Ebersburg Castle

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Ebersburg Castle
The main castle with the south tower in the foreground

The main castle with the south tower in the foreground

Creation time : around 1100–1130, from 1396
Castle type : Hilltop castle
Conservation status: Keep, enclosing walls, north tower ruin, wall remains of the outer bailey
Standing position : Nobles
Place: Ebersburg- Ebersberg
Geographical location 50 ° 28 '27.8 "  N , 9 ° 51' 5.8"  E Coordinates: 50 ° 28 '27.8 "  N , 9 ° 51' 5.8"  E
Height: 689  m above sea level NHN
Ebersburg Castle (Hesse)
Ebersburg Castle

The Castle Ebersburg is the ruins of a hilltop castle in the district Ebersberg the community Ebersburg in Fulda district in eastern Hesse . It is the eponymous landmark of the community.

A castle from around 1100 formed the origin of the complex. From 1396 the castle was rebuilt and expanded after previous destruction. Since it never had its own well, it was rather unsuitable as a permanent place to live and was finally abandoned in the 16th century. Even the attempt made after the Thirty Years' War to use it again by building a half-timbered apartment building failed after a few years. In the 19th century, the ruin was located in what was then the Weyhers district court , which belonged to the Kingdom of Bavaria. During this time one of the towers was made into a lookout tower and the castle was restored to preserve it. Today it is owned by the State of Hesse. It is a protected cultural monument .

The castle complex can be visited at any time. The key for the observation tower can be picked up nearby. The administration of the Hessian Rhön Nature Park has signposted hiking trails around the facility .

location

Ebersberg from the northwest

The castle is 6.5 kilometers southwest of the Wasserkuppe at 689  m above sea level. NHN on the Ebersberg and five kilometers northeast of Schmalnau , the administrative seat of the municipality of Ebersburg. The Ebersberg stands on the southeastern edge of the former municipality of Ebersberg and is enclosed on three sides by the Gackenhof district of the municipality of Poppenhausen .

The castle can be found on table sheet TK 5525. It stands on a ridge between the valleys of the Fulda and its right tributary Lütter . The polygonal main castle covers the entire mountain plateau of the Ebersberg, the outer castle is located on a lower terrace on the eastern slope. To the east, the castle is surrounded by a ring moat with a rampart, while natural steep slopes had a protective function, especially to the south and west.

The Ebersberg is densely forested, mainly with deciduous forest. In the surrounding valleys, the castle is therefore not easy to see from everywhere, especially in the summer months. Only the towers protrude from the canopy and, depending on the perspective, only one can be seen.

history

As the headquarters of the von Ebersberg family

The castle complex was probably built around 1100 by the Lords of Ebersberg and was associated with the imperial palaces of the Hohenstaufen family . It was created in connection with the Osterburg near Bischofsheim an der Rhön and Wartenberg Castle in Vogelsberg . Other authors assume an origin in the Staufer period during the kingship of Barbarossa or Henry VI. or even shortly after 1200.

According to the current state of research, the Ebersburg was first mentioned in written sources in 1396, as Dietrich von Ebersberg, the brothers Simon, Karl and Otto von Steinau called Steinrück , the brothers Thomas and Peter von Weyhers, the brothers Hans, Hermann and Eberhard von Weyhers and Johann von Weyhers applied to the Prince Abbot Johann von Merlau in Fulda to build a fortress and a castle on the Ebersberg. According to the document, the mountain was owned by the Fulda Abbey and they had to undertake to receive the castle as a man fief. Even if there is no reference to an existing castle or ruin in this letter, it is related to a destruction of the Ebersburg by troops of Prince Abbot Bertho III mentioned by Johann Friedrich Schannat . von Mackenzell , after Herrmann von Ebersberg's predecessor, Bertho II von Leibolz , had been killed. Archaeological work has also shown that certain parts of the castle are older than the rest of the current complex. Christoph Brower wrote in 1612 that it was destroyed by Bertho II von Leibolz. Neither chronicler cites any evidence and demonstrably invented facts in some places. In the case of the Ebersburg, it is likely that they wrote the truth and that there was a predecessor to the castle first mentioned in 1396.

The family of those zu Ebersberg is sometimes referred to as the most important knight family of the Rhön. It was named for the first time in the first decades after 1300 with the addition of "von Weyhers" due to the increasing ramification of the family and the headquarters in the Weyhers moated castle . After the castle had been rebuilt before Johann von Merlau was written, it can be seen that several branches of the family, those of von Ebersberg and those of Steinau Ganerbe, were sitting on the rather small castle. The castle formed a network of fortification structures with the moated castles in Weyhers and Poppenhausen . Are preserved truce from the years 1430, 1446, 1463 and 1478. In the completely preserved text of 1430 stipulates that should always just a Ganerbe at the castle. This had to reward the "tower people, gatekeepers and guards". The eight gan heirs were divided into two parties. Every Ganerbe had to contribute to the maintenance of the castle with money and grain. In the event of war, it was stipulated that each Ganerbe had to send four armed men with weapons to the castle. In the truce of 1446 with 17 heirs, a chapel in the castle is mentioned for the first time. A document from 1456 states that the chaplain employed at the castle had to read mass every week. In 1452 Prince Abbot Reinhard von Weilnau was included in the truce in order to have better control over the castle and its owner as a liege lord. Variously named conquests or destruction of the castle in 1449, 1460 or 1465 do not seem credible. The last truce was handed down from 1516. As the last evidence of the use of the castle, there is a report from 1533 about a prisoner imprisoned there. In the following years it was abandoned because it was obsolete as a defensive structure and its ownership structure was too fragmented. It was not mentioned again until 1646 towards the end of the Thirty Years War , when Lukas von Ebersberg leased it to farmers in the area who wanted to use it as a refuge to protect their cattle and their families in the event of warlike acts. Until the Swedish army had finally withdrawn in 1650, they made use of this right, in return they had to pay rent and repair damage to the walls. It can be assumed that the entire system was thus kept in a relatively good condition. Johann Philipp Breidung as Zentgraf of Weyhers built in 1664 on behalf of William Rudolph and Gottfried von Ebersberg in the ruins a half-timbered house with 14 windows and a thatched roof. Breiden complained seven years later that the new building was falling to pieces from penetrating rain. In the following almost 200 years, the castle was only used to remove stones as building material and fell apart under the influence of wind and weather.

In 1777, the von Ebersberg family sold their share of the “Lütter vor der Hart” court along with the associated property, including the Ebersberg with its castle ruins, for 85,000 Rhenish guilders to the Fulda monastery. In the following time the castle changed hands several times, but between 1803 and 1815 it was sold five times. During the affiliation to Bavaria in the district of Weyhers between 1819 and 1867 it was owned by the state. Today it is owned by the State of Hesse.

Building history

Castle of origin

South tower 1901 (on the right is the western wall remainder)

The castle is built from the anthracite-colored phonolite of the Ebersberg, which can only be used as quarry stone , and for window and door walls as well as a corner connection made of grayish, hewn sandstone . For the construction of the first castle, the summit plateau was extensively cleared and most of the stones used were removed on site. Even today you can discover several heaps of rubble around the castle. The older components contain sandstone as a humpback cuboid and from 1400 as a smooth cuboid.

The oldest remaining components are the lower (square) part of the south tower and the piece of tower wall adjoining it to the west, which has the same thickness as the tower back wall. These are the only archaeologically detectable parts of the original castle before the reconstruction around 1396. The floor plan of the lower tower floor is almost square with the external dimensions of 6.80 m × 6.95 m, the corners were bricked with humpback blocks made of sandstone. Originally the basement was barrel vaulted and had no entrance. The only opening to the outside was a slit of light in the western, eight-foot-thick outer wall. As in most castles, the basement served as a dungeon with the fear hole that was probably present in the vaulted ceiling . The wall adjoining to the west is only in its original state in the lower part because it was improperly raised by half a meter with smooth stone blocks during renovations in the 1960s, stylistically more in line with the late Gothic extensions around 1396.

From 1957 to 1959 Gotthold Wagner and Fritz Luckhard found wall remains during excavations, from which the original course of the curtain wall can be reconstructed. This was in the northern area inside, in the eastern area outside of today's castle wall. The original castle was a strictly geometric rectangular complex, which consisted of the keep, which is only preserved in the lower part today, as well as a Romanesque residential building and the surrounding walls. Most likely, the only gate of the small complex was in the eastern area, outside of today's curtain wall. Wagner's assumption that the northern area in which the second tower is located was undeveloped at the time is not certain. After making comparisons with Burg Hauneck and Burg Fürsteneck , Benjamin Rudolph and Annina Hilfenhaus date the castle from 1200 to 1250 at the latest in the most comprehensive monograph to date.

Reconstruction around 1396

The north tower still unrenovated in 1901
South tower from the west, recognizable the narrow Romanesque window

During the reconstruction and expansion, the south tower, which was probably destroyed except for the lower vault, was given a new superstructure in a cylindrical shape. The tower part has only one opening at a height of around 7 m, which served as an entrance. This can no longer be reconstructed precisely because the corbels , which are almost completely missing, were removed during the vacancy years and missing components were added during the first restoration in 1852/54. As can be seen in a drawing from 1721, the tower had a conical roof without today's battlements. During this time, the north tower and the moat, which can still be seen clearly in places, were built. The towers were connected to the newly built polygonal east wall. This meets at the north tower with the west wall, which was probably supplemented from an existing wall. The north tower stands on the two meter wide castle wall and is a round tower with a diameter of 5.80 m. The gate was 6.25 m high at the current opening and originally had a pointed arch. Another opening served as a viewing hole to the north. The north tower was completed with a slightly protruding weir plate , of which a gargoyle is still present.

In 1958, probably the only original gate was found in the direction of the west wall next to the north tower. This was probably locked during construction from 1664 and provided with a covered niche for the gatekeeper. At a distance of one to two meters from the west wall there was a building with a cellar with a side length of at least 11 m and on the east side a building with a side length of at least nine meters. The cellars of both buildings were connected by a corridor only 1.45 m high. The still existing walls of the outer bailey, especially the 35 m long dead straight south wall, were also built during this construction phase. The wall thickness there is about 1.50 m. For topographical reasons, the gate was probably at the level of the current entrance.

Changes since 1664

One of the oldest structures still in existence: the loop-hole-like window in the west wall of the south tower clearly shows a Romanesque architectural style

The house, commissioned by Gottfried and Wilhelm Rudolph von Ebersberg in 1664, was built on the site of the previously collapsed western house. It was divided into two living quarters. Which of the brothers got the upper or lower apartment, each with its own basement, was decided by lot. At the same time, Johann Breleid's protocol lists which parts of the house are still missing and still need to be installed. Among other things, 14 windows, 2 ovens and 14 doors, which are divided according to different designs, are mentioned. A cistern should also be built to catch the rainwater, as there was never a well at the castle. There is no answer to a request from the Count Johann Philipp Breendung to rebuild the east house at his own expense, from which all the walls were probably still preserved at the time. No evidence was found that this project was carried out. Breiden complained about the condition of the built house as early as 1671. It would be destroyed by penetrating rain. Repairs were probably not made and just a few years after construction the house was left to decay. From the foundation strips found in 1957, only 40 cm wide, it can be concluded that it was a half-timbered building.

The oldest surviving drawing from 1721 shows a relatively well-preserved castle. The south tower was still covered with the conical roof, while the north tower was already showing initial damage to the wall crown. There are five windows and six slits of light or loopholes below them in the much larger east wall. It remains to be seen whether these originated from the draftsman's imagination or have not yet been found due to repairs to the very small quarry stone masonry.

The appearance and state of preservation of the castle in 1854 can be reconstructed quite well on the basis of notes by Georg Landau published in 1835 and the original drawings by Johann Klüber. Both the inner and outer bailey showed strong signs of decay at that time. Foundations could still be seen in the outer bailey, it was assumed that farm buildings had stood there. Both gates that were visible at the time had collapsed and had no stones . The vault and fear hole in the south tower were still there. The only change was an access from the outside, which was probably created as part of surveying work. There was also a level access from the castle courtyard in the north tower. The tower was badly damaged, allegedly because of a lightning strike, and the interior was full of rubble. In 1835 Landau wrote about cellars in the courtyard that Klüber did not mention 20 years later. In 1835, the castle wall was still preserved at a "considerable height", while at Klüber the west wall was largely missing and the rest was heavily overgrown.

The restorations in 1854 were relatively small due to the very limited financial resources available. The south tower received the staircase, which is still accessible today, in order to use it as a lookout tower. The Romanesque vaulted ceiling was destroyed for this purpose. The defensive plate with its nine battlements and the timbered and sheet metal clad tower was rebuilt. The extent to which further repairs were made to the tower can no longer be determined due to contradictory records. The gates that exist today were built where there were passages before. Due to a lack of knowledge, no consideration was given to the fact that the castle of origin had the entrances elsewhere. All that has been handed down is that the south gate collapsed as early as 1646 and a passage in the north was created to replace it. It is not known why the south gate was designed with a round arch and the north gate with a pointed arch. The castle wall was repaired and leveled between the towers on each side. No repairs were made to the north tower.

The so-called donkey stable near the entrance to the outer bailey, which the vernacular erroneously claims to have housed a donkey that had to carry the water to the castle, was probably built from older wall remnants in the 19th century. Its irregular shape, consisting of walls of different thicknesses and different stone shapes on the walls, speaks against an earlier construction. The ceiling is also too low to hold an animal in. Johann Klüber described in 1852 that there were only a few remains of the wall at the site. During the restorations after 1852, the current building was probably placed on it. This therefore has no relation to the development before this time. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries it was used as a beer cellar several times at festivities.

The north tower was restored in the 1920s. The completely collapsed west side was largely rebuilt using the original wall technique and battlements were built up at the original height.

In 1963 the state of Hesse carried out further restoration measures. Between 1993 and 1995, the masonry and the wooden stairs in the accessible tower were renovated for 220,000 DM. At the same time, the protective roof of the rest hut in the outer bailey was renovated and a sycamore maple was planted in the courtyard to replace a sick chestnut.

The Ebersburg today

Ebersburg castle ruins 2016

The Ebersburg is owned by the federal state of Hesse and is managed by the Hessen-Forst State Office, Hofbieber Forestry Office, and is freely accessible at any time via a hiking trail. The path, which is closed with a barrier, has been developed so that it can be driven into the forecourt of the castle. The key for the access door to the south tower can be obtained against a deposit from the municipality of Ebersburg or at the Schafhof around one kilometer west-southwest of the castle as the crow flies. The 16.5-meter-high south tower, designed as an observation tower, offers the visitor a panoramic view of the Rhön and the Fuldaer Land. Both towers are connected by a castle wall, which gives access to the inner courtyard on two sides. In the forecourt of the ruin, next to a piece of the old castle wall and a mass of phonolite rocks, there is a roofed resting place with tables and benches and a campfire site. Since 2009 it is possible on the Ebersburg registry office to marry. The celebration is to be organized by the bride and groom because the municipal board's resolution to use the castle as a branch of the registry office only legitimizes the possibility of getting married there.

Research history

Plan of the castle by Johann Klüber

The first unproven research reports are from Christoph Brouwer in Fuldensium antiquitatum libri IIII 1612 and from Johann Friedrich Schannat in Pantronium sancti Bonifacii sive Buchonia vetus 1724.

Georg Landau described the castle in 1835 in the ninth volume of the anthology published by Friedrich Gottschalck , Die Ritterburgen und Bergschlösser Deutschlands . His rather lyrical report, influenced by Romanticism, is of interest to today's research mainly because it describes the state of the castle before the first renovation in 1852.

In 1914, Ernst Wenzel reported on the castle in the magazine Der Burgwart . In addition to first-time detailed sketches of components, Wenzel brings the loop-slit-like window in the west wall of the south tower in connection with the oldest windows in the Liobakirche (built from 836) in Petersberg and with those at Normannstein Castle near Treffurt .

After the royal Bavarian district judge Leonhard Geiger applied for the first financial means for monument conservation measures in 1852, master mason Johann Klüber made some drawings on the condition and the possible types of renovation. The government in Würzburg then decided on a different, no longer preserved design for restoration.

Between 1956 and 1958, under the direction of Fritz Luckhard and Gotthold Wagner, excavations took place in the castle courtyard, to which a large part of today's knowledge about the castle is owed. Suffering from a lack of time and money, the excavations lasted only a few days to a few weeks at intervals. Wagner was responsible for the archaeological work, while Luckhard tried for the first time to sift through all available files on the Ebersbergers and to reconcile the excavations with the entries. In addition to the first volume, Regesten der Herren von Ebersberg (the second has not yet been completed), Luckhard also published a number of essays in the Fulda history sheets .

The Dehio manual from 1965 and 2008 only devotes a short paragraph to the castle. The information provided there does not largely agree with those in the extensive article by Benjamin Rudolph and Annina Hilfenhaus in the 2006 Fuldaer Geschichtsbl Blätter, which summarizes the previous research .

literature

  • Heiner Flick, Adalbert Schraft: The Hessian Rhön - Geotopes in the land of the open distance. Hessian State Office for Environment and Geology, Wiesbaden 2013, ISBN 978-3-89026-373-1 , pp. 195–197.
  • Fritz Luckhard : The regests of the gentlemen of Ebersberg called von Weyhers in the Rhön (1170-1518) (= publication of the Fuldaer Geschichtsverein, volume 40). Parzeller, Fulda 1963, ZDB -ID 517272-x .
  • Wolf-Dieter Raftopoulo: Rhön and Grabfeld culture guides. A complete documentation of the old cultural landscapes in terms of art and cultural history. RMd Verlag, Gerbrunn 2017, ISBN 978-3-9818603-7-5 , pp. 87-88.
  • Benjamin Rudolph, Annina Hilfenhaus: The continuity of the unstable - The ruin Ebersburg (Rhön) between ruin and restoration. In: Fuldaer Geschichtsverein (Hrsg.): Fuldaer Geschichtsblätter . Volume 82. Rindt-Druck, Fulda 2006, ISSN  0016-2612 , pp. 5-54.

Web links

Commons : Ebersburg (Burg)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ ebersburg rhoen.de , accessed on November 23, 2019
  2. ↑ Map services of the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation ( information )
  3. ↑ a b c Rudolf Knappe: Medieval castles in Hessen. 800 castles, castle ruins and fortifications. 3. Edition. Wartberg publishing house. Gudensberg-Gleichen 2000, ISBN 3-86134-228-6 , pp. 206/207
  4. ↑ Benjamin Rudolph, Annina Hilfenhaus: The continuity of the unsteady: the ruin Ebersburg (Rhön) between ruin and restoration in Fuldaer Geschichtsverein: Fuldaer Geschichtsblätter , year 82 (2006), Rindt-Druck, Fulda, p. 16
  5. ^ Fritz Luckhard : Regesten der Herren von Ebersberg called von Weyhers in der Rhön , Verlag Parzeller, Fuldaer Geschichtsverein, 1963, p. XIII (introduction)
  6. ↑ Kay Tschersich: Kompass Wanderführer Rhön: 50 Tours , Mair Dumont DE, 2015, ISBN 9783990440971 , p. 35.
  7. ↑ a b c Benjamin Rudolph, Annina Hilfenhaus: The continuity of the unstable , p. 28
  8. ↑ Benjamin Rudolph, Annina Hilfenhaus: The continuity of the unsteady: the ruin Ebersburg (Rhön) between ruin and restoration in Fuldaer Geschichtsverein: Fuldaer Geschichtsblätter , year 82 (2006), Rindt-Druck, Fulda, pp. 10-12
  9. ↑ Benjamin Rudolph, Annina Hilfenhaus: The Continuity of the Unstable , p. 12
  10. ↑ Benjamin Rudolph, Annina Hilfenhaus: The continuity of the unstable , pp. 12-14
  11. ↑ Benjamin Rudolph, Annina Hilfenhaus: The continuity of the unstable , p. 14/15
  12. ↑ a b Willy Kiefer : The Ebersburg on the website of the Ebersburg community (accessed on October 23, 2015)
  13. ↑ Rolf Müller (ed.): Palaces, castles, old walls. Published by the Hessendienst der Staatskanzlei, Wiesbaden 1990, ISBN 3-89214-017-0 , pp. 87-88.
  14. ↑ Benjamin Rudolph, Annina Hilfenhaus: The continuity of the unstable , p. 15
  15. ↑ a b Benjamin Rudolph, Annina Hilfenhaus: The Continuity of the Unstable , p. 18
  16. ^ Benjamin Rudolph, Annina Hilfenhaus: The continuity of the unstable , pp. 24-26
  17. ↑ Benjamin Rudolph, Annina Hilfenhaus: The continuity of the unstable , pp. 30–35
  18. ↑ Benjamin Rudolph, Annina Hilfenhaus: The continuity of the unstable , pp. 35–39
  19. ↑ Benjamin Rudolph, Annina Hilfenhaus: The continuity of the unstable , pp. 43–47.
  20. ↑ Benjamin Rudolph, Annina Hilfenhaus: The continuity of the unstable , p. 47/48.
  21. ↑ Benjamin Rudolph, Annina Hilfenhaus: The continuity of the unstable , p. 49/50.
  22. ↑ a b Benjamin Rudolph, Annina Hilfenhaus: The continuity of the unstable , p. 50/51
  23. ↑ Benjamin Rudolph, Annina Hilfenhaus: The continuity of the unstable , p. 52
  24. ↑ Article on Ebersburg on rhoentravel.de ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (the author named there is the Fulda district administration; accessed on November 23, 2015)
  25. ↑ The decay was stopped in the Fuldaer Zeitung of August 15, 1995, p. 13
  26. ↑ Burgruine Ebersburg on poppenhausen-wasserkuppe.de, accessed on November 23, 2019
  27. ^ Ebersburg, object data in the scientific database "EBIDAT" of the European Castle Institute
  28. ↑ Ruin Ebersburg on the website of the municipality of Ebersburg (accessed on October 23, 2015)
  29. ↑ Information flyer on the Ebersburg ( memento from November 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) from Hessen-Forst (available as a pdf, accessed on February 26, 2020)
  30. ↑ Benjamin Rudolph, Annina Hilfenhaus: The continuity of the unstable , p. 11
  31. ↑ a b Benjamin Rudolph, Annina Hilfenhaus: The continuity of the unstable , p. 9
  32. ↑ Benjamin Rudolph, Annina Hilfenhaus: The continuity of the unstable , p. 5/6
  33. ^ Benjamin Rudolph, Annina Hilfenhaus: The continuity of the unstable , p. 8/9
  34. ^ Georg Dehio: Handbook of German Art Monuments - Hessen I; Gießen and Kassel administrative districts , 2008, ISBN 978-3-422-03092-3 .