Desenberg Castle

Desenberg Castle
	View of the Desenberg with the ruins of the Desenberg Castle
Creation time :	1000 to 1100
Castle type :	Hilltop castle
Conservation status:	Keep, remains of the wall
Standing position :	Counts, clericals
Place:	Warburg - Daseburg
Geographical location	51 ° 30 '0.7 " N , 9 ° 11' 53.5" E Coordinates: 51 ° 30 '0.7 " N , 9 ° 11' 53.5" E.
Height:	343.6 m above sea level NHN

The Desenberg Castle is the ruin of a hilltop castle on the Desenberg , which rises in the Warburger Börde not far from Daseburg , a district of the city of Warburg , in the North Rhine-Westphalian district of Höxter in Germany .

history

The Desenberg, engraving by GM Vischer (1672)

A fortification should be on the 343.6 m above sea level. NHN high Desenberg already existed in 766.

Henry the Lion besieged his vassal Widukind von Schwalenberg there in 1168 . Miners from Goslar are said to have dug a tunnel to take Widukind's water supply. After the imperial ban on Henry the Lion in 1180, the Archbishop of Cologne, Philipp I von Heinsberg , besieged the castle in 1181 and took it.

From 1256 the castle is proven to be owned by Ritter Spiegel . According to legend, a brave Saxon should be able to frighten and kill a dragon living on the mountain through the reflection in his shield, which the "mirror knight" succeeded in doing. The coat of arms of those von Spiegel who own the mountain and the castle ruins to this day shows three mirrors.

During the Hesse-Paderborn feud (1464–1471), Landgrave Ludwig II of Niederhessen besieged the castle in 1464, albeit without success. When Messrs. Spiegel zum Desenberg changed sides in the course of the feud , Bishop Simon III saw himself . forced by Paderborn to storm the castle in 1470 and largely destroy it. After that, the Spiegel zum Desenberg finally had to take the castle from the Prince Diocese of Paderborn as a fief .

In the middle of the 16th century the Spiegel left the Desenberg and moved into knight seats nearby, namely in Buhne , Rothenburg , Klingenburg , Übelgönne and Dalheim . The castle fell into disrepair, even if, in the last truce of 1581, the bishop imposed on Messrs. Spiegel zum Desenberg not to leave the buildings on the upper Burgplatz completely in ruin, to give the tower a roof again and to have a porter on the grounds to let live.

investment

Desenberg Castle

The keep of Desenberg Castle

The hilltop castle at 343.6 m above sea level. NHN had an outer bailey , a 1050 square meter main castle with a round, twelve meter high keep with a diameter of 6.7 meters and a wall thickness of 1.3 meters at the highest point of the mountain, as well as a multi-storey building ( Palas ? ) on the polygonal curtain wall . The keep and remains of the wall of the building are still preserved from the complex. The tower has been accessible via a metal spiral staircase since 1991 and offers a good view of the Warburg Börde from its viewing platform .

literature

Rainer Decker: The history of the castles in the Warburg / Zierenberg area (= The history of our homeland . Volume 4, ZDB -ID 24661-x ). Association for Hessian History and Regional Studies, branch association Hofgeismar , Hofgeismar-Zierenberg 1989.
The Desenberg near Warburg, Höxter district (= early castles in Westphalia . Volume 16). Antiquities Commission for Westphalia, Münster 2000, ISSN 0939-4745 .