Hohenberg Castle (Hohenberg an der Eger)

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Hohenberg, castle
Hohenberg Castle on the Eger

Hohenberg Castle on the Eger

Creation time : First mentioned in 1222
Castle type : Hilltop castle
Conservation status: Well preserved, inhabited.
Standing position : Ministerialenburg, later Princely Amtsburg
Place: Hohenberg on the Eger
Geographical location 50 ° 5 '50 "  N , 12 ° 13' 27"  E Coordinates: 50 ° 5 '50 "  N , 12 ° 13' 27"  E
Hohenberg Castle (Bavaria)
Hohenberg Castle

The castle Hohenberg is located on a 125 meters above the Eger towering cliff top at the edge of the town center of the city Hohenberg an der Eger in the Fichtelgebirge. The castle is station two kilometers to the south of Bayreuth after Eger running Castle Road .

history

Defense towers
Access via the bridge

Hohenberg Castle, located high above the Egertal , was after the Plassenburg ob Kulmbach the most important fortress in the Hohenzollern Margraviate of Brandenburg-Kulmbach-Bayreuth and secured the Schirnding pass , which was once important in terms of transport and strategy and which provides access from the Fichtelgebirg high plateau to the Eger basin and thus to Bohemia mediated. The castle was built in the Staufer period between 1170 and 1220 in connection with securing the Eger Imperial Castle ; the place name appeared for the first time in 1222 with a Berchtoldus de honberg from the noble family of Hohenberg who appeared as a document witness .

Around 1300 Hohenberg came to the burgraves of Nuremberg , who summarized their oldest acquisitions in the Egerland in the office of Wunsiedel / Hohenberg. The first bailiff of Hohenberg , Rüdiger von Sparneck , did not appear until 1341. A good hundred years later, in 1433, Hans von Kotzau defended Hohenberg against the Hussites . When the Bohemian troops invaded during the Bavarian War in 1462, the Eger Beckenknecht Haußner set fire to a tower in Hohenberg Castle.

Today's Hohenberg Castle was built in its essential parts (ring wall, round towers) in the period around 1480. In 1499 and 1504 the construction of the outer bailey was reported. In 1621 and 1622, Margrave Christian had massive earthworks with seven bastions built around the castle, which were additionally fortified with palisades . However, these precautions were of little use when in June 1632 imperial troops captured the Schirnding pass, conquered the Hohenberg border house and kept it occupied for three years. After the Thirty Years War , Hohenberg Castle lost its strategic importance. Margrave Christian Ernst built the Princely House in 1666 , a building used as a hunting lodge with an attached kitchen wing and a house for the bailiff. In 1945, along with a large part of Hohenberg, parts of the castle, namely the outer bailey, the gate tower and the stork tower, were destroyed by American artillery fire. Today Hohenberg Castle serves as a youth hostel and meeting and conference center for the Sudeten German Social Welfare Service.

The town and Hohenberg Castle were granted the privilege of an imperial sanctuary until 1799 . Four stone pillars (now to be seen in the castle courtyard) stood at the entrance paths to the village and delimited a protected area. If lawbreakers managed to reach the protected area, they were in the emperor's asylum and were initially free from persecution.

The margraviate of Ansbach-Bayreuth became part of the Kingdom of Prussia in 1791 . After four years of French occupation, the place and the castle became part of the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1810 .

Since 1936 the castle belonged to the Nazi teachers' union and was a country school home. At the end of the Second World War in April 1945, some defensive towers, the outer bailey and a third of the town fell victim to the shelling of American troops as SS troops defended the town. In 1951 the gradual reconstruction by the Bavarian state began.

Todays use

In cooperation with the Free State of Bavaria, the Sudetendeutsche Sozial- und Bildungswerk Foundation set up a youth hostel , which was operated until the end of 2014 , as well as a school camp and later a border area education center in cooperation with the Free State of Bavaria . Since April 2015, Hohenberg Castle has been operated by VEZ eV / Learning Campus. It has been extensively renovated since 2017 and will then be used again as a youth hostel and for conferences.

Building description

View of the Egerland from Hohenberg Castle

The spacious courtyard of the hilltop castle is enclosed by the circular wall built around 1480, built on an irregular hexagonal ground plan, which is additionally attached at the corners by the gatehouse, three round gun towers and the square prison tower. A fourth round tower went off in the 19th century. There is nothing to be seen of the medieval interior. Margrave Christian Ernst had the so-called Princely House built in 1666 as an office building and hunting lodge. Other buildings inside the castle, such as the granary and the cattle house, were demolished in the 19th century. A remnant of the earth wall from the years 1621/22 has been preserved in front of the southern curtain wall. Until 1959 there was a wooden pavilion built in 1853 in the area of ​​the south-eastern earth bastion, the so-called royal rest. This was reminiscent of a visit by Queen Theresa of Bavaria , who stayed on the wall in 1847 and enjoyed the view of the Egerland. Today the youth hostel's campfire site is located there; the view of the Egerland is completely overgrown.

literature

Web links

Commons : Hohenberg Castle an der Eger  - Collection of images, videos and audio files