The Eresburg is the largest, well-known
(Old) Saxon refuge castle
A refuge castleCreighton, Oliver (2015). ''Early European Castles''. Bloomsbury. or refuge fort (german: Fliehburg, also ''Fluchtburg'', ''Volksburg'', ''Bauernburg'' or ''Vryburg'') is a castle-like defensive location, usually surrounded by ramp ...
(''Volksburg'') and was located in the area of the present German village of
Obermarsberg
Obermarsberg is one of seventeen Quarter (country subdivision), quarters in the municipality of Marsberg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is situated on the site of an Old Saxon hillfort and refuge castle, the Eresburg, on a hill 130m above t ...
in the borough of
Marsberg
Marsberg () is a town in the Hochsauerland district, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.
History
Although its origins are obscure, Marsberg was a prospering town by the 13th century (it was even minting coins). It was a free city until 1807, when ...
in the county of
Hochsauerlandkreis
Hochsauerlandkreis (meaning “High Sauerland District” in German) is a Kreis (district) in the east of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Neighboring districts are Soest, Paderborn, Höxter, Waldeck-Frankenberg, Siegen-Wittgenstein, Olpe, M ...
. It was a
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 ...
built on the plateau of a low
table hill, known as the ''Eresberg'', at a height of 130–150 metres above the
Diemel
The Diemel is a river in Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is a left tributary of the Weser.
Route
The source of the Diemel is near Willingen, in Sauerland. The Diemel flows generally northeast through the towns Marsberg, Warburg, an ...
, a tributary of the
Weser
The Weser () is a river of Lower Saxony in north-west Germany. It begins at Hannoversch Münden through the confluence of the Werra and Fulda. It passes through the Hanseatic city of Bremen. Its mouth is further north against the ports of Bre ...
, in the extreme south of the Saxon
Gau of
Engern
Angria or Angaria (german: Engern, ) is a historical region in the present-day German states of Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia. The chronicler Widukind of Corvey in his '' Res gestae saxonicae sive annalium libri tres'' denoted it a ...
on the border with the
Duchy of Franconia
The Duchy of Franconia (german: Herzogtum Franken) was one of the five stem duchies of East Francia and the medieval Kingdom of Germany emerging in the early 10th century. The word Franconia, first used in a Latin charter of 1053, was applied l ...
.
History
There is evidence that indicates the hill was settled even in prehistoric times. Pieces of pottery from the
Michelsberg culture
The Michelsberg culture (german: Michelsberger Kultur (MK)) is an important Neolithic culture in Central Europe. Its dates are c. 4400–3500 BC. Its conventional name is derived from that of an important excavated site on Michelsberg (short for ...
have also been found here. Excavations in the vicinity of the present-day
collegiate church In Christianity, a collegiate church is a church where the daily office of worship is maintained by a college of canons: a non-monastic or "secular" community of clergy, organised as a self-governing corporate body, which may be presided over by a ...
have revealed traces of ditches, ramparts and posts.
Radio carbon dating
Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon.
The method was dev ...
points to their origin in the pre-Roman
Iron Age
The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age (Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly appl ...
. In addition the wooden posts were made from trees that can be dated to between 420 and 370 B.C.
Earlier research viewed the Eresburg as a border castle of the
Cherusci
The Cherusci were a Germanic tribe that inhabited parts of the plains and forests of northwestern Germany in the area of the Weser River and present-day Hanover during the first centuries BC and AD. Roman sources reported they considered themsel ...
tribe and a fortress of Prince
Segestes
Segestes was a nobleman of the Germanic tribe of the Cherusci involved in the events surrounding the Roman attempts to conquer northern Germany during the reign of Roman Emperor Augustus.
Arminius, the Cheruscan noble and military leader, had m ...
, who was supposed to have held his daughter,
Thusnelda
Thusnelda (; 10 BC – after AD 17) was a Germanic Cheruscan noblewoman who was captured by the Roman general Germanicus during his invasion of Germania. She was the wife of Arminius. Tacitus and Strabo cite her capture as evidence of both the ...
, prisoner here. However, there are no records supporting that theory.
Thanks to its favourable position on the border, the castle was repeatedly attacked and hard fought for before being conquered in 772 A.D. during the
Saxon Wars by the
Frankish king
The Franks, Germanic-speaking peoples that invaded the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, were first led by individuals called dukes and reguli. The earliest group of Franks that rose to prominence was the Salian Merovingians, who con ...
,
Charlemagne
Charlemagne ( , ) or Charles the Great ( la, Carolus Magnus; german: Karl der Große; 2 April 747 – 28 January 814), a member of the Carolingian dynasty, was King of the Franks from 768, King of the Lombards from 774, and the first Holy ...
. Charlemagne had the
Irminsul, a pagan religious site here or in the vicinity, destroyed. In 779, he charged the
Fulda
Fulda () (historically in English called Fuld) is a town in Hesse, Germany; it is located on the river Fulda and is the administrative seat of the Fulda district (''Kreis''). In 1990, the town hosted the 30th Hessentag state festival.
History ...
abbot
Abbot is an ecclesiastical title given to the male head of a monastery in various Western religious traditions, including Christianity. The office may also be given as an honorary title to a clergyman who is not the head of a monastery. The fem ...
,
Sturmius, with
mission service in this area and directed him to this location. As early as 784/785 Charlemagne overwintered at Eresburg and had a church built, probably on the site of the former Saxon temple.
Pope
The pope ( la, papa, from el, πάππας, translit=pappas, 'father'), also known as supreme pontiff ( or ), Roman pontiff () or sovereign pontiff, is the bishop of Rome (or historically the patriarch of Rome), head of the worldwide Cathol ...
Leo III is supposed to have stayed at the Eresburg in 799 on his way to
Paderborn
Paderborn (; Westphalian: ''Patterbuorn'', also ''Paterboärn'') is a city in eastern North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, capital of the Paderborn district. The name of the city derives from the river Pader and ''Born'', an old German term for t ...
. In 915 there was a bloody
feud
A feud , referred to in more extreme cases as a blood feud, vendetta, faida, clan war, gang war, or private war, is a long-running argument or fight, often between social groups of people, especially families or clans. Feuds begin because one part ...
at the Eresburg between the
Saxon
The Saxons ( la, Saxones, german: Sachsen, ang, Seaxan, osx, Sahson, nds, Sassen, nl, Saksen) were a group of Germanic
*
*
*
*
peoples whose name was given in the early Middle Ages to a large country (Old Saxony, la, Saxonia) near the Nor ...
Duke
Henry the Fowler
Henry the Fowler (german: Heinrich der Vogler or '; la, Henricus Auceps) (c. 876 – 2 July 936) was the Duke of Saxony from 912 and the King of East Francia from 919 until his death in 936. As the first non-Frankish king of East Francia, he ...
and the
East Francia
East Francia (Medieval Latin: ) or the Kingdom of the East Franks () was a successor state of Charlemagne's Carolingian Empire, empire ruled by the Carolingian dynasty until 911. It was created through the Treaty of Verdun (843) which divided t ...
n king,
Conrad. The Bishop of Paderborn,
Theoderic
Theodoric is a Germanic given name. First attested as a Gothic name in the 5th century, it became widespread in the Germanic-speaking world, not least due to its most famous bearer, Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths.
Overview
The name ...
is also supposed to have participated personally in the battle. Also in 915 at Eresburg the invading Hungarians defeated a German army.
[Baják László: A fejedelmek kora. A korai magyar történet időrendi vázlata. II. rész. 900-1000 ''("The Era of the Princes. The chronological sketch of the early Hungarian history. II. part. 900-1000")''; ÓMT, Budapest, 2000 p. 14]
Eresburg as site of the Irminsul
Eresburg may have been the site of the
Irminsul, a sort of pillar or tree, and one of the chief pagan religious sites of the
Saxons
The Saxons ( la, Saxones, german: Sachsen, ang, Seaxan, osx, Sahson, nds, Sassen, nl, Saksen) were a group of Germanic
*
*
*
*
peoples whose name was given in the early Middle Ages to a large country (Old Saxony, la, Saxonia) near the Nor ...
. The wording of the ''
Royal Frankish Annals
The ''Royal Frankish Annals'' (Latin: ''Annales regni Francorum''), also called the ''Annales Laurissenses maiores'' ('Greater Lorsch Annals'), are a series of annals composed in Latin in the Carolingian Francia, recording year-by-year the state ...
'' in 772 suggests that the Irminsul might have been located either at the Eresburg itself or in the near vicinity. The ''
Annales Petaviani
The ''Annales Petaviani'' (''AP'') is one of the so-called "minor annals group", three related ''Reichsannalen'', year-by-year histories of the Carolingian empire composed in Latin.The others are the '' Annales sancti Amandi'', '' Annales laubacens ...
'' states: ''"He conquered the Eresburg and found the place which is called Ermensul, and set these places on fire."'' On the one hand, therefore, Charlemagne captured the Eresburg and, on the other, ''"pervenit ad locum, qui dicitur Ermensul"'', i. e. he found the site that was called Irminsul. The writer calls the site of the Eresburg, ''Erisburgo'', i.e. not ''Ermensula''. The third part of the sentence runs ''"et succendit ea loca"'', i. e. he set "these places" (plural) on fire, possibly implying that Charlemagne moved on from the Eresburg to the Irminsul.
According to other sources, Charlemagne stayed near the Bullerborn,
[The ''"u"'' has become ''"o"'', today ''Bollerborn'' spring] an intermittent spring near
Altenbeken, before he conquered and destroyed the Irminsul site in the days that followed.
The question over the location of the Irminsul is however, probably, misleading; because there may have been several of them.
References
Literature
* {{RGA, 7, 475, 482, Eresburg, Gerhard Mildenberger, Fred Schwind, Jürgen Udolph (introductory specialist article)
* Daniel Bérenger: ''Die eisenzeitliche Höhenbefestigung von Obermarsberg''. In: ''Archäologie in Ostwestfalen'' 6. Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, Bielefeld 2002, pp. 29–33,
online (pdf, 552 kB).
Castles in North Rhine-Westphalia
Buildings and structures in Hochsauerlandkreis