Godesburg
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300px, Godesburg castle in Germany. The Godesburg is a castle in
Bad Godesberg Bad Godesberg ( ksh, Bad Jodesbersch) is a borough ('' Stadtbezirk'') of Bonn, southern North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. From 1949 to 1999, while Bonn was the capital of West Germany, most foreign embassies were in Bad Godesberg. Some buildings ...
, a formerly independent part of
Bonn The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ru ...
, Germany. Built in the early 13th century on the Godesberg, a hill of volcanic origin, it was largely destroyed following a siege in 1583 at the start of the
Cologne War The Cologne War (german: Kölner Krieg, Kölnischer Krieg, Truchsessischer Krieg; 1583–88) was a conflict between Protestant and Catholic factions that devastated the Electorate of Cologne, a historical ecclesiastical principality of the Holy ...
. In 1891, the German emperor
Wilhelm II , house = Hohenzollern , father = Frederick III, German Emperor , mother = Victoria, Princess Royal , religion = Lutheranism (Prussian United) , signature = Wilhelm II, German Emperor Signature-.svg Wilhelm II (Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor ...
donated the castle's ruin to the city of Bad Godesberg. In 1959, the ruin was rebuilt according to plans by
Gottfried Böhm Gottfried Böhm (; 23 January 1920 – 9 June 2021) was a German architect and sculptor. His reputation is based on creating highly sculptural buildings made of concrete, steel, and glass. Böhm's first independent building was the Cologne ...
, to house a hotel and restaurant. Today, the restaurant is still in operation, but the hotel tract has been divided into apartments.


Location

The site has a controversial history. Growing out of the nineteenth-century ''
Heimat ''Heimat'' () is a German word translating to 'home' or 'homeland'. The word has connotations specific to German culture, German society and specifically German Romanticism, German nationalism, German statehood and regionalism so that it ha ...
'' movement, historians speculated that in the pre-Christian era, the inhabitants probably used the peak to call to the god ''
Wotan (''The Ring of the Nibelung''), WWV 86, is a cycle of four German-language epic music dramas composed by Richard Wagner. The works are based loosely on characters from Germanic heroic legend, namely Norse legendary sagas and the ''Nibelung ...
'', the god of war, death and the hunt, and other attributes, establishing a custom that led eventually to the erection of a house of prayer on the site. They found early mention of the site in 9th century documents, and again in the 12th century, documents continue to refer to it as ''Gotensberg'', or ''Gotensperg''. first mentioned in documents from the early 8th century, was supposedly built on an old cult site and its name derived from the old Germanic ''Wotansberg'', ''Woudensberg'', or ''Gotansberg''. In the 10th century, documents from the reign of
Otto I Otto I (23 November 912 – 7 May 973), traditionally known as Otto the Great (german: Otto der Große, it, Ottone il Grande), was East Frankish king from 936 and Holy Roman Emperor from 962 until his death in 973. He was the oldest son of He ...
in 927, and
Otto II Otto II (955 – 7 December 983), called the Red (''der Rote''), was Holy Roman Emperor from 973 until his death in 983. A member of the Ottonian dynasty, Otto II was the youngest and sole surviving son of Otto the Great and Adelaide of Italy ...
in 974, suggested that a religious community had been located on the mountain peak, thus the name ''Gottesberg''. From this speculation, the idea emerged that the fort itself was established on an ancient cult site.


Construction

The fortress foundation stones were laid by a vicar upon the order of Dietrich I, the Archbishop of Cologne, who was himself in disputed possession of the Electorate and fighting to keep his position. After Dietrich's death in 1224, his successors finished the fortress; it featured in chronicles of the 13th through 15th centuries as both a symbolic and physical embodiment of the power of the archbishop of Cologne in his many struggles for regional authority with the patricians of the imperial city of Cologne. By the late 14th century, the fortress had become the repository of the Elector's valuables and archives, and by the mid-16th century, was popularly considered the ''lieblingssitz'', or the favorite seat (home), of the Electors.


Modifications

The fortification had been originally constructed in the medieval style and in the reign of Siegfried II of Westwald (1275–1295) successfully resisted a five-week siege by Count William of Cleves. Successive archbishops continued to improve the fortifications with stronger walls and expanded moats, adding levels to the central
Bergfried ''Bergfried'' (plural: ''bergfriede''; English: ''belfry''; French: ''tour-beffroi''; Spanish: ''torre del homenaje'') is a tall tower that is typically found in castles of the Middle Ages in German-speaking countries and in countries under Germ ...
, which was cylindrical, not square like many medieval ''donjons'', expanded the inner works to include a small residence, dungeons, and chapel, fortified the walls, added a curtain wall, and improved the roads. By the 1580s, it was an elaborate stone fortress, and it had been enhanced partially in the style made popular by Italian military architects. Although the physical location did not permit the star-shaped '' trace italienne'', its cordons of thick, rounded walls and massive iron-studded gates still made it a formidable adversary. Its height, some above the Rhein (Rhine), on the peak of a steep hill, made artillery fire difficult. Fortifications such as this, and the star-shaped fortresses more commonly found in the flatter lands of the Dutch Provinces, made warfare both difficult and expensive; victory was not simply a matter of winning a battle over the enemy's army, but of traveling from one fortified and armed city to another and investing time and money in one of two outcomes: ideally, with a show of extraordinary force, convincing the city leaders to surrender the city, or reducing the city to rubble and storming the ruins. In the case of the former, when a city capitulated, it would have to quarter troops at its expense, called ''execution'', but the soldiers would not be permitted to plunder; in the case of the latter, no quarter was given to the defenders.Parker, p. 19.


Destruction


Uses during the Thirty Years' Wars


Heimat movement


Renovation and reuse in the 20th century


References

''This article incorporates information from the German Wikipedia article.''


External links


Official web site


* Potthof, Tanja (2009)
Die Godesburg - Archäologie und Baugeschichte einer kurkölnischen Burg
{{Authority control Castles in North Rhine-Westphalia