Stutz Castle

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Stutz Castle
Stutz Castle: ring wall or unfinished high medieval castle? View from the southwest to the castle plateau

Stutz Castle: ring wall or unfinished high medieval castle? View from the southwest to the castle plateau

Creation time : 11th to 13th centuries
Castle type : Hilltop castle
Conservation status: Burgstall, small remains
Standing position : unknown
Construction: partly Odenwald sandstone
Place: Oberzent - Kailbach
Geographical location 49 ° 31 '46.4 "  N , 9 ° 4' 45.6"  E Coordinates: 49 ° 31 '46.4 "  N , 9 ° 4' 45.6"  E
Height: 422  m above sea level NN
Stutz Castle (Hesse)
Stutz Castle

The castle Stutz is an Outbound medieval hilltop castle in the district Kailbach the city Oberzent in Odenwaldkreis in Hesse .

Location and access

Panorama of the complex, view in southwest direction

The Burgstall is located on the 422 meter high Stutz , south of Kailbach with a view of the Ittertal and the Haintal viaduct used by the Odenwaldbahn near the border with Baden-Württemberg in the southern Odenwald, southwest of the border triangle Hesse - Bavaria - Baden-Württemberg. The facility can be reached steeply uphill on a forest path from the ring road in Kailbach southwards. At a crossroads just before the forester's house below the Stutz, a circular path turns sharply to the right, from which after 150 meters a path marked with a yellow "V" leads steeply up the mountain to the Burgstall.

characterization

View to the east, the ring ditch in the center of the picture, steep drop to the south (to today's forester's house)

Possibly it is an unfinished castle building, which after excavation under Eduard Anthes shortly before 1900 can be dated as " high medieval " (11th to 13th centuries). Whether the system on the Stutz was a prehistoric or early medieval ring wall or a high medieval (possibly undeveloped) small castle has not been clearly proven by archaeological investigations in recent times. In terms of condition and size, the facility can be compared with the Altenburg in the Lower Franconian Spessart .

description

Findings from pottery shards

The castle stable on the densely wooded, inaccessible crest of the Stutz still shows an elliptical ring wall system with a longer axis running from southwest to northeast , which is accompanied by a ring moat with a circumference of about 120 meters. A flat plateau inside has dimensions of about 15 by 15 meters on which there is a trigonometric point .

The continuous moat about two meters wide is still between 0.4 and about 1 meter deep today. On the northern flatter side of the mountain (surprisingly on the outside) there are fallen stones that indicate a wall. On the southern side of the ditch, there are larger collapsed stones that are about 0.6 × 1.2 (to 1.5) × 0.4 meters in size and are distributed over the inner ring side until in front of the ring trench. Above the trigonometric point are larger stone remains of smaller stones the size of bricks. There you will also find smaller, curved and straight-fired clay residues as reading finds .

Monument protection

The area of the castle complex is a ground monument and thus a cultural monument according to the Hessian Monument Protection Act . Investigations and targeted collection of finds are subject to approval, and accidental finds are reported to the monument authorities.

literature

  • Eduard Anthes : The fortification and the settlement on the Stutz near Kailbach in the Odenwald. In: Quarterly pages of the Hessian Historical Association for the Grand Duchy of Hesse , New Series 3, 1904, pp. 508-514.
  • Philipp Alexander Ferdinand Walther: The antiquities of the pagan prehistoric times within the Grand Duchy of Hesse , Ed .: Historical Association for the Grand Duchy of Hesse, Darmstadt 1869, p. 60 f.
  • Hans-Günter Morr: Mysterious Odenwald - Myths, sagas and legends from the early and Celtic times , Ed. Diesbach, Weinheim 2007, ISBN 9783936468366 ; therein: The ring wall on the Stutz near Kailbach , p. 56
  • Peter and Marion Sattler: Burgen und Schlösser im Odenwald , Verlag Edition Diesbach, Weinheim 2004, ISBN 3-936468-24-9 . P. 129

Web links

Commons : Burg Stutz  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
  • Entry about Stutz in the scientific database " EBIDAT " of the European Castle Institute