DE: Die Godesburg wurde vermutlich als Fliehburg bei Bad Godesberg am Rhein – heute im Bonner Ortsteil Alt-Godesberg im Stadtbezirk Bad Godesberg – von den Franken erbaut. Die Spitze des Bergfrieds der heutigen Ruine befindet sich auf 122 Metern ü. NN, die dortige Plattform ermöglicht einen einzigartigen Blick über das Rheintal.
Geschichte
Die Höhenburg liegt auf dem (heute als Burgberg bezeichneten) Godesberg, einem in vorgeschichtlicher Zeit erloschenen Vulkan, der die einzige markante Erhebung im Godesberger Rheintaltrichter darstellt. Eine bereits römische Besiedlung wurde durch einen in die Godesburg eingemauerten Altarstein nachgewiesen. 722 wurde der Berg als ubische Kultstätte Woudensberg (Wotansberg) urkundlich erwähnt.
Am 15. Oktober 1210 legte der Kölner Erzbischof Dietrich I. von Hengebach den Grundstein für einen Neubau. Erzbischof Konrad von Hochstaden erweiterte die Burg 1244 um die ersten fünf Geschosse des Bergfrieds. Erzbischof Walram von Jülich erhöhte diesen auf 32 Meter und ließ die Vorburg erbauen.
Während der Reformationszeit verstieß der Kölner Erzbischof Gebhard I. von Waldburg gegen den Augsburger Religionsfrieden, als er sich mit Gräfin Agnes von Mansfeld vermählte und zum Calvinismus übertrat. Er löste damit den Truchsessischen Krieg aus. Truppen des neu gewählten Kurfürsten Ernst von Bayern belagerten die Anlage 1583. Zerstört wurde die Godesburg durch die Sprengung der Mauer im Zuge eines Angriffes. Die Eroberung gelang am 17. Dezember 1583, als ein katholischer Söldner durch den Abort in die Burg gelangen konnte. Auf gleichem Weg folgten ihm weitere Angreifer, so dass sich die Besatzung, innerhalb und außerhalb der teilweise zerstörten Mauern bedroht, letztendlich ergeben musste.
1891 schenkte Kaiser Wilhelm II. die Ruine der damaligen Gemeinde Godesberg.
22 Kösener Corps gründeten im Mai 1951 auf der Godesburg die „Interessengemeinschaft“, den Vorläufer des rekonstituierten Kösener Senioren-Convents-Verbandes.
1959 wurde die Burg nach Plänen von Gottfried Böhm umgebaut. Eine Erweiterung beherbergte zu Beginn ein Hotel-Restaurant, heute ist nur noch das Restaurant in Betrieb. Der ehemalige Hoteltrakt ist – aufgeteilt in kleinere Wohnungen – vermietet. Die Stadt Bonn bietet an ausgewählten Terminen die Möglichkeit zur standesamtlichen Trauung in der Godesburg.
Auf dem Burgfriedhof Bad Godesberg bei der Michaelskapelle befinden sich viele reich gestaltete Grabstätten des Großbürgertums aus dem 19. Jahrhundert. Auch der Politiker Herbert Wehner, der Filmschauspieler Paul Kemp und die berühmte Wirtin Aennchen Schumacher fanden hier ihre letzte Ruhe.
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Datum des Abrufs: 7. September 2017, 19:27 UTC
EN: The Godesburg is a castle in Bad Godesberg, a formerly independent part of Bonn, 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. In 1891, the German emperor Wilhelm II donated the castle's ruin to the city of Bad Godesberg.
In 1959, the ruin was rebuilt according to plans by Gottfried Böhm, to house a hotel and restaurant. Today, the restaurant is still in operation, but the hotel tract has been divided into apartments.
Location
The castle depicted on a church stained glass window circa 1500, believed to be the only surviving detailed picture of the castle as it looked before its destruction.
The destruction of the Godesburg in 1583; the attackers used explosives to breach the walls
1646 engraving of the Godesberg hill and Godesburg castle as they might have appeared before the castle's destruction
The site has a controversial history. Growing out of the nineteenth-century Heimat movement, historians speculated that in the pre-Christian era, the inhabitants probably used the peak to call to the god Wotan, 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 in 927, and Otto II 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, 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 400 feet (122 m) 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
Date retrieved: 7 September 2017 19:29 UTC
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