Eschborn tower castle
| Eschborn tower castle | ||
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 Ferdinand Luthmer's ideal of Eschborn Castle |
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| Creation time : | 11th century | |
| Castle type : | Niederungsburg, moth | |
| Conservation status: | Burgstall | |
| Construction: | Vilbel sandstone, basalt, Taunus quartzite, Roman bricks, half-timbering | |
| Place: | Eschborn | |
| Geographical location | 50 ° 8 '45.7 " N , 8 ° 34' 4.3" O | |
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The tower castle Eschborn is an Outbound Turmhügelburg (Motte) in what is now streets "Castle Road", "On Hofgraben" and "On the moat" of the city Eschborn in the Main-Taunus-Kreis in Hesse .
history
The Eschborn tower hill castle was built in the 11th century, it is associated with the lords of Eschborn who appeared at the end of the 12th to the beginning of the 13th century and who moved their headquarters to Kronberg shortly afterwards . The castle in Eschborn was first mentioned in a document by the knight Rudolf von Sachsenhausen in a list of goods from 1339. Eschborn belonged as an imperial fief to the Lords of Kronberg until they died out in 1704 and their rule fell to Kurmainz . In the course of the battle at Höchst in 1622 between General Tilly and Christian von Braunschweig during the Thirty Years' War , the old castle complex and almost the entire place were destroyed. The Burgstall is modernly built over today.
description
From 1895 to 1896, on behalf of the Empress, Lieutenant Leinhaas and the castle captain Ludwig Freiherr von Ompteda carried out excavations on the outskirts of the former village of Eschborn on the castle stables, which still showed a small, round castle hill with an indicated ditch surrounding it. They systematically uncovered the remains of the Eschborn tower castle, the results were published in 1899 by building officer Christian Ludwig Thomas in the “Archive for Hessian History and Archeology”.
The entire castle area was surrounded by a 1.20 meter thick square curtain wall rounded at four corners with a diameter of around 20 meters surrounding the inner courtyard. The foundation walls of a square tower with an outer length of 10.5 meters, a wall thickness of 2.75 meters and an interior space of 20 square meters were exposed on the natural clay soil with an artificial fill of the castle hill. Between the tower and the curtain wall, there were remains of the foundations of some smaller buildings that could have served as extensions to the tower, perhaps as residential or stable buildings, and were executed in half-timbered houses. The masonry was made of Vilbel sandstone, basalt, Taunus quartzite and Roman bricks. Slate fragments found in the rubble indicate a slate roof on the tower. The upstream ring trench was about four meters wide and 10 meters high and was probably fed by the Westerbach .
During the excavations, medieval shards of vessels, an anvil, large iron axes, keys, two spindle whorls, a bronze lamp, a fire grate, floor tiles, a well-preserved stone jug and large quantities of charred grain were found.
Remarks
The tower hill castles were mainly used to protect property, mostly farms, in whose immediate vicinity they were also built. In Eschborn there were some farms belonging to aristocratic families (e.g. the Solmssche Hof), for whose protection the castle may have served.
literature
- Rudolf Knappe: Medieval castles in Hessen. 800 castles, castle ruins and fortifications. 2nd Edition. Wartberg-Verlag, Gudensberg-Gleichen 1995, ISBN 3-86134-228-6 , p. 476.
- Angela Metzner: Reichslandpolitik, aristocracy and castles - studies on the Wetterau in the Staufer period. Büdingen 2008/2009, ISBN 978-3-00-026770-3 , pp. 162-165 ( Büdinger Geschichtsblätter 21 ).
- Ludwig Freiherr von Ompteda : The von Kronberg and her manor house , Frankfurt am Main 1899
- Christian Ludwig Thomas : Der Burggraben zu Eschborn, in: Archive for Hessian History and Archeology , 1899, NF Vol. II, pp. 415–438
- Ferdinand Luthmer , Eschborn, in: Architectural and art monuments - Eastern Taunus. Frankfurt am Main 1907
