Johan van Valckenburgh (c. 1575 − 1624) was a Dutch military engineer who built fortresses. He is known for building the ''Bastion Henricus'' which was a fortification around Hamburg. Today the Hamburg History Museum is on this site.

Biography

van Volckenburg was born in about 1575. He was working for Maurice of Orange in 1606 under the tutelage of

Johan van Rijswijck Johan * Johan (given name) * ''Johan'' (film), a 1921 Swedish film directed by Mauritz Stiller * Johan (band), a Dutch pop-group ** ''Johan'' (album), a 1996 album by the group * Johan Peninsula, Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada * Jo-Han, a manu ...

. He was working as an engineer on his own account first within the

Hanseatic League The Hanseatic League (; gml, Hanse, , ; german: label=Modern German, Deutsche Hanse) was a medieval commercial and defensive confederation of merchant guilds and market towns in Central and Northern Europe. Growing from a few North German to ...

in the city of Lüneburg, but in his lifetime he is known to have worked on ten works including the waterway in

Bremen Bremen (Low German also: ''Breem'' or ''Bräm''), officially the City Municipality of Bremen (german: Stadtgemeinde Bremen, ), is the capital of the German state Free Hanseatic City of Bremen (''Freie Hansestadt Bremen''), a two-city-state consis ...

. He worked on the fortifications in Hamburg from 1615 to 1625 on what became known as ''Bastion Henricus'' as well as work in Böhlau and Cologne. His work in Hamburg introduced a second layer to the fortifications to protect against the Thirty Years War. He created a "New Town" (''Neustadt'') whose street names still dates from the grid system of roads he introduced. van Volckenburg died in 1625 as a Dutch soldier fighting the Spanish during the Eighty Years War in 1625. He is remembered by a plaque on Hamburg's city walls. He also has the bridge illustrated named after him and the ''Valckenburgschule'' training centre in Ulm.Valckenburgschule
accessed 3 November 2012

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Valckenburgh, Johan van Year of birth unknown 1570s births 1625 deaths 17th-century Dutch engineers Dutch military engineers Dutch military personnel killed in action Dutch people of the Eighty Years' War People from Voorburg