Frankfurter Landwehr

City area and Landwehr, between 1712 and 1714
(copper engraving by Johann Baptist Homann , area boundaries corrected after Friedrich Bothe )

The Frankfurter Landwehr around 1800. Map by Eduard Pelissier , 1905

The Frankfurter Landwehr was part of the Frankfurt city fortifications with which the imperial city of Frankfurt am Main protected its land area. The construction of the Landwehr began at the end of the 14th century . It achieved its greatest importance in the 15th and 16th centuries. Gradual dismantling and decay of the facilities began at the end of the 18th century. Individual remains, especially the waiting room , are still preserved in the cityscape today.

course

Friedberger waiting

Riederhöfe

The Landwehr moved around the town about two kilometers away; it essentially consisted of impenetrable hedges (" Gebück ", "Gedörn") and ditches. The Dornbusch district owes its name to the fact that thorn bushes were planted for defense purposes. The strategically important points at which the traffic routes crossed the Landwehr were protected by waiting towers and iron strikes . Several large military yards were also included in the Landwehr.

The Landwehr began in the west down the Main at Gutleuthof and extended in an arc to the northeast over the Galluswarte on Mainzer Landstrasse , the Bockenheimer Warte  on Bockenheimer Landstrasse and the Kühhornshof to Friedberger Warte on Friedberger Landstrasse . In the further course it followed the swamp area in front of the Bornheimer Hang , turned east along the small Riederbruch (around the southern tip of today's Ostpark ), enclosed the Riederhöfe on Hanauer Landstrasse and met the Main at around the height of what is now Frankfurt's east port .

Accordingly, fortifications with ditches, hedges, fences and small ramparts as well as the Sachsenhausen observation point were built in the south around Sachsenhausen . In the southeast, the Oberräder Landwehr has recently been restored by the city and Regionalpark Süd-West GmbH. The historic moat, which was dug in 1441, is visible and made accessible by a footbridge, so that this monument can be visited without further damage.

history

The original, natural protection of the Frankfurt (rural) area was the course of the Nidda river , so the city tried very early on to gain control over the respective Nidda bridges ( Vilbel , Bonames , Eschersheim , Praunheim , Hausen , Rödelheim , Nied ), but it was enough soon no longer as a safeguard and limitation.

In 1333, Emperor Ludwig IV allowed the city to be expanded and a new city ​​wall to be built around the so-called Neustadt . Outside the city walls lay the field marks of the city, Rieder field , the Friedberger field and the gallows field , which is about the present-day districts Ostend , Northrend , Westend , Bahnhofsviertel , Gallus and Gutleutviertel corresponded. The Frankfurt City Forest, acquired in 1372, extended south of the Main .

During the 14th century, the city led a series of feuds against the surrounding territorial lords. In the Kronberg feud in May 1389, Frankfurt suffered a bitter defeat against the Knights of Kronberg , the Lords of Hanau and the Count Palatine Ruprecht I. After the agreed payment of a ransom of 73,000 gold guilders, the city council decided in 1393 to build a Landwehr. In 1396/97 the complex was built between the Riederhöfen and the Knoblauchshof, which primarily served to protect against the claims of the Hanau and Vilbel residents . The city ​​acquired a privilege from King Wenzel in 1398 to secure the further expansion of the Landwehr. In the same year the facility was built between Kühhornshof and Gutleuthof.

The further expansion dragged on through the entire 15th century. The Sachsenhausen Landwehr was built between 1411 and 1413, and the first stone guard tower in 1414. In 1476, the city built further land defense systems (trenches and hedges) on the north-eastern border of the communities of Bornheim and Seckbach . This is how the Bornheimer Landwehr came into being , which was completed in 1478 with the construction of the Friedberger Warte . Ten years later, the Bornheimer Landwehr was expanded into the Bornheim-Seckbacher Landwehr .

Waiting towers

The waiting towers were fortified observation towers and resembled a small castle . They had a lookout tower, a military yard , a team building, an arsenal and a well. From the tower, the guard could observe the surroundings and warn the city in case of danger, with flags during the day and with torches at night.

Four waiting towers have been preserved: the Friedberger Warte , the Sachsenhauser Warte , the Galluswarte and the Bockenheimer Warte . The Berger Warte , also called Galgenwarte , was not a watch tower of the Frankfurter Landwehr, it was located outside the Frankfurt area. The place of execution, the gallows, was also used as an escort change station.

In 2008, during construction work on the Westend university campus, the remains of an ice cellar were unearthed, which belonged to the facilities of the former institution for the insane and epileptic . The responsible monument authority saw in the building a previously unknown medieval guard tower of the Landwehr, the Affenstein , which was later converted into a windmill and had been used as an ice cellar for the insane asylum since the 19th century. However, this attribution is controversial, according to archaeologists at Frankfurt University, it is actually the ice pit of the insane asylum . Parts of the find were demolished and the rest was incorporated in a modified form into the institute building for psychology, education and social sciences.

Defense yards

The Kühhornshof 1860

Well-fortified farmsteads were also incorporated into the Landwehr system (clockwise, from the west): Gutleuthof , Hellerhof , Kühhornshof , Riederhof , Strahlberger Hof and Riedhof . There are only a few remains of these courtyards. The entrance portal near the Ratsweg roundabout on Hanauer Landstrasse has still been preserved from the Riederhof . Today, the Hessischer Rundfunk (hr) is located on the grounds of Kühhornshof and Bertramshof . The main building of the Kühhornshof is still preserved, a former residential tower, which today houses the HR seminar rooms . Only a stone horse trough can be found from the Riedhof in Sachsenhausen.

literature

• Hans Pehl: When the Frankfurters still lived behind the wall - the medieval fortification of the Free Imperial City . Verlag Josef Knecht, Frankfurt 1977. ISBN 3-7820-0385-3
• Hans Pehl: When they once protected the city - Frankfurt's fortified manors . Verlag Josef Knecht, Frankfurt 1978. ISBN 3-7820-0411-6
• Eduard Pelissier : On the topography and history of the left Main Landwehr in the imperial city of Frankfurt. Frankfurt a. M., 1901. Online
• Eduard Pelissier: The Landwehr of the Imperial City of Frankfurt am Main. Topographical-historical investigation. Völcker, Frankfurt am Main 1905 Online

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Andrea Hampel: The Affenstein. A medieval watchtower and its varied history through six centuries. Find reports from Hessen 50, 2010 (Wiesbaden 2012) pp. 729–760
2. ↑ Hans-Markus von Kaenel , Thomas Maurer, Albrecht Schlierer: How what is thought changes what is built. To reinterpret the ice cellar of the former "Institute for the Insane and Epileptic" on the Westend campus of the Goethe University Frankfurt a. M. , in: Frankfurter Archäologische Schriften 21, pp. 167–209. Publishing house Dr. Rudolf Habelt GmbH, Bonn 2012. Available online wayback.archive.org/web/20131102200906/ Archive link ( Memento of the original from November 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed April 4, 2013