real Estate Around Fortresses