Ohrsberg Castle

Ohrsberg Castle
Southern plateau of the Ohrsberg with rampart and double moat
Creation time :	probably end of the 12th / beginning of the 13th century
Castle type :	Höhenburg , summit location
Conservation status:	Wall, ditches, remains of walls
Standing position :	unknown
Construction:	Quarry stone, ashlar
Place:	Eberbach
Geographical location	49 ° 28 '10 .6 "  N , 8 ° 59' 22.6"  E Coordinates: 49 ° 28  '10.6 " N , 8 ° 59' 22.6"  E
Height:	240  m above sea level NN

Ohrsberg Castle is the stable of a little-explored old hilltop castle in Eberbach in the Rhein-Neckar district in Baden-Württemberg .

location

The castle complex was on the summit of the Ohrsberg, which is now completely enclosed by the Eberbach buildings . This is an isolated circulating mountain that was separated from the slopes of the Odenwald to the north by the Neckar in prehistoric times . The summit plateau is at a height of almost 240 meters above sea level and thus around 100 meters above the center of Eberbach. The Itter flows past the western slope today .

description

The system takes up almost the entire plateau of the Ohrsberg. The inner plateau measures approximately 15 x 35 meters and is surrounded by two of the red sandstone worked out trenches surrounded, between which an artificially piled Wall located. The trench system measures around 44 × 79 meters. With the exception of the wall and double ditch enclosure, as well as retaining walls, heaps of stones and individual worked stones, especially on the eastern ridge, no visible remains have been preserved. The inner terrain of the plateau is built on with the base of a pavilion from the 19th century and an observation tower from the 1970s.

Research history

The Ohrsberg in Eberbach

The observation tower on the Ohrsberg marks the place of the castle, it was built in the 1970s

The castle is not mentioned in any of the traditional documents. Practically all mentions of Eberbach Castle or Castle refer to the much larger and more important Eberbach Castle . Only for a document from 1404, which speaks of sloße Eberbach, burg and stad , does recent research consider a possible mention of the facility on the Ohrsberg ( burg ?) Next to the castle Eberbach ( sloße ?). Therefore, the Ohrsberg was not taken into account in local historiography for a long time.

The complex that emerged on the plateau was first mentioned in 1883, at that time a fenced-in cult site of the Teutons was suspected. The local beautification association planned the construction of a pavilion at this point, erecting a stone base and leveling the paths.

The mayor of Eberbach , John Gustav Weiß , carried out excavations on the Ohrsberg in the early 1930s and found wall remains and ceramics . Weiß interpreted the walls as dry stone walls , as he could not detect any traces of mortar. He interpreted the ceramics as dishes used by the castle crew. For White it was at the plant by the remains of a medieval castle, the castle Eberbach after its enlargement to the middle castle as Vorwerk served. Oskar Kilian joined in further research in 1956 with the interpretation of Weiß, but did not want to rule out a prehistoric settlement either, since the terraced eastern slope of the Ohrsberg is reminiscent of pre-medieval ring walls.

In 1963 an exact survey of the moat was carried out on behalf of the State Monuments Office . A simultaneous excavation by Klaus Kilian , son of Oskar Kilian, brought to light remains of walls and half-timbering as well as a layer of fire . Kilian identified the found ceramics, which Weiß had thought to be dishes, as cup-shaped stove tiles , which he dated to the 13th century or later. Kilian concluded from his investigations that the castle on the Ohrsberg was built shortly before 1230 (and thus at the same time as the rear castle of Eberbach Castle), but had been destroyed again by fire before 1260. In the further course of the 13th century, the facility was still used. After an interruption in use, the castle was then provisionally fortified again around 1500, but was soon destroyed for good.

A hobby archaeologist put forward the thesis of two castles on the Ohrsberg in 1968, but only misinterpreted the remains of the wall from the agricultural development of the mountain in the 19th century.

In the 1960s, a fragment of a door or window trim was found on the Ohrsberg, which was dated to the time before the 14th century. The fragment was discussed in the press, but is lost today, as is a medieval lance tip that was found around the same time .

Nicolai Knauer discussed Ohrsberg Castle in detail in 2004 and critically reviewed the previously made assumptions and dates and added his own findings. In his opinion, the ceramics found can only be vaguely assigned to the period between the late Staufer epoch and the Renaissance . The complete lack of unambiguous stones , apart from the missing fragment of the garment, does not allow any dating of the buildings, especially since only retaining walls and half-timbered fragments have been found so far, but no main building of the complex. At the same time, the lack of ashlar, as well as the large masses of stone extracted from the trenches, is not an indication of a purely wooden or otherwise unstable building, because the ashlar may very well have been reused later for buildings in the city. Knauer explains the missing mortar in all the remains of the wall found with the natural weathering of the material. The unusual double ring trench on a mountain plateau is almost without a comparative example in the wider area. Only the also little explored Hohe Schanze in Höllental, which is dated to the 10th or 11th century, has similar characteristics. Knauer rejects the importance of the Ohrsberg as an outbuilding of Eberbach Castle due to the comparatively large distance, as does a possible interpretation as a protective structure for the construction of the city or as its high-altitude observation post. Knauer considers the dating of Klaus Kilian to be plausible, but he points out that the layer of fire that was found does not have to come from the destruction of the facility, but can only come from the fire in a farm building. Furthermore, an interruption of use cannot necessarily be assumed, but rather a continuous use of the system is also conceivable.

The Itter, which flows past to the west of the facility, was established in 1012 as the eastern border of the Lorsch forest marks. Knauer suspects that the castle with its archaic shape, an oval surrounded by moats and ramparts, could well be related to this border. Investigations in recent years have shown that the early castles in northwestern Baden-Württemberg were almost exclusively on the borders of the Gaue and Waldmarken .

He concludes with the wish for further excavations, especially in the previously unexcavated southern part of the complex, where the base foundation from the 19th century is located and where a main building can be assumed, as well as in the trenches of the complex, where knowledge about the chronological sequence of the trenches are to be expected.

literature

• Klaus Kilian: Investigation of the moat on the Ohrsberg near Eberbach , In: Eberbacher Geschichtsblatt Vol. 63 , Eberbach 1964, pp. 4-23.
• Nicolai Knauer: The enigmatic castle of Ohrsberg , In: Eberbacher Geschichtsblatt Vol. 105. Eberbach 2006, pp. 26–37.

Web links

Commons : Ohrsberg  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• City of Eberbach am Neckar: Sights

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ortlexikon Baden-Württemberg: Eberbach ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ^ Heinrich Becker: The eastern Odenwald , Mainz 1883.
3. ^ John Gustav Weiß: New conclusions from the time of the castle and imperial city of Eberbach , in: Eberbacher Geschichtsblatt 7, Eberbach 1934.
4. ↑ Klaus Kilian in: Eberbacher Geschichtsblatt 63, Eberbach 1964, p. 7ff.
5. ↑ Manuscript in the Eberbach City Archives
6. ^ A rare find from the Ohrsberg, in: Eberbacher Zeitung of February 9, 1971
7. ↑ Nicolai Knauer: The castles of the Counts of Lauffen in the Neckar Valley , special print from: (Ed.) Christhard Schrenk, Peter Wanner: Heilbronnica 5 (contributions to the city and regional history, sources and research on the history of the city of Heilbronn 20, yearbook for Swabian Franconian history 37), Heilbronn City Archives 2013, p. 96