Defensive wall
Defensive wall is a collective term for various types of walls that are used for defensive purposes in fortified structures such as city fortifications , fortresses and castles .
Types of defensive walls
- Curtain wall (also called bering )
- Kennel wall
- Shield wall
- Mantle wall
For lining the moat:
- Eskarpemauer or Escarpemauer (also called inner wall or inner trench lining wall )
- Contreescarpemauer or Contreescarpemauer (also called outer wall or outer trench lining wall )
- Bermen wall or moat wall
Building material
The material from which the masonry was built was mostly based on the natural occurrence of suitable stones . Thus, in the region of was the Middle Rhine basalt a popular building material, while in today's Ruhr like sandstone was used. In the stone- poor areas of northern Germany , brick again prevailed.
Defensive walls also differ in the shape of the stone used. Field stones and rubble stones were available as inexpensive building materials almost everywhere. Hewn cuboids or even humpback blocks , on the other hand, could only be afforded by wealthy builders.
history
The oldest literary mention of a defensive wall can be found in the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh (approx. 24th century BC). Gilgamesh, king of the city of Uruk , forced the inhabitants to build a city wall .
literature
- Friedrich-Wilhelm Krahe: Castles of the German Middle Ages. Floor plan lexicon . Flechsig, Würzburg 2000, ISBN 3-88189-360-1 , pp. 19-20.
- Reinhard Friedrich: Wall. In: Horst Wolfgang Böhme , Reinhard Friedrich, Barbara Schock-Werner (Hrsg.): Dictionary of castles, palaces and fortresses . Philipp Reclam jun. GmbH & Co., Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-15-010547-1 , pp. 184-186, doi: 10.11588 / arthistoricum.535 .
