Festung Peitz: A Brandenburg Fortress in Lusatia
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.5
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Holy Roman Empire, Margraviate of Brandenburg
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Citadel
On this page10 sections
History
Festung Peitz is a sixteenth-century fortress in Germany, built for the Brandenburg ruler Margrave Johann of Küstrin between 1559 and 1562. It occupied an exposed position in a Brandenburg exclave, a territory separated from the main body of its state, within Bohemian Lusatia. The fortress protected Peitz and the surrounding Brandenburg lands and formed part of a defensive system that also included Küstrin and the fortress begun at Spandau in 1560.
Medieval Peitz and the Brandenburg acquisition
Peitz and its castle first appear in the written record on 3 August 1301, when a deed issued at Dahme described them as Pizne opidum et castrum. The document concerned Theoderich the Younger’s sale of the Lusatian border region to Magdeburg Archbishop Burchard III for 6,000 marks of silver. The associated purchase and enfeoffment deeds did not become legally effective because the required feudal transfer before the German king could not take place during the war between the Empire and the Thuringian margrave.
Peitz and Lusatia changed rulers repeatedly. The area was under Bavarian rule from 1323 to 1353, passed to Saxony in 1353 for fifteen years, and came under Bohemian rule in 1368. The Landsberg brothers held Peitz in pledge from 1418. Repeated Hussite incursions led them to place themselves under the protection of Brandenburg Elector Friedrich I on 28 December 1431.
The territorial governor Johann von Polenz opposed this agreement and joined Saxon representatives in an attempt to recover Peitz. On 8 August 1436, the Saxon captain Querfurt captured the castle after a siege carried out with approximately 160 men. Hans von Waldow, master of the Order of St John, a Catholic military-religious order whose officers also held administrative roles, helped mediate between Polenz and the Brandenburg elector. Polenz then agreed to return the castle to Heinrich Schenk von Landsberg, provided that Polenz was recognised as his lord and as an official of the emperor.
On 11 August 1442, Brandenburg Elector Friedrich II acquired Heinrich Schenk von Landsberg’s pledge. Brandenburg troops took possession of Peitz and its castle, while Heinrich became castle governor and administered the Peitz district. Friedrich acquired Cottbus in 1448 and secured the Lusatian region from the Polenz brothers through the Treaty of Lübben on 29 September that year.
The Bohemian king Podiebrad challenged these acquisitions because Lusatia remained a fief of the Bohemian Crown. The conflict ended with the Treaty of Guben on 5 June 1462. Brandenburg returned most of the territories it had acquired after repaying the purchase price, but retained Cottbus, the Peitz district, Teupitz, and Bärwalde. These possessions formed a Brandenburg exclave within Bohemian Lusatia.
Construction of the fortress
Margrave Johann of Küstrin decided in 1557 to build a fortress at Peitz. Its position near Bohemia exposed it to possible occupation during wartime. In a letter to the emperor dated 24 February 1561, Johann also referred to threats from the Turks, Muscovites, and other enemies. Construction began in December 1559 under a building ordinance issued on 18 December. The ordinance set working hours, rest days, wages, penalties, supervision, and compulsory service through 11 November.
Work began during the winter instead of waiting for spring. In January 1560, the fortress master builder Jeronismus Arkanat reported that foundations were being dug and that foundation laying would begin when the weather allowed. Arkanat remained associated with the work at Peitz until at least 13 November 1560, after which Johann appointed the Italian builder Francesco Chiaramella de Gandino as his replacement.
The upper fortress, or citadel, was built over the site of the old castle. Existing brick structures were demolished and their materials reused. The completed complex consisted of the citadel and the fortified town, known as the lower fortress, and was finished in 1562. Between 1590 and 1595, extensive defenses were added around the entire town. Chiaramella, Arkanat, and especially Rochus zu Lynar, a prominent military architect and fortress builder, were among those involved in the work.
Wartime refuge and destruction
During the Thirty Years’ War, the major European conflict fought mainly from 1618 to 1648, Peitz sheltered many nobles and ecclesiastical dignitaries. In the winter of 1636 to 1637, Brandenburg Elector Georg Wilhelm and his court stayed at the fortress and used Peitz as their seat of government.
The documented governors included Rochus zu Lynar from 1584 to 1596, Hans von Buch the Elder from 1596 to 1600, Wigand von Hacke from 1620 to 1622, Hans Caspar von Klitzing in 1638, Georg Friedrich von Trott from 1640 to 1666, and a succession of later commanders through Karl Christoph von Schmettau, who served from 1755 to 1758. Their positions combined responsibility for the administration and defense of the fortress district.
A plan to enlarge and modernize the fortress during the Seven Years’ War, the European and global conflict fought from 1756 to 1763, was abandoned because of its cost. Austrian troops occupied Peitz in 1758 and 1759. In 1759, the buildings inside the fortress area were scheduled for destruction by blasting, but a thunderstorm extinguished the burning fuses and initially prevented complete destruction. King Frederick the Great later ordered the fortress demolished in 1767.
The surviving fortress tower now contains a museum, while its large festival hall is used for concerts, celebrations, and weddings.
Remains
Festung Peitz formerly covered the area of the present old town. The complex combined an upper fortress on the site of the medieval castle with a fortified town below it. Water defenses, earthworks, bastions, and brick construction shaped the larger defensive system, while the fortress tower is the principal surviving above-ground building.
Surviving tower
The fortress tower
The powerful fortress tower, also called the Thick Tower, rises approximately 36 metres. It is regarded as the oldest surviving building in the Peitz region and is the only surviving above-ground building of the former fortress. An accessible roof turret stands approximately 35 metres above the ground. The tower also contains a large festival hall, and its present museum use preserves the building as a physical reminder of the former complex.
Citadel and town defenses
The upper fortress
The citadel occupied the site of the earlier castle and formed the strongest fortified section of the complex. It was surrounded by a water moat approximately 675 metres long. A rampart beside the moat was intended to be protected by 751 stakes, each approximately 5.4 metres long. About 4.2 metres of each stake was driven into the ground, leaving roughly 1.2 metres above the surface as an obstacle against assault.
The fortified town
The lower fortress consisted of Peitz itself as a fortified town. Its defenses included an extensive system of bastions, earthworks, and water moats. Together with the citadel, these works formed the completed Fortress Peitz. The building campaign required large quantities of brick and lime. Calculations allowed for 600,000 bricks recovered from the old wall and ground, 100,000 from lowering the old tower by 10 to 12 feet, and further supplies from Peitz, Lieberose, and Cottbus. The planned total reached 1,835,000 bricks, while as many as 1,200 workers were employed during peak periods.
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