Flüglingen Castle

Flüglingen Castle
Creation time :	12th or 13th century
Castle type :	Hilltop castle, spur position, moth
Conservation status:	Burgstall, large tower hill with partial outer wall preserved
Standing position :	Ministerial Headquarters
Place:	Weißenburg in Bavaria - Weimersheim - "Schlossberg"
Geographical location	49 ° 2 '41.3 "  N , 10 ° 54' 38.4"  E Coordinates: 49 ° 2 '41.3 "  N , 10 ° 54' 38.4"  E
Height:	535.5  m above sea level NN

The castle Flüglingen is an Outbound high medieval hilltop castle at 535.5  m above sea level. NN , which once rose northwest of Weimersheim on the edge of a mountain plateau of the Schlossberg, part of the Flüglinger Berg .

Today's Burgstall is located about 800 meters from the center of Weimersheim, part of the district town of Weißenburg in Bavaria in the district of Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen in Bavaria . It was the former seat of the Kropfe vom Flüglingen, but next to it there are also the remains of prehistoric and early medieval fortifications on the Flüglinger Berg. Today a large tower hill with a partial outer wall can still be seen from the object, which is protected as a ground monument; it is one of the largest and best preserved structures in the district.

history

The impressive Burgstall was built during the High Middle Ages , probably in the 12th or 13th century. The builders were the Kropfe von Weißenburg and Emetzheim ; they had come here as Reich ministerials from the Regensburg area , but also served as ministerials for the bishops of Eichstätt . After the facility was built, a line was called Kropfe von Flüglingen. In 1235 a Heinrich von Flüglingen is mentioned. The castle itself was first mentioned in 1255 with the mention of " Henricus juvenis Cropf de novo castro Flugelingen ". Konrad Kropf von Flüglingen achieved supraregional importance, who is documented as bailiff of the Reichsburg Trifels (Conradus dictus Croph burcgravius ​​castri Trifels) in 1242 and accompanied Konradin on his campaign to Italy as marshal of the Swabian Duke in 1268 , where he and the Hohenstaufen died. Konrad Kropf was brother of Hildebrand Kropf von Emetzheim , which shows the close connection between the castles, which are only 3.7 kilometers apart. With the death of Konradin in 1268, the star of the Hohenstaufen Kropfe began to decline. The last news from family members comes from the middle of the 14th century, for the last time in 1342 and 1343 for the Flüglinger line.

In 1342 Hans Kropf von Flüglingen and his wife Gertrud sold their bailiwick of Weimersheim on their Hube and two fiefdoms as well as a farmstead to Wirich von Treuchtlingen and his wife Agnes for 66 pounds Heller . In 1343 Seifried Kropf von Emetzheim bought from his relatives Hans and Gertrud Kropf von Flüglingen, the latter a born von Hausen, 4 pounds of Heller from customs in Weißenburg. It seems as if the Flüglinger property was sold out back then.

The following owners of Burg Flüglingen were the Schenken von Geyern (first occupied by Heinrich Schenk von Geyern zu Flüglingen in 1363), who, however, sold the castle to the Burgraves of Nuremberg (the later Margraves of Brandenburg-Ansbach) between 1379 and 1385 . In the following it was pledged several times, but no longer came from the suzerainty of the burgraves or margraves and was therefore involved in armed conflicts several times. The statement that the castle was destroyed by fire in 1422 is incorrect - apparently only the hamlet of Unterflüglingen was destroyed and not rebuilt. Flüglingen Castle was still used as the margravial Ansbach official residence in the 16th century , but it seems to have been given up as early as 1617, i.e. before the Thirty Years' War ; The new official seat was then Weimersheim at the foot of the castle hill.

description

The one-piece Burgstall is located on the eastern edge of the Flüglinger Berg, the so-called Schlossberg. This slopes steeply to the north, east and south to the valley, on the west side it merges into a larger plateau of the Flüglinger Berg. Today the tower hill is separated from the rest of the plateau by a deep ditch running from north to south, but this was created by later quarry work. It is not known whether there was a neck ditch there in the past .

The round castle hill is surrounded by a round oval, but also partly rectangular ring wall, and thus also forms a ring moat around the hill. The wall is badly disturbed on the west side by the quarry ditch, and on the east side it is probably also damaged by erosion. The ring trench is at least 25 meters wide and eight to nine meters deep on the west side. The height of the castle hill is about ten meters, measured from the bottom of the moat. On top of it is a rectangular 60 by 55 meter plateau with rounded corners. The surface of the hill today has several ramparts and ditches; they were created by stone robbery when the residents of the surrounding villages transported the stones from the ruins for building purposes.

The appearance of the castle can be roughly reconstructed from a brief description from 1515. The older view that it was a tower hill castle (Motte) should therefore be revised: Flüglingen Castle was a “classic aristocratic castle” with a circular wall, gate building, keep , residential building ( bower ) and farm buildings.

and display information about the image

View of the castle hill with the ring wall surrounding it and the ring moat. (June 2013)

See also : List of German hill towers

literature

• Ingrid Burger-Segl, Walter E. Keller: Archaeological Hikes, Volume 3: Middle Altmühltal and Franconian Lake District . Verlag Walter E. Keller, Treuchtlingen 1993, ISBN 3-924828-58-X , pp. 52-55
• Fritz-Rudolf Herrmann : Weimersheim, City of Weißenburg: ramparts and castle stables . In: Konrad Spindler (edit.): Guide to archaeological monuments in Germany, Volume 15: Weissenburg-Gunzenhausen district - monuments and sites . Konrad Theiss Verlag , Stuttgart 1987, ISBN 3-8062-0504-3 , pp. 201-202
• Daniel Burger : From the Weissenburg castle to the castle in Emetzheim. The creation of the Ministerialenburg der Kropfe von Emetzheim in the High Middle Ages. In: Villa nostra. Weißenburger Blätter , 1999, No. 2, pp. 9-13.
• Daniel Burger: The Flüglingen Castle - a building tour from 1515 brings something new to the look of the margravial official residence, in: Villa nostra. Weißenburger Heimatblätter, 2010, No. 2, pp. 5-18
• Gottfried Stieber: Flüglingen . In: Historical and topographical news from the Principality of Brandenburg-Onolzbach . Johann Jacob Enderes, Schwabach 1761, p. 375 ( digitized version ).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Daniel Burger: From the Weissenburg castle to the castle in Emetzheim. The creation of the Ministerialenburg der Kropfe von Emetzheim in the High Middle Ages. In: Villa nostra. Weißenburger leaves . Volume 2, 1999, p. 9-13 .
2. ^ Bernhard Meyer: Burg Trifels - The medieval building history . Published by the Institute for Palatinate History and Folklore, Kaiserslautern 2001, ISBN 3-927754-50-1 , p. 95.
3. ↑ Konrad Spindler: Guide to archaeological monuments in Germany, Volume 15: Weissenburg-Gunzenhausen district - Monuments and sites , p. 201 f.
4. ^ Daniel Burger: The Flüglingen Castle - a building inspection from 1515 brings something new to the appearance of the margravial official residence. In: Villa nostra. Weißenburger Heimatblätter . Volume 2, 2010, p. 5-18 .