The motte-and-bailey castle or “motte”

The motte, a small fortification, indicates the political change in Northern and Central Europe. It symbolised power and control in most bigger towns and villages and at important crossing points along the border. “Minor knights”, so-called ministeriales, who were subordinate to the higher nobility, were the new rulers in the settlements. They ensured security and order, i.e. they represented the new interests. Those early wooden castles were towers whose lower third stood in an artificial mound. This construction, together with the ditch and palisades, was supposed to protect them from battering rams. At the same time, the impressively high building was, of course, a symbol of power.
The strange name “motte” is taken from French “château à la motte” which means “castle on the mound”. In France, the Normans brought this construction to perfection.

Plans are missing on the question what a motte might have looked liked in detail. That makes it even more exciting to reconstruct this building, that can be regarded as the symbol of new times together with the first churches, on the base of scientific findings and the small number of preserved pictures.

This idea has already come true in other places in Germany as well, whether it is the “Bachritter Castle” in Baden-Wurttemberg or the “Lütjenburg Castle” in Northern Germany. Still, none of those buildings represents a period as early as it will be shown in the Geschichtspark. As written records only deal with kings and monasteries, there is no evidence on the life in a small village in those times, on the changes that the new religion brought for single families and on emerging administrative structures. Thus, the darkness of history has to be cleared by trial and error.

The church, too, is a wooden building. In its form, the visitor of today finds familiar features, but the construction is archaic and bare of any of those ornaments that have occupied our churches in the course of history. The big, hall-like building substitutes the ancient pagan sacrificial site slightly away from the village. This site has now become obsolete and is growing wild and re-integrating into nature.