Weinbergsburg

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The vineyard as seen from Hitzacker

The Weinbergsburg is the stables of several fortifications from different periods on the elevation of the vineyard on the edge of the old town of Hitzacker (Elbe) . First a Slavic castle wall was built in the 7th century , which was rebuilt after multiple destruction and which is considered the most important Slavic site in Lower Saxony . Later a medieval castle was built on the site , the remains of which were removed in the 19th century.

location

Plateau of the vineyard

The fortifications, of which no remains above ground have been preserved, were built on the vineyard's 95 meter long and 45 meter wide plateau. The elevation of almost 53  m above sea level, which is still part of the Klötzie des Drawehn . NHN lies on the edge of the Elbe valley and rises around 40 meters above the river. The name of the vineyard is derived from centuries of cultivation of vines and viticulture still practiced on the mountain slope. Viticulture is first mentioned in 1521 at the time of Ernst the Confessor .

history

After the centuries-old Slavic phase as a ring wall , the fortifications went to Henry the Lion in the 12th century . In 1229 it was owned by the Ascanian dukes of Saxony-Lauenburg. In 1296 Margrave Otto von Brandenburg had the castle destroyed because the robber baron Hermann Ribe attacked merchant trains from there. In 1464 it was conquered by Duke Otto von Braunschweig-Lüneburg and mentioned for the last time in a document. Around 1500 the castle was abandoned and fell into disrepair. The structural remains were removed in the 19th century.

archeology

Reconstructed remains of the foundation on the castle plateau

The prehistorian Ernst Sprockhoff carried out the first archaeological investigations on the vineyard in 1960. Further excavations followed in 1965 and 1966 and from 1970 to 1975. A total of around 13% of the area of ​​the mountain plateau was archaeologically examined. The excavations went down to a depth of 5 meters, where the oldest and Slavic find layers were.

Outstanding finds were a gold-plated knife sheath fitting , riding spurs, a gold pearl and glass rings as well as a presumable neck chain . The mass finds include around 60,000 pottery shards that can be dated to the 9th to 15th centuries. Slavic ceramics were found in the oldest settlement layers , including Feldberger , Menkendorfer and Drawehn ceramics. Early German ceramics included brown, yellow and gray earthenware . In addition came pingsdorf ware before. Animal bones, mainly pigs and cattle, and a minority poultry, fish and game were found in large numbers, with around 33,000 finds.

Wall

The excavations led to the realization that there were a total of 8 different construction phases on the wall, including 5 Slavic and 3 German. In the first construction phase in the Old Slavic period in the 7th century, an approximately 5 meter wide wall of gravel with a palisade was created , which reached a height of approximately 4 meters. In the second phase in the 8th century, the wall was converted into a wood and earth construction in box construction. After being destroyed by fire, the wall was renewed in the 9th century and reached a height of around 5 meters with a palisade. After being destroyed by fire, the wall was rebuilt in the 10th century as a wood-earth construction with a height of 6 meters. The last wall renovation in Slavic times took place in the 11th century, when the wall reached a height of 7 meters and a width of 10 meters. The total width was 14 meters, as casemates were integrated into the wall .

Ruins of the Weinbergsburg on a Merian engraving from 1654

In medieval times, a castle wall was built on the top of the rampart, the foundation of which was discovered during the excavations. This corresponds to the description of Hitzacker by Merian from 1654. He writes that there was a castle or tower on a mountain, which could still be seen in cellars and ruderal vegetation . On a Merian engraving from 1654 by Lüchow , the vineyard with remains of the wall can be seen in the background, which can be viewed as the wall and stumps of two castle towers. During the excavations, a base made of bricks from the 14th to 15th centuries was found, which was founded on an older foundation made of field stones. It could have been a tower.

inner space

Traces of settlement were found in the interior of the fortification as remains of buildings. While there were hardly any buildings in the first phases of existence, settlement activity increased from the 10th century. Several wooden log houses came from this period, as well as from the 11th and 12th centuries . Solid masonry of buildings from the 12th century was found at an excavation depth of between 2 and 3 meters. The interior walls of these fieldstone buildings were carefully smooth.

literature

  • Berndt Wachter : The continuation of the excavation on the vineyard near Hitzacker (Elbe) in 1971 . In: News from Lower Saxony's Urgeschichte , 41, (1972), p. 227 ff.
  • Berndt Wachter: A Slavic rampart - the excavation on the vineyard in Hitzacker (Elbe) in 1972 . In: News from Lower Saxony's Urgeschichte 42 (1973), p. 300 ff.
  • Berndt Wachter: The Slavic-German castle on the vineyard in Hitzacker / Elbe: Report on the excavations from 1970–1975. A contribution to the early history of the Hanoverian Wendland. Neumünster 1998
  • Ernst Andreas Friedrich : The vineyard of Hitzacker , p. 29–31, in: If stones could talk . Volume IV, Landbuch-Verlag, Hannover 1998, ISBN 3-7842-0558-5
  • Wolfgang Jürries , Berndt Wachter (ed.): Weinbergsburg in: Wendland-Lexikon . Volume 2: LZ , 2nd edition. Druck- und Verlagsgesellschaft Köhring & Co., Lüchow 2008, ISBN 978-3-926322-28-9 , pp. 553-555

Web links

Commons : Weinbergsburg  - Collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wendland-Lexikon, Volume 2, Lüchow 2008, p. 293.

Coordinates: 53 ° 9 ′ 15 ″  N , 11 ° 2 ′ 37 ″  E