Elevator castle

an elevator castle is one on a hill established castle. Their designation results from the categorization of castle plants on the basis their topografischen situation. According to this partitioning one differentiates elevator castles and valley castles so mentioned (also flat country castles called).

Elevator castles can be still further partitioned on the basis their exact altitude. One differentiates between:

• Summit castles, which lie on the summit or the back one approximately steep mountain. Under it the rock castles represent a special form .
• Slope castles, which were established at the slope of a mountain and by a rising area are in such a way superelevated.
• Spur castles, which are limited by steeply dropping area at three sides and therefore only to a side of the mountain had to be defended.

As in 10./11. Lost century castles their pure fortress character and arose increasingly noble living castles, the elevator castle due to its better defense possibilities were preferred. Nearly 66% of all today well-known castles (Lit.: Crow, 2002) exhibit such an altitude.

At first the establishment of an elevator castle only the dynastischen aristocracy was reserved. Starting from that 12. Century also distinguished Reichministeriale representative elevator castles finally built, for those in 13. Century also the low aristocracy followed.

Examples of elevator castles are the castle Kriebstein (spur castle), the Mark castle (summit castle), castle honour rock (slope castle) and the castle chess stone (rock castle).

literature

• refuge Wolfgang Böhme, pure hard Friedrich, Barbara shock Werner (Hrsg.): Dictionary of the castles, locks and fortresses. Reclam, Stuttgart 2004, S. 156, ISBN 3-15-010547-1
• Friedrich William crow: Castles and apartment towers of the German Middle Ages. Bd. 1, Thorbecke, Stuttgart 2002, S. 21-23, ISBN 3-7995-0104-5