Albrechtsburg

About

The Albrechtsburg is a Late Gothic castle erected from 1471 till about 1495. It is located in the town centre of Meissen in the German state of Saxony. It is situated on a hill above the river Elbe, adjacent to the Meissen Cathedral.

In 929 King Henry I of Germany subdued the Slavic Glomacze tribe at the Siege of Gana and built a fortress within their settlement area, situated on a rock high above the Elbe river. This castle, called Misnia after a nearby creek, became the nucleus of the town and from 965 the residence of the Margraves of Meissen, who in 1423 acquired the Electorate of Saxony. In 1423 Frederick I was appointed Elector of Saxony. His grandsons, Ernst and Albrecht, ruled over Saxony and Thuringia together from 1464 to 1485 and commissioned the master builder Arnold von Westfalen to build the first German palace on the site of the old margravial castle in 1471. Albrechtsburg Castle never actually became a centre of Wettin's court. While construction was still in progress, the builders agreed in 1485 on a division of their territory. The joint government of the two brothers was abolished and the land was divided into two parts. Albrecht received essentially the Margraviate of Meissen with the newly built castle and the later Thuringian district, his brother Ernst the remaining Thuringian areas and the Duchy of Saxony with Wittenberg, to which the electorate was bound.. Between 1495 and 1500, construction work was halted during the interior finishing work in the upper northern parts. It was not until 1521 that the son of Duke Albrecht, Duke Georg (1500-1539), these areas were completed by Jakob Heilmann. From this period are the loop ribbed vault in the style of Benedikt Ried, who worked in Prague, on the first floor of the north-eastern building and a fireplace in the room above. At that time the sculptor Christoph Walther I was also commissioned to create figural reliefs for the balustrades of the Great Staircase Tower, the frames of which show typical early Renaissance forms. The castle was christened "Albrechtsburg" in 1676 after one of its first lords. But it was Albrecht's son, Georg the Bearded, who first took possession of Albrechtsburg Castle as his residence. During the Thirty Years' War the castle was badly damaged. Since then it has stood empty. It was not until the beginning of the 18th century that Albrechtsburg Castle received more attention again, thanks to Augustus II the Strong, when he had the Meissen porcelain manufactory set up in the castle in 1710. Two years earlier Johann Friedrich Böttger and Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus had invented European porcelain. At first, Dresden was intended to be the manufactory, but Augustus the Strong chose the empty castle, isolated because of its location, because nowhere else would the secret of porcelain production have been so certain. On 6 June 1710, the porcelain manufactory began operations in the former princely residence, which was to make the "white gold" world-famous. In the middle of the 19th century, the manufactory was moved to the newly built factory building and the castle stood empty again. Between 1864 and 1870, the old factory buildings were removed and the castle was rebuilt architecturally. The missing furniture was replaced by elaborate paintings on the late Gothic walls. The later well-known artist Alexander Linnemann from Frankfurt was also active in this process, e.g. in designing the new doors. At the end of the 19th century Albrechtsburg Castle was also made accessible to the public and still delights many visitors from home and abroad.

The former electoral castle rises above a hook-shaped ground plan on a rocky plateau steeply sloping towards the Elbe north of Meissen Cathedral. All storeys are vaulted, a great peculiarity of German palace construction, which required an immense financial and design effort. The high substructures of the core building are followed by a low ground floor and two main floors open with unusually large so-called curtain arch windows. Another storey, which was also used by the nobility, is already located within the roof zone and is lit through the windows of the Lucerne row. The tower-like character of Meissen Castle, which is still so striking from all sides, is probably a well-calculated image of political significance. Albrechtsburg Castle was not only to become a residential palace that was particularly comfortable to live in, but also an unmistakable sign of the increasingly consolidating territorial rule of the Wettins, which was gaining in imperial, administrative and economic importance. For this purpose Arnold von Westfalen was probably expected to formulate a new architectural language. While the architectural decoration belongs to the Late Gothic period, the structure of the building forms already leads to the culture of the European Renaissance. The ground plan of Albrechtsburg Castle, which was already proportioned like a tower, was divided into individual tower figures; all the strips of the façade tend to be upright rectangular in format; in the effect of light and shade, the core building presents itself like a crystal with a multiply folded surface. Apart from the Staircase tower on the courtyard side, however, only one building, arranged in the central zone on the Elbe side, develops into a real tower; all other buildings are bound together again by the mighty roof. In the roof zone, however, the lucarnes, high-rectangular roof dormers resting on the eaves line, form a wreath of tower figures surrounding the building. The lucarne in its typical design as a window bay window originates from France, but it was only in isolated cases (e.g. in the castles of Baugé and Le Rivau) that it was used in such a systematic and consistent manner around 1470. Another momentous adaptation of French building culture in Meissen was the use of the lofty staircase tower, as it had been formulated as a type in 1365 with the - later demolished - Great Spiral Staircase in the courtyard of the Louvre. The large main staircase to the south, which provides access to the upper floors used for stately purposes, is a masterpiece of stonemasonry with intricately curved steps winding up around an open eye in the centre. Its windows were originally open and allowed a variety of views between those walking on the stairs and spectators in the courtyard. However, the overall shape of the gallery in front of the Meissen staircase tower and the neighbouring section of the façade has no direct French model. A smaller stair tower is also located on the courtyard façade in the corner between the north and east wings.

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Photography via Wikimedia Commons.