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Saaleck Castle
Saaleck Castle (german: Burg Saaleck) is a hill castle near Bad Kösen, now a part of Naumburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. In 1922, two of the men who had killed Walther Rathenau, the foreign minister of Germany, hid at Saaleck Castle but were tracked down by the police. The Nazi regime later put up a memorial plaque at the castle and turned their grave in Saaleck cemetery into a heroes' shrine. The castle is now mostly ruined, but its two towers feature small exhibits and it is a popular tourist attraction. Saaleck Castle is a stop on the designated tourist route ''Straße der Romanik'' ("Romanesque Road"). Geography Saaleck Castle is located in the village of Saaleck in the district of Burgenlandkreis in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. It overlooks the Saale river and is only a few hundred metres from another castle, the Rudelsburg. Since 2010, Bad Kösen and with it Saaleck Castle has been part of the municipality of Naumburg. History In 1922, two of the assassins of Germ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hill Castle
A hill castle or mountain castle is a castle built on a natural feature that stands above the surrounding terrain. It is a term derived from the German ''Höhenburg'' used in categorising castle sites by their topographical location. Hill castles are thus distinguished from lowland castles (''Niederungsburgen''). Hill castles may be further subdivided depending on their situation into the following: * Hilltop castle (''Gipfelburg''), that stands on the summit of a hill with steep drops on all sides. A special type is the rock castle or ''Felsenburg''. * Ridge castle (''Kammburg''), that is built on the crest of a ridge. * Hillside castle (''Hangburg''), that is built on the side of a hill and thus is dominated by rising ground on one side. * Spur castle (''Spornburg''), that is built on a hill spur surrounded by steep terrain on three sides and thus only needs to be defended on the one remaining side. When in the 10th and 11th centuries castles lost their pure fortress charact ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hermann Willibald Fischer
Hermann Willibald Fischer (6 February 1896 in Florence – 17 July 1922 in Saaleck Castle) was a German mechanical engineer. He was a member of an extreme right-wing terror group Organisation Consul (OC) and was one of the assassins of the German minister of foreign affairs, Walther Rathenau, on 24 June 1922. Life Fischer was the son of a painter and professor in Dresden. He was a volunteer in World War I and at the end of the war was a company commander with the rank of lieutenant. After the war he studied mechanical engineering in Chemnitz, successfully completing his studies in March 1922. Periodically he interrupted his studies to join various Freikorps, initially during the Chemnitz food riots in August 1919. As a member of the Marine-Brigade Ehrhardt he participated in the Kapp-Putsch and fought in early summer 1921 with the Upper Silesian Self-Protection Organisation. He was a member of various extreme right-wing organisations, among them the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Castles In Saxony-Anhalt
A castle is a type of fortified structure built during the Middle Ages predominantly by the nobility or royalty and by military orders. Scholars debate the scope of the word ''castle'', but usually consider it to be the private fortified residence of a lord or noble. This is distinct from a palace, which is not fortified; from a fortress, which was not always a residence for royalty or nobility; from a ''pleasance'' which was a walled-in residence for nobility, but not adequately fortified; and from a fortified settlement, which was a public defence – though there are many similarities among these types of construction. Use of the term has varied over time and has also been applied to structures such as hill forts and 19th-20th century homes built to resemble castles. Over the approximately 900 years when genuine castles were built, they took on a great many forms with many different features, although some, such as curtain walls, arrowslits, and portcullises, wer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thurant Castle
The ruins of the Thurant Castle (german: Burg Thurant, also ''Thurandt'' or ''Thurand'') stand on a wide slate hill spur above the villages of Alken on the Moselle in Germany. The castle is in the district of Mayen-Koblenz in Rhineland-Palatinate and belongs to the spur castle type. Vine gardens on the sunniest slope. From the mid-13th century the archbishops of Cologne and Trier were joint owners and had their respective property managed by burgraves. As a result, each half of the castle had its own ''bergfried'', living/domestic buildings and entrance. From the early 16th century the double castle gradually fell into disrepair and was made a complete ruin during the destruction wrought by the War of the Palatine Succession. Robert Allmers (1872–1951) from Varel, co-founder of the Hansa Automobil company and, from 1914, director of Bremen's Hansa Lloyd factories, bought the site in 1911 and had part of it rebuilt. The castle is in private hands, but may be visited from Mar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Botenlauben Castle
Botenlauben Castle is a ruined castle in Reiterswiesen, a district of the Bavarian spa town of Bad Kissingen. History of the castle The castle was home of the minnesinger and crusader Otto von Botenlauben and his wife Beatrix de Courtenay (founders of the Frauenroth cloister), who both stayed from 1220 to 1242. The exact year the castle was built is unknown, but it is generally accepted to be from around 1180. The name probably comes from the words 'Boto' (name of the architect) and ''Laube'' (meaning residence). In 1234, the castle came under the control of the Bishopric of Würzburg, under Bishop Hermann I von Lobdeburg. In 1242, the castle became the administrative centre of the diocese's offices. It was eventually moved to Ebernhausen in 1525 following the German Peasants' War, and then completely dissolved in 1670. During the Peasants' War, the castle fell victim to peasants from Aura an der Saale Aura an der Saale is a municipality in the district of Bad Kissingen in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Münzenberg Castle
Münzenberg Castle (German. ''Burg Münzenberg'') is a ruined hill castle in the town of the same name in the Wetteraukreis, Hesse, Germany. It dates from the 12th century. It is one of the best preserved castles from the High Middle Ages in Germany. History The first lord of nearby Arnsburg known by name is Kuno von Arnsburg, who served Emperor Heinrich IV as a ''Ministerialis'' in 1057. Around 1064 he married Gräfin Mathilde of the House of Bilstein. Their daughter, Gertrud (b. c. 1065, d. before 1093) married Eberhard von Hagen (1075-1122), lord of ' near Frankfurt, who moved his seat to Arnsburg and changed his name to "von Hagen und Arnsburg". Under Eberhard's son, Konrad I (1093-1130) the family became the most powerful in the Wetterau and the Rhine-Main region. Konrad II exchanged properties with Fulda Abbey, receiving the land around Münzenberg Castle. The name Münzenberg means ''Mint mountain'', after the mint growing on the hill. His son, Kuno I (1151-1207), from 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neck Ditch
A neck ditch (german: Halsgraben), sometimes called a throat ditch, at www.roadstoruins.com. Accessed on 3 Jan 2012. is a dry that does not fully surround a , but only bars the side that is not protected by natural obstacles. It is often an important element in the defensive system of s, especially in Germany and other parts of Central Europe. Originally, the term ''neck ditch'' was only applied to |
Hill Spur
A spur is a lateral ridge or tongue of land descending from a hill, mountain or main crest of a ridge. It can also be defined as another hill or mountain range which projects in a lateral direction from a main hill or mountain range. Examples of spurs include: *Abbott Spur, which separates the lower ends of Rutgers Glacier and Allison Glacier on the west side of the Royal Society Range in Victoria Land, Antarctica *Boott Spur, a subpeak of Mount Washington *Kaweah Peaks Ridge, a spur of the Great Western Divide, a sub-range of California's Sierra Nevada *Kelley Spur, east of Spear Spur on the south side of Dufek Massif in the Pensacola Mountains, Antarctica *Geneva Spur on Mount Everest *Sperrin Mountains in Northern Ireland [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rampart (fortification)
In fortification architecture, a bank or rampart is a length of embankment or wall forming part of the defensive boundary of a castle, hillfort, settlement or other fortified site. It is usually broad-topped and made of excavated earth and/or masonry.Darvill, Timothy (2008). ''Oxford Concise Dictionary of Archaeology'', 2nd ed., Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, p. 376. . Early fortifications Many types of early fortification, from prehistory through to the Early Middle Ages, employed earth ramparts usually in combination with external ditches to defend the outer perimeter of a fortified site or settlement. Hillforts, ringforts or "raths" and ringworks all made use of ditch and rampart defences, and they are the characteristic feature of circular ramparts. The ramparts could be reinforced and raised in height by the use of palisades. This type of arrangement was a feature of the motte and bailey castle of northern Europe in the early medieval period. Types of ram ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Defensive Wall
A defensive wall is a fortification usually used to protect a city, town or other settlement from potential aggressors. The walls can range from simple palisades or earthworks to extensive military fortifications with towers, bastions and gates for access to the city. From ancient to modern times, they were used to enclose settlements. Generally, these are referred to as city walls or town walls, although there were also walls, such as the Great Wall of China, Walls of Benin, Hadrian's Wall, Anastasian Wall, and the Atlantic Wall, which extended far beyond the borders of a city and were used to enclose regions or mark territorial boundaries. In mountainous terrain, defensive walls such as ''letzis'' were used in combination with castles to seal valleys from potential attack. Beyond their defensive utility, many walls also had important symbolic functions representing the status and independence of the communities they embraced. Existing ancient walls are almost always masonry ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Garderobe
Garderobe is a historic term for a room in a medieval castle. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' gives as its first meaning a store-room for valuables, but also acknowledges "by extension, a private room, a bed-chamber; also a privy". The word derives from the French , meaning "robes (or clothing) protector": thus, a closet or a toilet seat that would tend to prevent clothing from getting soiled. Its most common use now is as a term for a castle toilet. Store room is the French word for "wardrobe", a lockable place where clothes and other items are stored. According to medieval architecture scholar Frank Bottomley, garderobes were "Properly, not a latrine or privy but a small room or large cupboard, usually adjoining the chamber edroomor solar iving roomand providing safe-keeping for valuable clothes and other possessions of price: cloth, jewels, spices, plate and money." Toilet The term ''garderobe'' is also used to refer to a medieval or Renaissance toilet or a close stool ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
