The Rudelsburg is a ruined hill castle located on the east bank of the river Saale above Saaleck, a village in the borough of Naumburg in the county of Burgenlandkreis in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany
The Rudelsburg is a ruined hill castle located on the east bank of the river Saale above Saaleck, a village in the borough of Naumburg in the county of Burgenlandkreis in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. The Rudelsburg was built in the Middle Ages by the Bishop of Naumburg and served to secure trade routes such as the Via Regia through the Saale Valley.
The Rudelsburg was a point of conflict between the bishops of Naumburg and the Margraves of Meissen belonging to the House of Wettin. The castle occasionally served various noble families as a residence, until it was destroyed in the Thirty Years' War and thereafter fell into disrepair. In the early 19th century the Rudelsburg became a popular tourist destination thanks to the romanticisation of mountains and the rise of hiking as a pastime. From 1855 onwards it achieved national renown as the annual meeting place of the Kösener Senioren-Convents-Verband, the oldest union of student fraternities with delegates from all German-speaking countries. The Rudelsburg still maintains a particular attraction for visitors and lies on the Romanesque Road (Ger:Straße der Romanik), a tourist route.
History
Archaeological finds seem to indicate that an early Bronze Age settlement existed on the site of the Rudelsburg, which has been attributed to the Unetice culture. The discovery of the Nebra sky disk attracted public attention to this prehistoric civilisation and its elevated culture and provoked interest in the settlements in the region of Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia. The political, religious and economic importance of such settlements has not yet been established, but is the focus of intense research.
Military fortification and seat of nobility
The Rudelsburg castle was established in 1050 as a border fortification and was extended around 1150, with the addition of the central and outer keeps. Not far away on the western knoll is the ruin of Saaleck Castle. Rudelsburg was officially mentioned for the first time in 1171 under the name Rutheleibisberg.
Heinrich III, Margrave of Meissen, received the castle from the Bishop from Naumburg in 1238 as recompense for services to the church and installed there a number of families belonging to the nobility of service (retainers to a lord whose status was far above that of the peasantry but who nonetheless did not belong to the ranks of the high nobility). A source from 1271 names 12 different castellans. A priest is mentioned for the first time in 1293.
During a dispute with the noble Curtefrund, the citizens of Naumburg led by their captain Johann von Trautzschen laid siege to the Rudelsburg from 22 April to 30 July 1348. The sources relate that an “instrumentum” was brought to bear during the siege that could shoot Greek fire.[1] This must have been some early form of gunpowder and is thought to be one of the first records of the use of firearms in a siege in Germany. The only earlier recorded use of ordnance dates back to the siege of the town of Meersburg on Lake Constance by Ludwig von Bayern in 1334. The oldest reports in all of Europe are from Italy (Florence 1326, Cividale 1331) and from the French fleet (1338-1346).
The citizens of Naumburg burnt down the Rudelsburg during their siege, and there were deaths and injuries on both sides. It seems that the castle was not rebuilt, as it is not mentioned in any official document for several decades after this event.
The next mention of the castle dates to 1383, when the Schenk family from Saaleck belonging to the House of Vargula are named as masters of the citadel, seated in Rottelsburg.
A loan certificate of the Dukes of Saxony, who belonged to the House of Wettin, dated 2 April 1441 names the brothers Rudolf, Günther and Heinrich von Bünau as the owners of the Rudelsburg. Apparently they owned no land other than that on which the castle stood.
During the fratricidal war between Friedrich and Wilhelm of Saxony, the Rudelsburg was besieged and destroyed for a second time in 1450. The inner keep was burnt to the ground during this incident.
At the division of the lands of the House of Wettin in 1485, the Rudelsburg was attributed to the Albertine line.
Rudolph von Bünau auf Teuchern and Günther von Bünau auf Gröbitz sold the Rudelsburg and the surrounding outworks to Hans Georg von Osterhausen in 1581 to cover their debts. The castle, which had been barely maintained until then, began to fall into decay during this period.
Although Groitzsch still describes the Rudelsburg as arx pulcherrima ("most beautiful castle") in his 1585 work Descriptio Salae fluvii eidemque adjacentium urbium, arcium etc. (Description of the river Saale and the surrounding towns, castles, etc.), a record from 1612 indicates that the lord marshal of Osterhausen employed a stonemason and a carpenter to provide "necessary support of the sagging beams, girders and rafters".
According to Osterhausen court records, a process was held at the Rudelsburg on 4 June 1616. At the time, a caretaker still lived in the castle, which was accessible via a narrow road. The courtyard was covered in grass. Besides a small room with a wooden pulpit, the usable remains of the castle included the dungeons with their very strong doors.
Towards the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1640, Swedish troops set fire to the Rudelsburg. Following this third destruction, the Rudelsburg was abandoned on 14 April 1641 and the inhabitants moved to the nearby Kreipitzsch property.
The nobles from Creutz(en) are believed to have been the owners of the Rudelsburg from 1671 to 1771. In 1690, they tried to establish the status of the (uninhabited) castle as a possession owing direct allegiance only to the emperor (Reichsunmittelbarkeit) in a court process in the imperial court in Wetzlar.
In 1770, the owner of the Rudelsburg ordered that the walls of the outer keep be torn down in order to reuse the stones for construction on the property, but a worker was permanently injured in an accident, and this was interpreted as a bad omen. The work was stopped. The outer keep was almost completely destroyed at this point in time, and it is probably only as a result of this accident that the ruined inner keep was preserved.
With the death of Friedrich Adolph von Creutz in 1774, the male line of the family was extinguished. This thwarted the plans to establish the Reichsunmittelbarkeit of the Rudelsburg.
In the following years, the counts from Zech and the counts from Brühl are named briefly as the owners of the Rudelsburg. The family von Schönberg bought the castle in 1797 and established an entailment, i.e. an indivisible trust that was designed to keep together the inheritance of the family.
The Rudelsburg as a destination for hikers and a tourist attraction
In the 19th century, the Rudelburg became a meeting point for romantically-minded hikers, especially for students from Jena, Leipzig and Halle.
By this time, the castle was desolate, and devoid of all infrastructure. There was no entrance into the courtyard of the central keep and there were no sealed rooms, just rubble and debris. In 1818, the cantor emeritus, Johann Friedrich Förtsch, described the Rudelsburg as follows:
“The inner courtyard is covered in the rubble of the various ceremonial halls, chambers, weapon and storage rooms, kitchens, underground vaults, cellars and corridors, which have collapsed. It is thus impossible to say how everything used to be arranged.”
Nonetheless, ever more visitors came to the Rudelsburg. During the same period, the masters of the castle belonging to the family of the barons von Schönberg planted grapevines on the southern slope of the hill. One of the former vineyard workers, Gottlieb Wagner, known as “Samiel”, began to look after the ruins. From 1824 onwards, he offered food and drink from the Kreipitzsch property to visitors.
In this song, the castles on the Saale are decaying ruins that serve only to inspire the imagination. There is as yet no mention of drinking and celebrations or of the Rudelsburg as a venue for events.
The attractiveness of the castle rose however with the services offered by Wagner, so much so that the head of the district authorities in Naumburg asked Friedrich von Schönberg, the owner of the property, if it would be possible to open it officially for visitors. Consequently, a road was even built up to the castle.
Gottlieb Wagner opened the first tavern in the castle in time for Easter 1827, although it was only open on Sundays at first. When word got around about this development amongst the students in Jena, they marched on the Rudelsburg and, cheering loudly, occupied it for three days. The owner of the castle was honoured with a torchlight procession.
The completion of the Thuringian Railway in 1849, which improved the access to the Rudelsburg, coupled with the gastronomic offerings, further increased the attractiveness of the castle and brought in visitors from further abroad, including for example students from Leipzig and Halle an der Saale.
During a large-scale Prussian military exercise in the area in 1853, the provincial classes invited King Frederick William IV to breakfast at the castle. The drinking hall in the inner courtyard, which was built in the same year, is probably a product of this visit. The hall took the form of a roofed seating area that was open to the courtyard and replaced the old straw roof that had been held up by simple tree trunks.
Gratis
Gratis
Burgturm: 1.00 EUR
- Schöne Aussicht
- Informationstafeln
- Ruinen der Burg
- Für Rollstühle nicht zugänglich
- Teilweise als Restaurant genutzt