StandortHagenstraße
Wollweberturm (woolen cloth weavers´ tower)
Opposite the local court building (Amtsgericht) in the Hagenstraße is the "Wollweberturm" situated. It was built around 1505. Today it accommodates a restaurant. The round tower be-longed to the city fortification of the new town´s centre. It already provided the installation of cannons. Apart from the "Tylenturm" it was - with its brickwork of three metres height and a width of ten metres - probably one of the most powerful old fortified towers.
(Photo: Stadt Korbach)
The name "Wollweberturm" means that the woolen cloth weavers´ guild had to defend the tower and the adjacent part of the city wall in danger. Later on it also was called "herrschaftlicher Turm" (noble tower), as the tower had once been property of the count of Waldeck.
Directly near the tower stood the city palace of the count of Waldeck (Eisenberg´s line), built in the second half of the 13th century. Today we must imagine the location of the palace and the count´s yard between the Wollweberturm and the tower near the local court in the Hagen-strasse, which at the time did not exist.
In 1536 the palace fell victim to a fire. Count Wolrad immediately initiated the reconstruction. The three-floor renaissance city palace erected between 1536 and 1546 must have been a huge building. However, it was pulled down in 1720 to make room for an even bigger and more impressing baroque palace that was never realized.
Until 1734 the Wollweberturm accommodated the local prison. Around 1900 the tower was reconstructed for habitation. The slate roof dates from that period. Today the tower is owned by the City of Korbach.
© Adil Durakovic/ M. Möller
Literatur:
Hans Osterhold: Meine Stadt. Korbacher Bauten erzählen Stadtgeschichte, hrsg. vom Magistrat der Kreisstadt Korbach, 3. Aufl., Korbach 2004.
Ein Rundgang durch die alte Stadt, bearb. von Ursula Wolkers, hrsg. vom Wilhelm Bing Verlag und Magistrat der Stadt Korbach mit Förderung der Sparkassenstiftung Waldeck-Frankenberg, Korbach 1999.