Hürben Castle

Hürben Castle
Creation time :	12th Century
Castle type :	Höhenburg, spur location
Conservation status:	Burgstall
Standing position :	Ministerialenburg
Construction:	Square and hump square masonry
Place:	Giengen an der Brenz -Hürben
Geographical location	48 ° 35 '35.2 "  N , 10 ° 12' 14.2"  E Coordinates: 48 ° 35 '35.2 "  N , 10 ° 12' 14.2"  E
Height:	480  m above sea level NN

The castle Hürben is the residue of a dialed high medieval hilltop castle at 480  m above sea level. NN above the district of Hürben in the municipality of Giengen an der Brenz in the Heidenheim district in Baden-Württemberg .

history

This small spur castle is the ancestral seat of the Hürben local nobility. This family of Hürben is probably a ministerial of the Staufer , who named their castle after the place Hürben, which got its name from the "Hürbe" stream flowing through it.

The first historical news comes from the year 1135, at that time a Teginhart de huirwin (Degenhard von Hürben) witnessed a donation of the nobilis Deginhardus de Sevelt to the Augsburg monastery of Sankt Ulrich. The Hürbeners are also mentioned several times later, for example when Otto von Hürben (Hurwin) was mentioned around 1171 as a fiefdom of the Herbrechtingen monastery when he was donated to the monastery by Emperor Friedrich I. Barbarossa . In 1193 an Otto von Hürben is also a witness in a certificate from Emperor Heinrich VI. , 1216 is a Friedrich von Hürben document witness. The last mention of the name dates back to 1226, a Bilgerinus von Hürben is a witness in a document for Emperor Heinrich VII and the Weissenau monastery .

In the following years the castle changed hands frequently, in 1227 Hürben Castle was sold to the Counts of Dillingen by Gottfried von Wolfach, the bailiff of the Herbrechtingen monastery, and in 1286 it was inherited by the Counts of Helfenstein . In 1385 Albrecht von Rechberg bought the castle, but had to pledge it to the city of Ulm in 1442 . In 1448 Count Ulrich V von Württemberg acquired the castle and village of Hürben.

The castle was destroyed on June 24, 1449 when it was conquered and razed against the House of Württemberg during the war between the Swabian and Franconian cities. Only the castle chapel survived the attack; it later became the village church because the castle was not rebuilt. But it also existed only a few hundred years longer, the church was first damaged by a lightning strike in 1728 , then destroyed by another lightning strike in 1737.

In 1844 it is said: The rounded, isolated castle hill Hürben rises steeply above the village, on the top of which the church is laid out. There is no longer any trace of the castle itself. Separated by the moat, on a southern terrace of this hill, the small church with its graceful tower, built in 1738 at the expense of the community, stands picturesquely. Before this year 1738, a chapel on the mountain that was still left of the old castle was used for worship, which, ignited by lightning, went up in flames .

description

The castle site in the village is at the end of a spur facing southeast over the valley of the Hürbe , about 480  m above sea level. NN height. A neck ditch separated the castle square from the adjacent plateau, this 15 meter wide bed was filled with rubble around 1960.

Today the entire castle area is taken up by the village cemetery , the enclosure of which is polygonal around the spur. This wall could still be largely identical to the surrounding wall of the castle. The only remnant of this surrounding wall, and thus the castle, is a 24-meter-long and five-meter-high section of the wall above the Hürbe spring on the north side of the mountain spur. This masonry still shows ashlar stones and humpback blocks up to three meters larger , above which core masonry can be seen.

On a depiction of the castle ruins in the Renlin forest map from 1591, the location of the castle chapel at the northeast end of the castle site can be seen; the former castle gate was located in the immediate vicinity to the west.

literature

• Günter Schmitt : Castle Guide Swabian Alb, Volume 6 - Ostalb: Hiking and discovering between Ulm, Aalen and Donauwörth . Biberacher Verlagsdruckerei, Biberach an der Riß 1995, ISBN 3-924489-74-2 , pp. 331–334.
• Christoph Bizer, Rolf Götz: Forgotten castles of the Swabian Alb . DRW-Verlag, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-87181-244-7 , p. 15.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Source history: Günter Schmitt: Burgenführer Schwäbische Alb, Volume 6 - Ostalb: Hiking and discovering between Ulm, Aalen and Donauwörth , p. 333ff.
2. ↑ Christoph Bizer, Rolf Götz: Forgotten Castles of the Swabian Alb , p. 15