Kattenturm Essen: Medieval Residential Tower of Burg Luttelnau
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Medieval
- Eras represented
- Medieval
- Civilizations
- Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page8 sections
History
Kattenturm Essen is the ruin of a medieval residential tower in Essen, Germany, built in the thirteenth century as part of Burg Luttelnau, a knightly seat and motte on the Ruhr. The site is the only motte on the Ruhr River that survives at least in part, preserving evidence of a fortified settlement whose construction and alteration continued through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
Luttelnau and its medieval lords
Luttelnau, also written Luthenau or Luttenau, means “small floodplain.” The castle began on a long, narrow island in the Ruhr before being placed on a raised mound. During the fourteenth century, it was held as a fief of Werden Abbey. A fief was an estate granted by a superior lord to a dependent holder in return for obligations. The Lords of Luttelnau, recorded from 1296, held the castle during this period.
Excavation evidence indicates continuing building work and changes during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In 1317, the Luttelnau property was burned and looted. Traces of burning found in 1968 were interpreted as the remains of a wooden palisade later replaced by a northern ring wall, although they may instead have belonged to a bridge leading to the former bailey.
The Lords of Luttelnau expanded the residential tower with an eastern addition during the fourteenth century. This extension may have been remodeled later in that century or by the fifteenth century, when a round structure was also added at the tower’s western corner.
Transfer, decline, and later memory
The Lords of Luttelnau became extinct in 1417. In 1424, the castle passed as a fief to Heinrich von Oefte and later became part of the estate of Oefte Castle. It gradually deteriorated. In 1454 it was described as wüst, meaning deserted or waste, and the Werden feudal register listed it as abandoned in 1573. The Lords of Oefte nevertheless used the site as a prison at the end of the sixteenth century.
The nineteenth-century name Kattenturm later became connected with legends about cats and with the ancient Chatten, a Germanic people associated mainly with central Germany. These stories claimed that cats or the Chatten guarded a treasure at the site. Another tradition states that Archbishop Konrad von Hochstaden granted Luttelnau to the knight Konrad von Elberfeld in 1260 and that Count Eberhard I of the Mark destroyed it after the archbishopric’s defeat at the Battle of Worringen in 1288. Excavation evidence does not support this account and instead places building activity at the site in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
Excavation and protection
After the 1968 excavation, the City of Essen began securing the ruin in 1969 and later opened it for viewing. The city owns Kattenturm as the legal successor to the former city of Kettwig, which received the ruin as a gift from the Counts von der Schulenburg. Kattenturm was entered in Essen’s municipal register of architectural monuments in February 1985 and received additional protection as an archaeological monument in September 1992.
Remains
The castle occupies the northern bank of the Ruhr in Essen-Kettwig, opposite Oefte Castle on the southern bank. Its principal surviving structure is a square residential tower standing on a circular mound about 2 metres high and 25 metres across. The former moat survives as a depression about 3 metres wide along the northern side, while the associated bailey lay north of the tower, upstream along the river, on a low elevation above flood level.
Residential tower
The tower is built from unrendered Ruhr sandstone and has a ground plan measuring 7.80 by 7.80 metres. It now stands about 13 metres high, although its original three-storey form reached approximately 16 metres. The northeastern half has collapsed. The surviving base storey has exterior walls between 1.70 and 1.80 metres thick, an interior 4.25 metres wide and 5.50 metres high, and a barrel vault, a continuous rounded ceiling covering an elongated space. A fireplace, latrine, and slit windows survive on the ground floor. The first storey is about 5.20 metres high, with walls approximately 1.35 metres thick.
Walls and later additions
At the tower’s western corner are remains of a rubble-stone curtain wall, an enclosing defensive wall surrounding a fortified building. Built during the fourteenth century, it curved around the tower from west to east and protected the landward side. A partly preserved circular structure stands on the wall remains at the western corner. It measures 3.10 metres in diameter, with walls 60 centimetres thick. Another extension survives at the eastern corner, although its original dimensions cannot be determined.
Earthworks and bailey
The circular mound supports the tower and forms the central earthwork of the motte. North of it, the former bailey occupied a low rise above the Ruhr’s flood level. A bailey was the adjoining enclosed area used for subsidiary buildings and working or residential facilities. Its position upstream from the tower forms part of the known layout of Burg Luttelnau.
