Château de Salm

Château de Salm is a ruined château situated in the département of Bas-Rhin, Alsace, France. It began construction in 1205 and was completed around 1400.

The château's ruins have had the title of historic monument since December 6th, 1898.

History

The château de Salm was built between 1205 and 1225 by Henry III, Count of Salm (of Haute Lorraine), on the territory of the Senones Abbey dont il est l'avoué. The Salm family started in the 13th century with the Counts of Bar (Bar-le-Duc), one of the more powerful families of Lorraine. The Salm-Lorraine dynasty came from the Luxembourg family.

Henry IV, grandson of the bâtisseur count, reorganized les salines of Morhange so the Framont forges were situated close by. The industrial politics provoked a military reaction around 1259 from the Bishop of Metz, who occupied his installations and forced the count to sell him the château de Salm and château de Pierre-Percée and to swear fealty to him. When the bishop left the castles, the count retook the fortresses as titre d'hommage.

In 1285, the troubador from Lorraine, Jacques Bretel, spent several days at the château where he met Count Henry IV. He recounted his stay there in his work le Tournoi de Chauvency.

The site is le siège d'une occupation importante all throughout the 14th and 15th centuries (with foundry, metallurgy, and pottery activities), without a doubt the after-effects of the acquisition of Jean de Salm of the lower valley of Bruche in 1366, of Mutzig à Schirmeck. The large works completed around 1400 considerably modified the château's defences by the construction of a thick shielding tower, a barbacane, and a new gate. The old shield wall was torn down and adapted for new functional requirements.

The château seems, however, to have been précocement ruined around 1500 car il est cité en ruine en 1564, sans qu'on lui connaisse de violent destruction. Prince Constantin Alexander of Salm-Salm visited the château in 1779 in the company of the prince of Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, to show an inscription on the bas-relief of an outside wall.

The ruins served de carrière peu after the annexation of the principality of Salm-Salm by the French Republic in 1793. It was bombarded by French artillery during World War I in 1914 because a German observation post had been established there.

Integrated in German territory by the Treaty of Frankfort in 1870, the vestiges of it were classified as a historic monument by the Imperial Administration of Alsace-Lorraine December 6th, 1898. In 1919 the territory was attached to the Department of Bas-Rhin.

Description

Constructed at 809 metres above sea level on a bar rock of red sandstone with a Northeast-Southwest orientation, the château stretches on different levels approximately 120 metres long and 50 metres broad. The primitive château of the 13th century, or Kernburg, was equipped in the southwest with a shield wall facing the attack, behind which were living quarters and the cistern. A palace, or Palas, which demonstrates the remarkable architectural quality of elements composed of decoration, is situated across from les courtines Northwest and Northeast, which dominate the keep, or Bergfried (tower refuge), constructed on the rock's highest point (its northern extremity). In the course of the 14th century the shield wall was reinforced by one or two flanking towers before a shield tower and a postern weren't constructed in the front, maybe around the beginning of the 15th century.

Details of the ruins

Since 2004 the rehabilitation workers on site that have been employed by the association of The Caretakers of Salm have had permission to excavate more unexpected walls and to progressively understand more of the different stages of construction.

The reading of the plans nevertheless remains very difficult, in comparing them to the few ruins left. Few significant traces remain of the shield tower, the vaulted ceilinged room that housed the cistern, which is rare in Alsace, and the postern. An analyzation of ruin details shows the presence of large basses-cours réalisées at the end of the fourteenth century, a barbacane and more interior battlements with doors and window slits, but also the presence of crossbowmen at cross-shaped windows in the 13th century. The richness of the movable architecture (observations en cours) suggests the presence of a chapel, which is in general a standard fixture of counts' castles.

The shield tower, which is flush with the second floor, as a large artificial hole (destruction?). It is named thus not only because it was intended to face siege cannons (the thickness of the wall reaching 3 metres), but also because it hid the château behind it.

The princely visit of 1779 was preceded by important travaux d'aménagement et de sécurisation qui pesèrent grandement on the face of the ruins. Even today, the plan and chronology of the château's construction is still open to global interpretation, the assembly of data and analyzation of gothic elements place this castle among the most beautiful counts' achievements of the 13th century in Alsace and Lorraine.

Bibliography

(taken from the French page)

• Marc Brignon, La fin du château de Salm, Revue Lorraine (56), 1984.
• Pierre de la Condamine, Salm en Vosges, nouvelle édition augmentée, Ed. du Palais Royal, Paris, 1974.
• Dominique Dantan , Les châteaux de Salm et Pierre-Percée, maîtrise d’histoire, Université de Nancy II, 1984.
• Danièle Erpelding, Actes des princes lorrains, Template:1re série, Actes des comtes de Salm, Université de Nancy II, UER de Recherche Régionale, 1979.
• Denis Leypold, Contribution à la connaissance du château de Salm, données historiques et architecturales, L'Essor (139), 1988.
• Denis Leypold, Nouvelles données historiques sur la château de Salm : le point sur sa construction, L'Essor (151), 1991.
• Jean-Luc Pupier et collaborateurs, Senones à travers les âges, Bulletin des Amis de la Bibliothèque de Senones, n° 3, Senones, 1983.
• Frédéric Seillière, Document pour servir à l'histoire de la Principauté de Salm en Vosges et de la Ville de Senones, sa capitale, réédition par les Editions Jean-Pierre Gyss, Strasbourg, 1982.
• Histoire des terres de Salm, Société Philomatique Vosgienne, Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, 1994.

Coordinates: 48°27′11″N 7°8′24″E / 48.45306°N 7.14°E / 48.45306; 7.14