Wogastisburg

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Wogastisburg was in the so-called Fredegar Chronicle to the year 631 / 632 mentioned castle or settlement or a fortified camp in central Europe . Here the main Austrasian army of King Dagobert I was defeated by a Slavic army of Samo . The location of the place and thus the battlefield are unknown.

The battle for Wogastisburg

The battle near Wogastisburg took place in 631 (or 632) between the Wends under Samo and the Frankish King Dagobert I.

After Frankish merchants had been robbed and killed by Wenden, King Dagobert tried in vain to get Samo to make amends. Thereupon a strong Frankish army marched against Samo. While two of the three Frankish army pillars were successful and captured a large number of Wends, the army from Austrasia encountered greater resistance. The advance came to a halt at the Slavic border fortress Wogastisburg (which has not yet been precisely localized). After three days of clashes the Slavs were victorious, the Austrasian troops had to retreat hastily, and the neighboring Franconian lands were looted in the period that followed.

The Fredegar Chronicle (IV 68) reports on failed diplomatic negotiations for the year 631/32 between an envoy from the Frankish king Dagobert I and Samo, the ruler of a Slavic community who originally came from the Franconian Empire. Thereupon Dagobert decided on a large-scale campaign against the kingdom of Samo. The allied with him Alemanni under Duke Chrodobert attacked the outlying areas of the empire. The allied Friulian Longobards invaded most likely from the south and occupied the "regio Zellia", probably located in today's Gailtal in Carinthia. The main Austrasian army, perhaps led by Dagobert himself, was supposed to penetrate into the heart of the empire. However, the individual armies did not succeed in uniting. While the first two armies returned victorious with many prisoners, the main Austrasian army was totally defeated after a three-day unsuccessful siege of a place called castrum vuogastisburc . The remaining fighters of Dagobert had to flee and leave all weapons and tents behind.

One result of the battle was that the independence of this first supra-regional Slavic empire in Central Europe was preserved. After this battle Samo was able to consolidate his position. Among other things, he was joined by the Sorbian prince Derwan (Dervan), whose tribe had previously been subject to the Frankish Empire.

Basics of localization

There are numerous localization proposals for the place Wogastisburg. However, since it is the only surviving location information for the Samo kingdom, these considerations are all speculative. Mostly it is assumed that Dagobert wanted to get to the "center" of the Samo Empire without a detour (that is, from the west) but did not reach it, so that Wogastisburg was somewhere on the western edge of the Samo Empire. Strictly speaking, this is only a pure assumption and in the absence of written information, nothing stands in the way of localizing Wogastisburg at almost any location in eastern Central Europe. In addition, the exact location of the realm of Samo itself and / or its center remains rather controversial. The core of the empire was most likely in the area of ​​the central Danube and March , that is, in today's Moravia , Lower Austria and southwest Slovakia .

According to more recent archaeological and dendrochronological studies, no fortified castles were built in East Central Europe in the 7th century . The question to be asked is whether the locality called Wogastisburg can even be connected to one of the well-known castle walls , and whether it is not, in spite of the naming as castrum (= usually "fortified place"), much more of a lightly fortified complex for the Example in the form of a wagon castle or an open warehouse (similar to the Avar "rings"). In the conflict situation, a certainly wooden fortification could very well have been built in a very short time, whereby an older rampart could also be reused. This interpretation is also supported by the fact that Fredegar uses the word castrum in the description of other campaigns in the sense of "fortifications built at short notice" or "armed military camp".

Linguistic considerations point in a similar direction, according to which the place named vuogastisburc in the Franconian sources probably goes back to a formation from the Old Slavic gost / gast / gošc = merchant and the Latin burgus , i.e. non-agricultural, town-like settlement or, in turn, merchant settlement. See also below (c). According to other theories, however, "gast" in the name Wogastisburg stands for Hochwald (Czech and Slovak "hvozd") or it is simply a personal name.

Localization suggestions

The numerous localization suggestions include above all (from west to east):

  1. The area of Bavaria Slavica in northeast Bavaria :
    • In a forged document from 1017, an allodium Wugastesrode is mentioned, which may have been in the area of ​​the Gleichberge . However, it is unclear whether this Wugastesrode is connected to the Wogastisburg.
    • The Banzer Berg , whose post slit wall with circumferential slope trenches speaks for an early medieval fortification.
    • Staffelberg near Staffelstein
    • Burk near Forchheim , whose settlement in the early Middle Ages has been confirmed by test excavations, or the corridor area between the places Burk and Hausen , which bears the name Pilodes and is connected to the legend of the birth of Pontius Pilatus . The Munich Slavist Heinrich Kunstmann first put forward the controversial Wogastisburg hypothesis in a total of four articles in the magazine "Die Welt der Slaven" in 1979, because he derived the field name Pilodes from the Old Slavic phrase "poti byl otec" (he was the father of the street ), which is said to have referred to the general Samo. For the place Burk, Kunstmann suspects that it was a trading establishment and that the Slavic name was "v gosti burc" (in the merchant's castle), which he interpreted as a Wogastisburg. Apart from these unsecured linguistic assumptions, for which there is no written evidence, Kunstmann was unable to provide any other evidence, so that his theory can now be considered refuted due to intensive scientific debate.
    • According to H. Büttner, a local legend localizes the Wogastisburg in the "Wüstenburg" corridor near the town of Oberaufseß in the Aufseßal valley
    • other places in the upper Main area where Slavs lived in the 7th century
  2. Bohemia :
    South Bohemia: North Bohemia, Duppau Mountains :
    • Úhošť : Úhošť is the linguistic derivation: Wogast = Ugast = Úhošť + castle. The proposed translation would be the castle (in today's sense) of Wogast / Uogast / Ugošč. During excavations, only a castle wall from the Iron Age was discovered here.
    • Hradec u Kadaně : According to the findings, Slavic settlement did not begin until the 8th century.
    • Rubín bei Podbořany : This is the latest proposal. The castle is strategically located on the transition to western Bohemia. Czech archaeologists found a "center with a fighting character, which roughly (also) can be dated to the 7th century", as well as the largest known collection of objects of Avar origin in Bohemia from the 7th and 8th centuries.
  3. The area of ​​the central Danube in what is now Lower Austria and southwestern Slovakia .
    The Danube has always been an important trade route. Most of the great campaigns of the Frankish Empire against the Slavs were carried out along the Danube. The area around Carnuntum and Bratislava was also very likely the site of the Slavs' uprising, which led to the emergence of the Samo Empire , and a place of extraordinary strategic importance (transition between the Alps and the Carpathians , crossing of the amber route (north-south) and trade routes Donaustraße). Castle ramparts from the 7th century have not been found to this day - just as they have not been found in the other Slavic areas of Europe. The location on the Danube is also due to the fact that up to the 10th century the ending -burc was borne by localities ( Regensburg , Strasbourg , Pressburg ) that were previously a Burgus of the Limes Romanus along the Danube and now developed into trading centers . This is supported by the fact that Fredegar speaks of a castrum vuogastisburc (instead of just vuogastisburc ), but the fact that the word burg / burc was used by Fredegar in other places (also) in the meaning of castle wall or something similar speaks against it. The first part vuogastis- can then simply be derived from gast / gost 'Kaufmann'. If one assumes, however, that the center of the kingdom of Samo was also located in this area, these places on the Danube are not to be equated with the Wogastisburg, because then Fredegar would have pointed out that the Franconian troops had reached the capital:
    • Melk , Vienna , Carnuntum, Hainburg etc.
    • Castle Devin : Refer to Samo - geographical location. However, the archaeologists working at the castle refused to identify the actual castle with Wogastisburg, as there is no evidence of this despite large-scale excavations.
    • Bratislava : This is supported by the fact that it is the only known place with Avar finds from this time with the ending -burc in its name ( 907 : Brezalauspurc, later Pressburg) and that it was an important trading place.
  4. The area of ​​the March and its tributaries in Moravia :
    Here, however, as in (c), if one assumes that the center of the kingdom of Samo was also located in this area, these places are not to be equated with the Wogastisburg.
  5. The area of ​​the Waag (Slavic Váh ). The connection of this river name with the Slavic ending for settlement " -gast " results in names like Váh -gast or Waag-gast , which is similar to Wogastisburg.
  6. Sometimes the area of Niederlausitz and the Elbe-Saale area with the Sorbs who settled there are indicated in older depictions , who were under the leadership of their dux dervanus at the time of the conflict with Samo . However, it was now possible to clearly confirm that it is in the ramparts of the Lausitz in the settlement area of Lusitzi other than the oldest Slavic castles, but these have been created on the contrary only in the late 9th and early 10th century. This area can definitely be excluded from the search for the Wogastisburg.

map

Wogastisburg
most frequently searched places in the 20th century (the area of ​​the Czech Republic is highlighted in gray )
Link to the picture
(Please note copyrights )

Legend:

  • (1) Staffelberg near Staffelstein
  • (2) Burk near Forchheim
  • (3) Úhošť near Kadaň
  • (4) Rubín near Podbořany
  • (5) Lower Lusatia
  • (6) Melk
  • (7) Znojmo
  • (8) Vienna
  • (9) Mikulčice
  • (10) Bratislava
  • (11) Hostýn

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dagobertus superveter iubet de universe regnum Austrasiorum contra Samonem et Winidis movere Exercitum; ubi trebus turmis falange super Wenedos exercitus ingreditur, etiam et Langobardi solucione Dagoberti idemque osteleter in Sclavos perrixerunt. Sclavi his et alies locis e contrario preparantes, Alamannorum exercitus cum Crodoberto duci in parte qua ingressus est victuriam optinuit. Langobardi idemque victuriam obtenuerunt, et pluremum nummerum captivorum de Sclavos Alamanni et Langobardi secum duxerunt. Aostrasiae vero cum ad castro Wogastisburc, ubi plurima manus forcium Venedorum inmuraverant, circumdantes, triduo priliantes, pluris ibidem de exercito Dagoberti gladio trucidantur et exinde fugaceter, omnes tinturius et res quas habuerunt adertunturebus. - B. Krusch (ed.): Fredegarii et aliorum Chronica. Vitae sanctorum . MGH SS rer. Merov. 2. Hannover 1888, p. 155 lines 2-11. Online edition: http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/bsb00000749/images/index.html?id=00000749&&seite=164 .
  2. ↑ L. Dralle: Derwan . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages . Vol. 3, Col. 714.
  3. ^ Ruprecht Konrad: The "allodium Wugastesrode" <1017> and the documented tradition in the Franconian Forest. On the medieval history of settlement and rule in the eastern Franconian Forest . 174. Report of Hist. Bamberg Association 2011 p. 49 ff) online link .
  4. ↑ a b Björn-Uwe Abels , Walter Sage , Christian Züchner: Upper Franconia in prehistoric times . Bayreuth 1986. (pp. 199, 242) ISBN 3-87052-991-1

literature

Further references under Samo .