Tierberg Castle

Tierberg Castle
Tierberg Castle - view from the southwest
Alternative name (s):	Tierberg Castle
Creation time :	1220
Castle type :	Höhenburg, spur location
Conservation status:	receive
Standing position :	Knight's castle
Construction:	Shield wall castle
Place:	Braunsbach- Tierberg
Geographical location	49 ° 15 '7.8 "  N , 9 ° 47' 12.6"  E Coordinates: 49 ° 15 '7.8 "  N , 9 ° 47' 12.6"  E
Height:	406.1  m above sea level NN

The castle Tierberg is a Stauffer period knight's castle in the region Hohenlohe in the area of the hamlet of stone churches in the church today Braunbach in the district of Schwäbisch Hall in Baden-Wuerttemberg .

Geographical location

The spur castle stands at a height of 406.1  m above sea level. NN on a west-south-west spur of the almost 7 km wide plateau between the rivers Kocher in the west and Jagst in the east; a half km southwest of the shield wall Burg and about 130 m deep opens in front of the spur of the west by the army blade contracting the Hirschbach in the south-west extending Weilersbach , further talab in turn a kilometers reaches the cooker. 4.5 km north of Tierberg Castle is Stetten Castle , also a shield wall castle, in a similar location directly on the eastern Kochertaltrauf.

history

In 1220, the noble lords of Langenburg had Tierberg Castle built by one of their servants , the knight Arnold von Tierbach . The fortification served to secure or control two nearby long-distance trade routes. The builder of the castle named himself after the castle and was mentioned in a document as Arnold von Tierberg in 1226.

Between 1232 and 1235, the rule of Langenburg came into the possession of the von Hohenlohe family . As a result, the Knights of Tierberg became Hohenlohe feudal people. When they later emigrated, the Feldner (Veldner) patrician family from Hall became the owners of the castle in 1300 . In 1374 the rule of Tierberg and the castle became the direct property of the Lords of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. The incumbent sovereign Ulrich von Hohenlohe sold the castle and its lordship in 1387 at a ridiculous price to two lords of Stetten . This led to a family dispute in the Hohenlohe family. Gottfried III. von Hohenlohe, the brother of the head of the family, sued in 1398 against the von Stetten for the surrender of the castle and payment of compensation for unauthorized use. The trial ended in 1402 with a settlement; this comprised the conclusion of a new purchase contract, which granted the Hohenlohern a buyback right, as well as the payment of a further purchase price.

In the following time, the Stetten built the satellite castle, which was strategically located near their ancestral castle, into a hunting lodge and expanded the complex.

72 years after the purchase by von Stetten in 1474, the descendants of the sellers, the Lords of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, who have now risen to the rank of count , with reference to the contractually agreed right of repurchase, repurchase at the old price. The von Stetten opposed this request and demanded at least adequate compensation for the construction costs they had incurred. As a result, in 1475 armed troops from Hohenlohe forcibly expelled the Stetten residents from the castle. This resulted in a 20 year long, bloody feud between the two noble houses, which culminated in a siege and partial conquest of Stetten Castle by the von Hohenlohe in 1488. Both adversaries sought support from more powerful instances. As a result, this dispute developed into a constitutional dispute between the emperor and the imperial princes over power in the empire. This so-called Tierberg feud is considered to be one of the initiators of the imperial reform ; it was only settled in court in 1495.

After 1475, the castle remained in the possession of the House of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, who later became the prince, for five hundred years . It continued to use the complex as a hunting lodge and expanded and converted it. Great hunts were sometimes held here. In 1974 the Hohenlohe-Langenburg family sold the castle to bourgeois buyers due to financial difficulties.

Building description

The castle was built on a mountain ledge that slopes steeply on three sides. On the mountain side, to the east, there is a very deep and wide neck ditch . The fortification wall of the outer Zwinger rises directly behind the neck ditch , which was built later as the inner castle and forms a circular wall around the entire inner castle. At the north-eastern corner, the kennel wall is secured by a round tower . At the other end of the Zwingermauer on Halsgraben, on the southeast side of the complex, there is a bastion .

Parallel to the outer kennel wall and the neck ditch is a second, the inner kennel wall, which was built together with the core castle. This inner kennel is in front of the shield wall , which forms the end of the main castle on the mountain side. The almost square keep is integrated in the middle of the 18 meter high and 2 meter thick shield wall . This also has a wall thickness of 2 meters, an edge length of 6.5 meters and is 26 meters high. The shield wall is now covered with a roof directly on the masonry. However, two exits in the keep, which are above this end, show that there were battlements on the shield wall in earlier times . The shield wall and keep are unusually high because the supporting spur at the location of the castle is already clearly indented from the high plateau to the east; At this height, despite the low elevation, the adjacent terrain could be overlooked and the castle could be defended. The original core castle is enclosed by two thick, almost parallel walls that form a small inner courtyard that connects the shield wall with the palas , and which then continue in the outer walls of the palas. On the north wall there is an outbuilding of the inner castle along the entire length of the courtyard. Another, smaller outbuilding is on the south wall in the courtyard, right next to the shield wall.

On the south-east side of the shield wall there is a later built outbuilding, the so-called Jägerhaus, outside the main castle. It was built on parts of the inner as well as the outer kennel, extends to the neck moat and today forms the entrance to the castle.

On the Bergspornspitze there are two additional outbuildings on the wall of the outer pen, which were also built later.

Trivia

Tierberg Castle, or the Tierberg hunting lodge, is one of the scenes in Agnes Günther's novel The Saints and Her Fool and is referred to in the novel as Silent Castle.

literature

• Eberhard Bechstein: The Tierberger feud between the Counts of Hohenlohe and the Lords of Stetten (1475–1495). A dispute between knights, counts, princes and the emperor on the eve of the imperial reform . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne 2004, ISBN 3-412-15903-4 .
• Alois Schneider: The castles in the Schwäbisch Hall district - an inventory . Konrad Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-8062-1228-7 , pp. 45-48.
• Alexander Antonow: Castles of southwest Germany in the 13th and 14th centuries - with special consideration of the shield wall . Konkordia Publishing House, Bühl / Baden 1977, ISBN 3-7826-0040-1 , pp. 268-270.

Web links

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

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Tierberg Castle on pro-region.de
2. ↑ History of the castle on pro-region.de (PDF; 6 kB)
3. ↑ Tierberg Castle on burgen-web.de  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 363 kB)