Twangste

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Long before Königsberg was founded, Twangste or Tuwangste ( Lithuanian : Tvangstė, Tvanksta ) was the name of a Prussian castle north of the middle Pregelinsel. A fishing village of Lipnick with an anchorage and the villages of Tragheim and Sackheim , all in what was later to be the urban area, in the middle of what is now Kaliningrad, lay under their protection .

In addition to the ramparts, Lübeck merchants founded a merchant settlement in 1242. There a route of the Amber Road crossed with the Curonian and Lithuanian roads.

In addition to the Truso trading center, the castle was the starting point for various amber routes. Twangste is mentioned in a document in 1326 as "edicaverunt castri Kunigsberg ... (apud Pruthenus dicitur) Tuwangste. Tunwangste e nomine silva, que fuit dicto loco ” .

The place name Twangste even Tuwangste, Twangst, Twongst, Twoyngst marked a settlement site, which later district Burgfreiheit lay. The name refers to the proximity to the castle pond: Prussian "tuwi, tauwan": near and "tuwangste": pond. Lithuanian linguists interpret the name as "pond with a dam". In earlier years this pond had an open drain to the Pregel . According to some not uncontroversial German sources, however, the name Twangste is derived from the Gothic word "wangus", which describes a logging, a clearing in a half cleared oak forest (cf. Prussian-Lithuanian "vanga": forest clearing). Peter von Dusburg speaks of the fact that the Prussians named the fort, which the knights of the order in 1225 at the place called "old castle" at the time, after the forest there, Tuwangste.

Twangste was probably an insignificant village until the 8th century, because the international trade routes led along the lagoon beaches, the inland lagoon banks and of course across the sea. Only trade routes inland led along the Pregel. The impenetrable wilderness that began south of Ponarth also made it impossible for Twangste to have access to trade routes going south. These primeval forests were only drained around 1400 and for a long time belonged to the Brandenburg Forest Authority and not to the city of Königsberg. Twangste will only have been converted into a refuge in the later warlike times of which Wulfstan reports. This castle may have played a major role in the Samland revolts against the order. Presumably it was razed by the order and expanded into a fort, otherwise Peter von Dusburg would not have been able to speak of "old castle". The Twangste weir system was later built over by the Reichsbank.

But Ottokar performed a more important service for the order by building Königsberg. On a hill in an oak forest, which was then called Tvangste, this castle was built to tame the Samlanders at a place he designated, where the stables in front of the castle are today. In order to withstand decay, the cut oaks were burned at the tips, rammed into the earth, nailed with planks, and inside this fence, which was then called fortress, a church, an apartment for the bishop and some canons, one others were built for the knights and the garrison, along with the necessary magazines, but in the area of ​​today's castle church, an outer bailey or an outbuilding was built. A ditch was dug to the east, the Katzbach was dammed, and another ditch was dug to drive a mill in the area that is still called the Mühlenberg. King Ottokar supported the order, headed by Landmeister Heinrich von Weida at that time in Prussia, not only with money during the construction, but also left a large part of the army he had brought with him to occupy the new castle and to cultivate the surrounding area. This, however, must have remained populated by the subjugated Samlanders because the old names of many places, which consequently remained undamaged, have been preserved in the vicinity of Konigsberg. "

- Ludwig von Baczko

literature

  • Ludwig von Baczko : An attempt at a history and description of Königsberg. Koenigsberg 1804.
  • Hans Crome: The castles of the old Prussians. In: Communications from the Association for the History of East and West Prussia. 1926-1931, ZDB ID 563903-7 .
  • Carl Engel : Prehistory of the old Prussian tribes. Volume 1: Introduction. The problem of settlement continuity. The culture groups of the Stone Age and Pre-Christian Metal Age. Gräfe and Unzer, Königsberg 1935.
  • Wilhelm Gaerte: Prehistory of East Prussia. Gräfe & Unzer, Königsberg 1929 ( East Prussian regional studies in individual representations 1, ZDB -ID 2270555-7 ).
  • Fritz Gause : Königsberg in Prussia. The story of a European city. 2nd Edition. Leer, Rautenberg 1996, ISBN 3-7921-0345-1 .
  • Hans Mortensen: settlement geography of the Samland. Engelhorn, Stuttgart 1923 ( research on German regional and folklore 22, 4, ZDB -ID 501109-7 ).
  • Gerhard Salemke: Site plans of old Prussian ramparts in the former province of East Prussia. Self-published, Gütersloh, 2005, map 16/3.
  • Wolfgang P. Schmid (Ed.): Hydronymia Europaea. Special volume 2: Grasilda Blažiene: The Baltic place names in Samland. Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-515-07830-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Robert Albinus: Königsberg Lexicon. City and surroundings. Special edition. Flechsig, Würzburg 2002, ISBN 3-88189-441-1 .
  2. Ludwig von Baczko: Attempting a history and description of Königsberg. Königsberg 1804, p. 23.