Stolzeneck Castle

Stolzeneck Castle
	Stolzeneck Castle around 1900
Alternative name (s):	Stoltzinecke
Creation time :	around 1200
Castle type :	Höhenburg, hillside location
Conservation status:	Shield wall, extensive wall remains, neck ditch
Standing position :	Nobles, counts
Construction:	Humpback cuboid
Place:	Eberbach- Rockenau
Geographical location	49 ° 25 '31.4 " N , 8 ° 59' 57.1" E Coordinates: 49 ° 25 '31.4 " N , 8 ° 59' 57.1" E
Height:	215 m above sea level NN

The castle Stolzeneck is the ruins of a hilltop castle above the Neckar in Eberbach in Baden-Wuerttemberg . The castle, built around 1200, was given to servants of the Count Palatinate from 1284 as an Electoral Palatinate fief . After 1610 the castle and the associated castle hamlet Krösselbach were given up.

Geographical location

The ruins of the Stolzeneck are about 2 km south of the Eberbach suburb of Rockenau, just on the boundary of the neighboring community Neunkirchen , at 215 m above sea level. NN high rock spur in the acute angle of the mouth of a small Hangbach gorge, which rises about 80 meters to the left above the Neckar running northwards here. The small spur plateau is now forested.

history

The castle was probably built around 1200 as an imperial castle. The name was first mentioned in 1268 with a widow von Stoltzinecke . In 1284, Count Palatine Ludwig II acquired the castle. King Albrecht I promised Ludwig in 1291 that his rights to Stolzeneck and Reichenstein would be recognized and that he would be enfeoffed with Kammerstein Castle and Dilsberg if he was re-elected .

Various aristocratic families were enfeoffed with the castle, to which there was little affiliation (Burgweiler Krösselbach, small property in Rockenau, smaller lands and fishing rights). From 1418 to 1458 it was again owned by the Electoral Palatinate and then given to various fiefdoms . The castle was probably damaged in the Palatinate-Bavarian War of Succession in 1504 , as Count Palatine Ludwig V reached a settlement with Philipp von Seldeneck in 1509 about the chopping of wood necessary to rebuild the castle. After the Barons von Frauenberg died out in 1610, the castle came back to the Electoral Palatinate and was not re-assigned. In a report from 1611 the entire complex is described as dilapidated, whereupon the Electoral Palatinate court chamber decided to give up the fief. The castle was released for demolition, the associated land, fishing rights, etc. were sold in 1612. The income from the sales benefited in particular the last residents of the Burgweiler Krösselbach, which was also given up, which is why a financial basis was needed to relocate the residents to Zwingenberg.

The court chamber of the Electorate of the Palatinate originally ordered that the ashlars of the castle be broken out and transported by barge on the Neckar to Mannheim, where they were to serve as building material. However, since around 1000 boat trips would have been necessary, the project was not implemented. The castle ruins were rather forgotten and were only exposed again in the 1960s.

investment

Dating of the building remains and foundations

Stolzeneck Castle consists of a core castle as well as an outer castle and a kennel . The site of the plant slopes northeast towards the Neckar. The core castle is located in the southwest and is protected from the further rising terrain by a shield wall and a neck ditch to the west and is surrounded by a kennel. The outer bailey extends to the northeast following the sloping terrain. Access to the complex was originally at the eastern connection between the outer bailey and the Zwinger, today the main access is through an artificially created opening in the west.

The core castle consists of the shield wall with battlements and the northeast thereof lying Palas . During excavations in 1964, foundations were found that run diagonally to the walls of the four-storey palace and the enclosure, so that the palace preserved today probably only after 1350, possibly not until the renovations of the 16th century when the previous palace was abandoned and at the same time the enlargement of the inner courtyard of the main castle was created and was then rebuilt several times. The hall shows structural attributes of different epochs. Of the 21-meter-high and 2.85-meter-thick shield wall, only the base area with humpbacks seems to come from the 13th century, because the dimensions of the wall correspond more to the defense requirements of later centuries. The shield wall can be climbed. The battlements offered a good view of the Neckar valley from the once unforested mountain spur.

Zwinger and outer bailey with cistern were built in the 15th or 16th century. Some remains of the foundations in the outer bailey are evidence of the farm buildings that were once there.

Shield wall
Shield wall
Shield wall
Battlement on the shield wall
Palaswand
Access to the main castle
Inner courtyard of the main castle
Remnants of the foundation in the outer bailey

literature

Fritz Arens : The building history of the castles Stolzeneck, Minneburg and Zwingenberg. In: Yearbook for Swabian-Franconian History. No. 26, 1969.
Jochen Goetze, Werner Richner: Castles in the Neckar Valley . Braus, Heidelberg 1989, ISBN 3-925835-52-0 , p. 50 ff.
Friedrich-Wilhelm Krahe: Castles of the German Middle Ages - floor plan lexicon . Special edition. Flechsig Verlag, Würzburg 2000, ISBN 3-88189-360-1 , p. 590.
Wolfgang Krüger: The German castles and palaces in color. Castles, palaces, fortifications, manor houses and aristocratic palaces in the Federal Republic of Germany and Berlin (West) . Wolfgang Krüger, Frankfurt am Main 1987, ISBN 3-8105-0228-6 , p. 123.
Rüdiger Lenz: History of Stolzeneck Castle on the Neckar . In: Eberbacher Geschichtsblatt . No. 90, 1991, pp. 7-40.
Wilhelm Seussler: The "sell-out" of the Stozeneck house in 1611/12 . In: Eberbacher Geschichtsblatt . No. 80, 1981, pp. 60-65.

Web links

Commons : Burg Stolzeneck - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikisource: Stolzeneck Castle (Sage) - Sources and full texts