Von der Burg zur Festung. Der Wehrbau in Deutschland und Europa zwischen 1450 und 1600

Volume 18 of the series "Forschungen zu Burgen und Schlössern". The 22nd annual conference of the Wartburg Society for the Research of Castles and Palaces (Wartburg-Gesellschaft zur Erforschung von Burgen und Schlössern e.V.), which took place in Schwerin in 2014 in cooperation with the German Society for Fortress Research (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Festungsforschung e.V.), was devoted to the changes in fortified construction under the influence of firearms between the middle of the 15th century and the beginning of the 17th century. The contributions to this conference volume take a look at how noble and sovereign castle owners reacted to the challenges of artillery. Which concepts did they pursue, who used which forms of construction and who adopted the new form of the bastion from Italy and when?

Did the development really lead to the end of castle building, as can be read time and again, or even to the separation into the purely military fortress and the supposedly more homely unfortified castle? International and regional lines of development of early fortress construction are shown, but questions of efficiency, symbolism and symbolism of fortifications are also clarified and, last but not least, it is made clear that the supposedly "modern" bastion did not necessarily always and everywhere have to represent the more efficient element of fortification, and that rondels and turrets were not necessarily obsolete. A number of contributions also focus on current castle and palace research in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.