Fluhenstein Castle

Fluhenstein Castle
The entrance side of the older castle with the remains of the external plaster
Creation time :	14th Century
Castle type :	Hilltop castle
Conservation status:	Wall remains
Standing position :	Ministeriale
Place:	Sonthofen- Berghofen
Geographical location	47 ° 31 '2.2 "  N , 10 ° 18' 4.1"  E Coordinates: 47 ° 31 '2.2 "  N , 10 ° 18' 4.1"  E
Height:	790  m above sea level NN

The ruins of Fluhenstein Castle are located on the southern outskirts of Berghofen (town of Sonthofen , Oberallgäu district , Germany ) on the slope of a ridge. The former stately castle complex is in a desolate condition and can only be viewed from the outside.

history

The Heimenhofen Castle

Floor plan on the information board in front of the castle

The south side of the older part of the castle

The residential tower from the east

The residential tower, interior view

The gate of the older part of the castle (inside)

The younger north wing (north wall)

In 1361 the brothers Marquard and Oswald von Heimenhofen shared their common property. Marquard kept the rule of Burgberg with the Heimenhofen castle of the same name . His brother Oswald acquired the Berghofen rule from the abbot of the Kempten monastery in the following year . Abbot Berthold von Langenegg had recently bought the property from childless Heinrich von Berghofen.

The lords of Berghofen were servants of the Kempten Abbey and originally sat in a small castle east of the village (Burgstall Berghofen). Heinrich von Berghofen had probably left his headquarters a few years before the sale and lived on his Sedelhof.

The new owner Oswald von Heimenhofen moved the castle seat to a rocky hill on the slope of the "Walten", a foothill of the Allgäu Alps . The fortress originally consisted essentially of a semicircular residential tower with a spacious western extension over a trapezoidal floor plan.

The lord of the castle systematically expanded his property over the next few years by purchasing a mill and two farms. His son Berthold was in the service of the dukes of Bavaria in 1398.

In 1413 the brothers Berthold and Ulrich acquired the rule of Hohentann and divided the entire property among themselves. Ulrich von Heimenhofen stayed on Fluhenstein, his brother founded a new branch of the family in Hohentann. The two noble lords are referred to in the sources as "bad stewards" who had to go into debt.

Berthold's son Erkinger even had to sell his share in the Fluhenstein reign in 1440 to the Augsburg bishop Peter von Schaumberg . The purchase price is 9225  florins .

Four years later, troops from the Augsburg bishopric occupied the poorly fortified castle. Ulrich and Hans von Heimenhofen had killed the episcopal serf Andreas Funk. Ulrich was transferred to Füssen as a prisoner and was only released after his father Ulrich the Elder. Ä. and his brothers Hans and Jörg Urfehde had sworn.

From 1462 Ulrich d. J. von Heimenhofen with the imperial city of Kempten in feud . The Heimenhofen resident wanted to force the imperial city's shares in his rule under his jurisdiction. The diocese of Augsburg and Count Hugo von Montfort zu Rothenfels sided with the city and besieged the Fluhenstein in 1463. After the conquest, the lords of the castle in Kempten were arrested. In 1464, however , the Archduke of Austria ordered the warring parties to be reconciled in Bregenz .

The official castle of the Hochstift Augsburg

Decades of excessive indebtedness forced Jörg d. Ä. 1477 for the sale of the castle to the bishopric of Augsburg . His family only had one house in Sonthofen as a residence.

In 1508 and 1511 the family lost their last inherited possessions to the Kempten monastery. The Fluhenstein line of the Lords of Heimenhofen even fell back into the middle class or peasant class. Since then Jörg von Heimenhofen has only been called Jörg Heimenhofer. His brother Kleinhans married the serf Anna Mutzin. The couple's children therefore fell into serfdom.

From then on, Fluhenstein Castle was administered by officials of the Augsburg bishopric. Around 1500 work began on expanding the fortress to include the north wing. The new St. Alexius castle chapel was inaugurated in 1501.

During the German Peasant War , the rebels looted the castle in 1525. The Landammann Hans Nachtrueb managed to escape to Dillingen on the Danube , but lost all his household effects and his grain supplies.

In 1540 the serf Jakob Heimenhofer refused to give the body tax and the carnival hen to the bishopric. Thereupon he was imprisoned in the castle of his knightly ancestors and only released again after his obligations had been recognized.

In 1546 the troops of the Swabian Federation occupied the fortress. During the Allgäu peasant uprising in 1607, the Rettenberg peasants moved in front of the castle, dug the water out of the crew and captured some mercenaries who had been sent by the bishopric to defend the castle. However, the troops of the bishopric were able to recapture the Fluhenstein shortly afterwards.

In 1633 the facility was plundered again by Swedish soldiers during the Thirty Years' War , who also severely abused Landammann Alexander Straub.

Until 1769, the fortress still served as the official residence of the Augsburg governors. Construction bills received tell of numerous repairs and conversions, not least of which resulted from the destruction caused by the war. As the last Amman of the bishopric, Johann Georg Birk sat on Fluhenstein from 1761.

Birk's successors moved into the nursing home in Sonthofen, which was destroyed in 1945. The castle, which is no longer needed, was sold to a farmer in 1808 after the secularization of the bishopric by the Bavarian kingdom for demolition. The ruins are still privately owned today.

description

Older part of the castle

In terms of defense technology, the hilltop castle is unfavorably located on a small rock head above the western foot of the "Walten". The fortress could easily be shot at from a tongue of land above it. In the east, a neck ditch partially cut from the rock separates the complex from the mountainside. In the south this trench is only about one and a half meters deep.

In the south of the rock the remains of the older Heimenhofen castle rise. The residential tower still rises almost at the original height. The surrounding walls to the west were largely removed in the 20th century. Larger parts of the wall are only upright in the north and west. The art monuments inventory from 1964 shows an undated photograph of the castle on which the south wall has been preserved up to the first floor. The ground floor was broken through by two large arched openings. Four windows can be seen on the upper floor .

The masonry consists of rolling stones and rubble stones. Sometimes layers of larger pebbles (mostly sandstone ) alternate with layers of flat quarry stones with small pebbles. In the preserved window frames, brick patches can sometimes be seen.

The semicircular residential tower was separated by a transverse wall, which has only been preserved as a wall attachment.

The castle gate in the north wall has been partially buried, but its substance is still well preserved. There are still larger remains of the original exterior plaster next to it.

The expansion around 1500

The north wing, created under the Augsburg bishopric, was connected to the main castle by walls preserved in the west. Access to the entire facility was via a footbridge from the east. The gate was in a protruding gateway that came off completely. The wall that followed to the north was still partially upright around 1936. (Postcard, private collection). The ten meter high northern front of the north wing is best preserved.

The parts of the castle, which were built at the beginning of the 16th century, were built from poor quality slate and are in a critical condition. The north wing with its pinnacle gables may have been reminiscent of the high castle in Füssen , which was expanded around the same time.

The small castle chapel of St. Alexius was said to be on the first floor of the north wing. The exact location of the sacred space, consecrated in 1501 by Bishop Friedrich von Hohenzollern, can no longer be determined.

Access to the castle was blocked because of the acute danger of collapse. However, only a low barbed wire fence prevents access to the castle ruins, which are only about five minutes' walk above a children's playground. Because of the proximity to the residential areas of the Sonthof district of Berghofen, securing the remains of the ruins is urgently required. In addition, one of the most important castle complexes in the Oberallgäu could be preserved in the long term, the total loss of which is to be feared in the coming decades.

In 2007/08, as part of the expansion of the "Allgäu Castle Region", a modern information board was set up in front of the neck ditch, on which some historical views and modern reconstructions of the castle complex are shown.

Some legends have been handed down about Fluhenstein Castle.

literature

• Toni Nessler: Castles in the Allgäu, Volume 1: Castle ruins in the Altlandkreis Kempten and Altlandkreis Sonthofen . 1st edition. Allgäuer Zeitungsverlag, Kempten 1985, ISBN 3-88006-102-5 , pp. 193-205.
• Michael Petzet : Sonthofen district (= The art monuments of Bavaria. The art monuments of Swabia. Volume 8). Oldenbourg, Munich 1964.
• Klaus Wankmiller: From the castle to the palace. The checkered history of Fluhenstein near Sonthofen , in: Das Schöne Allgäu 82 (2019), issue 2, pp. 130-132.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wankmiller (2019), p. 132.
2. ↑ Wankmiller (2019), p. 132.