Tabor (weir system)

Under Tabor a late medieval or early modern is today generally fortification understood that was often built around churches. The name is a loan word used in war technology that entered the German vocabulary during the Hussite period .

Originally, the members of the radical and militant wing of the Hussites named Tabor, after the example of the biblical mountain Tabor, an open-air place where they gathered to take the Lord's Supper “ sub utraque ”, Tabor and were therefore called Taborites . This is how the city of Tábor in the Czech Republic got its name. After all, the Hussite camps and wagon castles were soon given the same name, and it was in this meaning that the word was adopted by the Hussite enemies. In the Czech language today, tábor is generally used for camps, whether field, tent, holiday or summer camp.

In the German-language sources, the designation " Taber " or " Teber " was used from then on primarily for field fortifications made of earthwork and palisades .

Place name

In many parts of Austria , especially in the north and east, Tabor has been preserved as a topographical name to this day, mostly in connection with a fortification. In part, these are also the areas that were badly affected during the Hussite Wars . In Vienna , Taborstraße and the name Am Tabor still remind us that the city had a Tabor built near the Danube crossings in the first half of the 15th century . In Burgenland and in the Steiermark exist today fortified churches and other fortifications, long considered Tabor Church , Tabor Cave were called, etc., or still are.

Examples are:

• the Fehringer Tabor
• the Feldbacher Tabor
• the Mannersdorfer Tabor in Mannersdorf an der Rabnitz
• the Tabor Church in Weiz
• the Taborwand cave near Spital am Semmering (better known as the robber cave )

literature

• Herwig Ebner: The Styrian Tabore. In: Communications from the Commission for Castle Research 4 (1955), pp. 292–309.