Vigilio Tower

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Vigilio Tower
Bad Dürkheim, Vigilienturm, front side

Bad Dürkheim, Vigilienturm, front side

Data
place Bad Dürkheim
Client Johannes Fitz
Architectural style classicism
Construction year 1842

The Vigilienturm is a temple-like vineyard house on a hill, north of the city center of Bad Dürkheim . It is one of the city's landmarks because of its striking architecture and exposed location .

Building stock

View from the east side
Ruins of the old tower, 1787
Drawings of the old tower ruins in 1837, before the demolition
Information board at the Vigilienturm

It is a rectangular, single-storey plastered building in the classical "Weinbrenner style" , with a portico resting on four columns and a triangular gable facing the front (city side). Despite its villa character, it is officially known as the "Vigilienturm" because it stands on the foundations of what used to be a defense and watchtower. The building is part of Sonnwendstrasse.

history

Between 1460 and 1464 , the Counts of Leiningen had their master builder Per Senffer erect a round defense and watchtower on the site of today's vineyard temple. The location was a hilltop dominating the city and therefore strategically important on the Hagelsberg, which was formerly outside the city and is now called Vigilienberg, is now built on and is now part of the urban area.

In 1471, during the siege of Dürkheim by Elector Friedrich I , the then ultra-modern artillery department played an important role. In Michael Beheims Reimchronik he is described in detail. There it is said that he had many loopholes and that he was armed with Terraboxes and field snakes . Just like the castle and town, the Elector of the Palatinate had the Vigilienturm besieged for eight days or, under the direction of his gunner Martin Merz, violently shot at with heavy stone balls. On August 18, 1471, Friedrich's troops captured both Dürkheim and the tower in front of it, after several hours of losing struggle. The latter was burned down, softened and abandoned by order of the winner, and its protective trenches were filled in. Since then it does not seem to have been rebuilt and remained in ruins. In the 17th and 18th centuries the Vigilienturm only appears in field names. In Urkatasterplan of 1831 his round outlines are drawn.

In 1835 the tower area was owned by the Otterberg pastor Georg Knobloch, who sold it in 1837 to the Dürkheim winemaker Johannes Fitz . He had the basement of the Vigilient Tower, which was partially filled with rubble, demolished in 1838. In 1842 he built the vineyard temple in the classicist style, which still exists today, on its foundations. He used it for representation purposes. In 1860 the winery owner Johann Georg Zumstein bought the property. Hans Phillipp Zumstein, one of his descendants, handed it over to the local Drachenfels Club in 1978 , which had it renovated and maintains it as a cultural monument .

While the castle researcher Jürgen Keddigkeit from Palatinate sees Saint Vigilius of Trient as the namesake of the tower, several local historians believe that the name is derived from the Latin word " Vigil " (= night watch). Since the 19th century, the opinion has prevailed that the name is even an ancient relic from Roman times, as a Roman road passed here and the strategically important place could have served as a guard station even then. The information board placed there by the Drachenfels Club also takes up this thesis. However, there are no reliable findings that prove the existence of the vigil tower before the middle of the 15th century.

During and after the Second World War , the building served at times as an emergency shelter for bombed-out citizens from Ludwigshafen .

literature

  • Jürgen Keddigkeit : Palatinate Castle Lexicon , Volume 4, pp. 142–146, Kaiserslautern, 2007, ISBN 3-927754-48-X
  • Karl Heinz: The Vigilienturm , Drachenfels-Club, Bad Dürkheim, 1985

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl Heinz: Der Vigilienturm , Drachenfels Club Bad Dürkheim, 1985, p. 29

Coordinates: 49 ° 27 '49.6 "  N , 8 ° 9' 49.7"  E