Hohenstaufen Castle

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Hohenstaufen Castle
Oldest image of Hohenstaufen Castle from 1470 (Oberhofenkirche Göppingen)

Oldest image of Hohenstaufen Castle from 1470 (Oberhofenkirche Göppingen)

Creation time : around 1050 to 1079
Castle type : Höhenburg, summit location
Conservation status: ruin
Place: Hohenstaufen
Geographical location 48 ° 44 '35 "  N , 9 ° 42' 59"  E Coordinates: 48 ° 44 '35 "  N , 9 ° 42' 59"  E
Height: 684  m above sea level NN
Hohenstaufen Castle (Baden-Württemberg)
Hohenstaufen Castle
View according to the forest inventory book by Andreas Kieser around 1685 (view from the west-south-west; the village of Hohenstaufen is southeast of the mountain)
Hohenstaufen on a picture postcard from 1905
Plan of a national monument, memorial sheet 1871

The Hohenstaufen Castle is the ruins of a medieval hilltop castle above the town of Hohenstaufen , a district of Göppingen in Baden-Württemberg .

Geographical location

The Höhenburg is located on the summit of the Hohenstaufen at 684  m above sea level. NN height.

The name "Stauf" (a drinking vessel) refers to the conical shape of the mountain, which appears to be comparable or associated with an upside-down Stauf and which already had a hilltop settlement in the late Hallstatt period .

history

Prehistory of the castle

It has only been known for a few years that the summit of Hohenstaufen was inhabited long before the medieval castle was built. In 2003, a burial area was discovered and examined in the northeastern part of the summit plateau. 20 burials of men, women and children could be proven, which could be dated with C14 samples from the end of the Merovingian period (1st half of the 8th century) to the early High Middle Ages. Ceramics from the same period were discovered during selective excavations in the following years ("older yellow turntable goods of the round mountain type "; 8th to the middle of the 11th century). During excavations and renovation work between 2009 and 2013, there were also indications of the settlement of Hohenstaufen as early as the Bronze Age and the late Hallstatt and early La Tène ages (5th century BC). The evaluation of these finds has not yet been completed (as of 2014).

The medieval castle (around 1070 to 1525)

According to written sources , the high medieval Hohenstaufen Castle was built around 1070 by Duke Friedrich I of Swabia . Exact construction dates are not available, but the records of Otto von Freising (died 1158) allow the conclusion that the castle was built around 1070. Today it is assumed that as Count Friedrich redesigned an already existing, simpler fortification on the Hohenstaufen and expanded it into a castle, because Otto von Freising reports that Friedrich had a "colonia" (housing estate) in "castro" (on the castle ) and these were expanded accordingly. Duke Friedrich subsequently resided temporarily on the Staufen and he was also the first to name himself after Burg and Berg. Since the castle was built before Frederick's elevation to Duke (1079), it was initially not an imperial castle , but an allod of the Hohenstaufen. Until the middle of the 13th century, the Hohenstaufen was the ancestral seat of the royal and imperial family of the Staufers . After that there were multiple changes in ownership.

Following a campaign by Duke Frederick II through Upper Swabia in 1132, which led to the devastation of Guelph possessions, the Bavarian Duke Heinrich the Proud undertook a retaliatory campaign via Daugendorf on the Danube to Hohenstaufen in the same year , devastating the Hohenstaufen possessions were burned. The ancestral castle remained undefeated, as was the case in the following campaign of 1134. In the 12th century the castle was expanded and strengthened. a. the intermediate wall that divides the complex into a kind of outer bailey and a kind of citadel.

Duke Friedrich IV called himself "Duke of Staufen" from 1163 at the latest. He is the only one among all the "Hohenstaufen" who already had the Hohenstaufen in his name in contemporary documents. He probably resided in the castle. Whether Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa , the grandson of Frederick I, visited his family's ancestral castle when he was in or near Göppingen in 1154 and when he took part in the consecration of the high altar of the Adelberg monastery church in 1188. The stay of the emperor at the castle on May 11, 1181 is guaranteed. On this day he issued an important document for the Adelberg monastery , the original of which is now kept in the main state archive in Stuttgart , “in castro Stoufen”, ie in Staufen Castle . On August 27, 1208, Queen Irene , the young widow of Philipp von Schwaben , who had been murdered a good two months earlier, died at Hohenstaufen Castle while giving birth to her child. Other kings and emperors of the Hohenstaufen dynasty probably did not visit the castle.

It was not until the 14th century that the name “Hohenstaufen”, which is used today for mountain and castle, became established. To distinguish it, today's village of Hohenstaufen was initially still called Staufen. Staufer servants, who were also castle men on the Hohenstaufen, built their own castles, such as Hohenrechberg Castle , in the area, which could even then be called "Stauferland" . In the Middle Ages and in the early modern period, the market town of Hohenstaufen had special privileges within the Württemberg district of Göppingen due to its status as a castle hamlet .

In 1241, the last evidence of Hohenstaufen Castle as Staufer possession can be found in the imperial tax register . After the fall of the Staufer in 1268, the castle was built by King Rudolf von Habsburg to the imperial castle explained. As the new owner, the king visited the castle in 1288.

The strategically and ideally important place subsequently formed a constant bone of contention between the Counts of Württemberg and the empire . After the end of the Hohenstaufen era, the castle fell to Württemberg as a pledge from the empire . The siege and conquest of Count Eberhard von Württemberg together with Heinrich Goeler as well as Gottfried and Dieter von Neipperg in 1319 was followed by an equally successful siege by Emperor Charles IV in 1360. On May 17, 1366, Duke Albrecht of Austria acquired from Emperor Charles IV . against payment the castles Hohenstaufen and Achalm . In 1371, Emperor Charles IV approved the increase in the pawnbrokerage for the repair of the castle - "walls and roofs have even come down".

From 1372 the Hohenstaufen was again in the hands of the Counts of Württemberg . After Duke Ulrich's expulsion in 1519, the Obervogt von Göppingen Georg Staufer von Bloßenstaufen , who posed as a descendant of the old imperial family, successfully claimed the Hohenstaufen for himself, he received the castle in 1520 from Emperor Charles V because of his services to the Swabian Federation .

Destruction and decay of Hohenstaufen Castle (1525 to around 1800)

The castle was only defended by a small team when it was destroyed by rebellious peasants in the Peasants' War on April 29, 1525. After a short siege and a first run of the "Hellen Haufen" of the Gaildorf and Schwäbisch Hall farmers, the castle garrison under knight Michel Reuss von Reußenstein decided to retire . Under the thunder of all the artillery set up in the area of ​​the gate, the escape succeeded in thick powder steam . After this end, described by chroniclers as not very creditable, the castle was plundered by the farmers and set on fire. According to another source, the castle was captured and destroyed by Jörg Bader's farmers from Böblingen in the second onslaught. Another source dates the firing of the castle to the early afternoon of May 1st, 1525: "1525 ahn St. Philippi Jacobi day, Hohenstauffen was burned by the bauren between 1 and 2 o'clock in the afternoon."

As early as 1555, Duke Christoph von Württemberg had the burned-out ruins used as a quarry for the construction of the Göppingen Castle . Despite the intensive demolition work, the Tübingen historian Professor Martin Crusius found extensive building remains when he visited the ruins in 1588, which he described and sketched. He noted that “apart from bare walls and towers without roofs and beams” nothing could be seen and the remaining walls continued to decline, “because stones for other buildings are being brought to Göppingen”. In the Thirty Years War (1618–1648) the ruins played no role. From 1636 to 1648 Hohenstaufen belonged to Austria as part of the Göppingen district. Because of the uncertain legal title, the castle had not been rebuilt.

A donjon ruin that still existed in 1685 , as evidenced by a watercolor by Andreas Kieser , was demolished in 1705. A document dated May 20 of this year reports that a tower that was still standing had become dilapidated due to a crack and "would cause harm to people and cattle". The Rentkammer then allowed the demolition. Presumably it was the "boy tower" in the southwest of the complex and not the actual keep ("man tower") further in the center of the elongated oval castle.

In 1736, Duke Karl Alexander von Württemberg decided to build a new fortress on the Hohenstaufen. The project was not carried out due to the Duke's death in spring 1737, and explosives were used on the summit plateau during preparatory digging and leveling work in summer 1736. In 1769 it is reported that "60 wagons of bricks for building houses" were removed from the top of the mountain. It is unclear whether it is the remains of the old ruin or material from the first masonry of the project from 1736. A wood engraving by Max Bach from 1798 shows “the last remains of the Hohenstaufen wall”. From the early 19th century there was nothing to be seen of the former castle.

Exploring the castle since 1871, plans to rebuild

Especially after the founding of the empire in 1871, the castle hill was considered a German national monument. In the 19th century there were three attempts to rebuild at least parts of the castle. But the Hohenstaufen Association, which wanted to create a "control room", and two "Hohenstaufen Comités", which wanted to build a national monument, could not realize their plans for financial reasons. In 1871 and 1888 only the first excavations were carried out by the two Göppingen Hohenstaufen Comités. At this point in time until the subsequent excavation in 1935/36 nothing could be seen of the castle on the surface. In 1904, the Swabian Alb Association built a hut on the mountain, which was destroyed by arson in 1975. It was replaced by a new concrete “hut” just a few meters further east in 1976/77, just in time for the “Staufer year” in 1977. In this construction, the monument protection authorities were bypassed and damage to the substance of the ground monument was caused. The building was acquired by the city of Göppingen from the Albverein in 2009 and replaced by today's castle restaurant the following year.

At the foot of the mountain, the documentation room for Hohenstaufen history has been a reminder of the past of the castle and the ruling family since 1977 . The ruins and the documentation room have been outstanding sights on the Staufer road since 1977 . The neighboring parish church of St. Jakob, known as the Barbarossa Church, can also be considered a Staufer memorial . Since June 1, 2002, there has been a Staufer stele on the Hohenstaufen to commemorate the Staufer era .

In 2010, a Göppingen interest group again went public with the plan to rebuild the castle as true to the original as possible. For monument protection and financial reasons, the plans have been considered to have no chance since 2012 at the latest. A lookout tower is also not to be built.

Description of the plant

In two excavation campaigns 1936 to 1938 ( Walther Veeck ) and 1967 to 1971 the castle foundations were exposed and secured. In 2010, construction work to secure the facility was completed. The existing ruins were partially expanded.

literature

  • Hans-Martin Maurer : The Hohenstaufen. History of the ancestral seat of an imperial family . Stuttgart 1977, ISBN 3-8062-0163-3 .
  • Walter Lang among other things: Archaeological evidence from Hohenstaufen. The excavations from 1935 to 1938 . (Publications of the Göppingen City Archives. Volume 34). Goeppingen 1996.
  • Konrad Plieninger: Hohenstaufen Castle. In: Regional history. Vol. 1 (1979), pp. 6-40.
  • Günter Schmitt : Castle Guide Swabian Alb. Volume 1: Northeast Alb: Hiking and discovering between Aalen and Aichelberg . Biberacher Verlagsdruckerei, Biberach an der Riß 1988, ISBN 3-924489-39-4 , pp. 95–112.
  • State palaces and gardens of Baden-Württemberg (ed.): Hohenstaufen and the Stauferland . Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-422-02329-1 .
  • Katharina Zierlein: Every beginning is small: the Hohenstaufen and the Habsburgs. In: Frank Meier (ed.): Places of memory - memory breaks. Medieval places that make history . Ostfildern 2013, pp. 111–123.

Web links

Commons : Hohenstaufen Castle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. R. Rademacher, M. Weidenbacher: New archaeological observations in the family castle of the Staufer on the Hohenstaufen near Göppingen. (2014), p. 299.
  2. R. Rademacher, M. Weidenbacher: New archaeological observations in the family castle of the Staufer on the Hohenstaufen near Göppingen. (2014), p. 300.
  3. Reinhard Rademacher, Michael Weidenbacher: New archaeological observations in the family castle of the Staufer on the Hohenstaufen near Göppingen. In: Archaeological excavations in Baden-Württemberg. 2013, pp. 297-300.
  4. Klaus Graf: Gmünder Chroniken in the 16th Century: Texts and studies on the history of the imperial city Schwäbisch Gmünd. 1984, p. 277.
  5. R. Rademacher, M. Weidenbacher: New archaeological observations in the family castle of the Staufer on the Hohenstaufen near Göppingen. (2014), p. 297f.
  6. a b R. Rademacher, M. Weidenbacher: New archaeological observations in the family castle of the Staufer on the Hohenstaufen near Göppingen. (2014), p. 298.
  7. Straße der Staufer on stauferstelen.de. Retrieved July 11, 2016.
  8. Hohenstaufen 2002 on stauferstelen.net. Retrieved March 23, 2014.
  9. ↑ The exciting Hohenstaufen vision in Göppingen also makes people sit up and take notice in Gmünd and Lorch. In: Rems newspaper . August 23, 2010.
  10. Let's do it after the Japanese (!?!) In: FAZ . October 4, 2010, p. 29.