Wegelnburg
| Wegelnburg | ||
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 View from Hohenburg to Wegelnburg |
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| Alternative name (s): | Wegelenburg | |
| Creation time : | around 1100 to 1200 | |
| Castle type : | Höhenburg, rocky location | |
| Conservation status: | ruin | |
| Place: | Schoenau (Palatinate) | |
| Geographical location | 49 ° 3 '40.5 " N , 7 ° 47' 12.7" E | |
| Height: | 570.9 m above sea level NHN | |
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The Wegelnburg is the ruin of a medieval castle in the southern Palatinate Forest , the German part of the Wasgau , in the district of Südwestpfalz ( Rhineland-Palatinate ). The castle complex is 570.9 m high, making it the highest in the Palatinate . The term Wegelenburg , which is sometimes used in the literature , can only be proven with a document from Count Palatine Ruprecht I from 1402.
Geographical location
The rock castle is within sight of Nothweiler at an altitude of 570.9 m on the Sindelsberg directly on the German- French border. The Hohenburg and Löwenstein are on the neighboring elevation . The ruins of Fleckenstein Castle are only marginally further away.
history
Surname
There are two theses about the origin of the name: The first assumes a Franconian nobleman named Wegilo or Wagilo as the builder or namesake of the castle . The second postulates that the word "wegeln" in Palatinate means "move something back and forth" and establishes the connection to ore extraction in the vicinity of Wegelnburg ( St. Anna tunnel ).
timeline
The Wegelnburg was first mentioned in 1247. Conrad IV awarded to Friedrich III. von Leiningen the fiefdom that had previously owned a B. de Waeglenburc . In 1282, because the imperial bailiff had been guilty of breaching the peace , the castle was taken by troops from the bishopric of Strasbourg under the leadership of the Alsatian bailiff Otto IV. It is disputed whether the castle was destroyed in the process; a destruction can only be proven by sources from the 14th, 16th and 18th centuries. A connection with Rudolf von Habsburg's policy of revision is assumed, since the Lords of Fleckenstein had to cede the Löwenstein in 1282 and the Guttenburg to Rudolf in 1283.
In possession of the empire and administered by imperial servants , the Wegelnburg was expanded and in 1322 was designated by Ludwig von Bayern "for maintenance by Hagenau ". In 1330 the castle was pledged to the House of Electoral Palatinate and no longer released. In 1417 the Wegelnburg came into the possession of the Wittelsbach dukes of Pfalz-Zweibrücken as an exchange object . After the last repairs and extensions in the 16th and 17th centuries, the castle, held by an increased garrison, was captured and damaged by imperial mercenaries during the Thirty Years' War . The complex was probably already in ruins when it was destroyed and razed in 1679 by French troops due to the provisions of the Peace of Nijmegen .
In the 1860s a society for the beautification of the Wegelnburg was formed , which carried out the first safety and conservation measures. In 1977 the remains of the castle were to be used for the renovation of the Dahner Burgengruppe , but this was refrained from after protests by the communities formerly part of the Wegelnburg office. During the following renovation work between 1979 and 1982, large amounts of rubble were removed and an attempt at rehabilitation was made. This sometimes resulted in unhistorical walls that falsified the existing structure.
description
General
The upper castle is about 90 × 8 m in size and found almost ideal conditions for the construction of a castle on the ridge it occupied. There is a line of sight to the nearby Hohenburg and Löwenstein castles, as well as to the Dahner Burgengruppe, Lindelbrunn and Berwartstein and Trifels Castle .
The remains of the buildings, which are now regarded as the main castle, were built as a typical rock castle on a narrow rocky reef, about 90 m long and 5 to 19 m wide, oriented from northeast to southwest . The spatial narrowness is due to the narrowness of the attachment rock. The built-up ridge between the Wachtfelsen, Kötenstuhl and Hauptburg offered better opportunities. Current investigations indicate that Wegelnburg, Wachtfelsen and Krötenstuhl are an overall development of the ridge and not separate structures.
Main system
A plain carved into the rock - this is where the main entrance was also located - optically separates the rocky reef on which the main castle is built from the rest of the ridge with the other buildings. An access road that comes from the southwest and a narrow hiking trail from the northwest lead up to the mountain.
The water supply situation of the Wegelnburg suggests that it was a very well developed castle. The first water supply point can be found in the front central area of the rock massif. Whether it is a well or a cistern cannot be seen at first glance. Today the well shaft has an opening of about 2.15 m. It is free to a depth of around 8.50 m, and underneath it is filled with rubble. The masonry wall thickness is 60 cm, after which the opening is continuously carved into the rock with a width of 2.15 m. Another water supply facility can be found at almost the same height in the area of a rock chamber. Here, too, you can see a round shaft buried at a depth of about 4.00 m, but only with a diameter of 90 cm. As far as you can follow it, this shaft leads straight down into the depths and is carved out of the natural rock.
The castle is divided into three zones as lower , middle and upper castle , with the lower castle only on the west side. The inner gate structure has been preserved and restored. Rock stairs allow access to the upper castle . Passages carved out of the rock and a rock cellar are preserved.
The walls on the castle do not match the original appearance. Only a few stone remains of residential buildings have survived, so that the appearance of the castle is difficult to reconstruct.
literature
- Alexander Thon: … umb wonderful peace, pious and need of the land . Siege and fall of Palatinate-Alsatian castles in the Middle Ages. In: Olaf Wagener and Heiko Laß (eds.): ... threw down in stones / grôze and niht small ... sieges and siege systems in the Middle Ages (= supplements to Mediaevistik ). No. 7 . Frankfurt am Main u. a. 2006, ISBN 3-631-55467-2 , pp. 241-268 (here pp. 71-73) .
- Alexander Thon (Ed.): "... like a banned, inaccessible magic castle" . Castles in the southern Palatinate. 2nd, improved edition. Schnell & Steiner, Regensburg 2005, ISBN 3-7954-1570-5 , p. 158-161 .
- Magnus Backes: State castles, palaces and antiquities in Rhineland-Palatinate . Schnell & Steiner, Regensburg 2003, ISBN 3-7954-1566-7 , pp. 194 .
- Institute for Palatinate History and Folklore (Ed.): Palatinate Castle Lexicon . Volume IV.2, St-Z. Kaiserslautern 2007, ISBN 978-3-927754-56-0 , p. 256-271 .
Web links
- Entry on Wegelnburg in the scientific database " EBIDAT " of the European Castle Institute
Individual evidence
- ↑ State Office for Surveying and Basic Geographic Information Rhineland-Palatinate (Ed.): Topographic map 1: 25,000 with hiking trails, Western Wasgau with Dahn . Self-published by the State Office for Surveying and Geospatial Information Rhineland-Palatinate, Koblenz 2007.
- ↑ [Regg. Count Palatine 2] n. 2123, Count Palatine Ruprecht III., 1402 apr. 4, Germersheim. In: regesta-imperii.de. Retrieved August 3, 2016 .
- ↑ State Surveying Office Rhineland-Palatinate: Edition 5-DMG . In: Office for Military Geosciences (Ed.): Topographic map 1: 50,000 . Sheet No. L 6912, 1987.
- ^ Albert Krieger: Topographical Dictionary of the Grand Duchy of Baden . Ed .: Baden Historical Commission. tape 1 . Heidelberg 1904 ( uni-heidelberg.de [accessed on August 3, 2016]).
- ↑ Peter Müller-Helbling: The Wegelnburg - The Office Wegelnburg . Edition Winterwork, Borsdorf 2013, ISBN 978-3-943048-08-7 .
- ^ Institute for Palatinate History and Folklore (ed.): Palatinate Castle Lexicon . tape IV.2 , 2007, p. 251 .
- ^ Institute for Palatinate History and Folklore (ed.): Palatinate Castle Lexicon . tape IV.2 , 2007, p. 258 f .