Zwinger
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A Zwinger
In the territories of the Teutonic Order the terms Parkam or Parcham were used instead of Zwinger. These were related to the words Park ("park") and Pferch ("pen").[4]
Castles
The Zwinger of a castle is sited in front of the main
In central Europe most Zwingers were built in front of older castle walls as a later addition and reinforcement of the defences.
Town fortifications
The Zwinger in front of a
The barbican is based on a similar concept to the gateway Zwinger and is found in front of the main wall but separated from it by an additional moat.
In the
The open area of the Zwinger was mainly used in peacetime to keep animals or as a garden. As their defensive function became superfluous, in many cases barns, stables and storage buildings were erected in Zwingers.
The
Development
The development of the Zwinger has not been well researched to date. By the fifth century A.D. a fully developed Zwinger had been built in front of the Byzantine
In
Occasionally the narrow outworks of the Habsburg (Aargau) or of Alt-Bolanden (Rhineland-Palatinate), which date to the late 10th and early 11th centuries, are seen as early Zwingers. These fortification elements do not have any direct successors, however.
In central Europe Zwingers first reappeared in the first half of the 13th century in front of the ring-walls of small fortifications. Towards the end of that century, the defensive capability of castles was being enhanced in this way far more frequently, for example at Gnandstein Castle in Saxony; Château du Landsberg and Château d'Andlau in Alsace. In southern France the heavily restored Zwinger in the town fortifications of Carcassonne appears to have been built. Initially Zwinger walls were very close to the main wall.
In the 14th century, the first firearms caused a further growth in the number of Zwingers. Countless examples were built, especially during the 15th and 16th centuries. In Franconia the fortification of late medieval city has largely survived. In Nuremberg a low Zwinger was built in front of the older ring-wall. In the early 15th century, Munich was fitted with a new double ring of town walls, as depicted in the Nuremberg Chronicle. By connecting the inner and the outer ring – to be more exactly, the respective inner and outer (= lower) watch towers – with numerous party walls, a succession of zwinger segments soon encircled the place as a whole.
The first Zwinger walls of the
The Zwingers of a small group of castles in the Franconian
The Hussite period additions of many castles in the endangered regions often went back to innovations that had been developed by the Hussites themselves. A prime example is the town fortification of the south Bohemian Hussite town of Tábor. Parts of the Zwinger in front of the main gate have survived even today.
In general the Zwinger walls were markedly lower and less thick that the actual ring walls. Often only a parapet wall was erected around the intended killing ground of the Zwinger. Occasionally a covered or open
Zwinger walls could fully surround a fortification or just a particularly vulnerable section. There is often a moat in front of them, the Zwinger wall also acting as the revetment of the moat. On hillside castles the Zwinger wall was a supporting wall and often very high to provide static stability of the whole site.
Frequently, small, hidden sally ports or posterns enabled direct combat with an enemy in the moat area. The actual Zwinger area was also often accessible through sally ports.
Early high medieval Zwinger in the Holy Land
The
Other large crusader castles were also surrounded by great Zwinger systems. The outer ring wall of the castle of Tartus (Syria) could have been built at the same time as the Zwinger at Krak, i.e. in the middle of the 13th century. By shortly before 1168 the Knights of St. John began remodelling Belvoir Castle in present-day Israel. The outer fortification with its corner towers acts like "a large Zwinger to the structure" (U. Großmann).
13th-century double concentric walls in Wales
The Welsh castles of Harlech and Beaumaris (started 1295 but never completed) have a double defensive wall, the outer wing surrounding the inner one concentrically at a short distance from it. The outer fortification in Beaumaris, with its round wall towers, is particularly massive and comparable to the Krak des Chevaliers.
Examples of surviving medieval Zwingers
Town and city fortifications
- Amberg
- Aschersleben
- Carcassonne
- Delitzsch
- Dinkelsbühl
- Ingelheim
- Jihlava
- Jüterbog
- Neubrandenburg
- Nördlingen
- Nuremberg
- Templin
- Warsaw
- Wolframs-Eschenbach
Castles
- Hassberge)
- Burghausen Castle (Burghausen/Salzach, Upper Bavaria)
- Giechburg (Upper Franconia)
- Guttenberg Castle on the Neckar (Neckar-Odenwald-Kreis)
- Hohenurach Castle (Swabian Jura)
- Hornberg Castle on the Neckar (Neckar-Odenwald-Kreis)
- Löwenstein Castle (Swabian-Franconian Hills)
- Minneburg (Odenwald)
- Nürburg Castle (Eifel)
- Otzberg Fortress (Otzberg)
- Rauheneck Castle (Ebern)
- Turaida Castle (Turaida)
- Tower of London (London)
See also
Footnotes
- German nounit is capitalized, but can be written lower case when used as an English common noun.
References
- ^ Piper, Otto (1995). Burgenkunde. Bauwesen und Geschichte der Burgen. Würzburg, 1995, p. 684.
- ^ Ettel et al. (2002), p. 282.
- ISBN 978-3-95801-028-4.
- ^ Piper (1895), p. 11, footnote 2.
Literature
- Ettel, Peter, Anne-Marie Flambard Héricher and T. E. McNeill, eds. (2002). "Actes du Colloque International: de Maynooth (Irland), 23 - 30 août 2002" in Chateau Gaillard 21. Caen: Crahm.
- Thomas Biller. Die Adelsburg in Deutschland. Entstehung, Form und Bedeutung. ISBN 3-422-06093-6.
- Horst Wolfgang Böhme (ed.): Burgen in Mitteleuropa. Ein Handbuch. Vol. 1: "Bauformen und Entwicklung." Deutschen Castlesvereinigung e.V. Theiss, Stuttgart, 1999, ISBN 3-8062-1355-0.
- Horst Wolfgang Böhme, Reinhard Friedrich, ISBN 3-15-010547-1.
- Georg Ulrich Großmann. Burgen in Europa. Schnell & Steiner, Regensburg, 2005, ISBN 3-7954-1686-8.
- Michael Losse. Kleine Castleskunde. Regionalia, Euskirchen, 2011, ISBN 978-3-939722-39-7.
- Piper, Otto (1895), Burgenkunde, 1st edn. Munich: Theodor Ackermann.