Weibertreu castle ruins

Weibertreu castle ruins
View from the east, on the right the Big Tower
Alternative name (s):	Weinsberg Castle
Creation time :	1000 to 1100
Castle type :	Hilltop castle
Conservation status:	ruin
Standing position :	Dukes, nobles, ministerials
Place:	Weinberg
Geographical location:	49 ° 9 '14 "  N , 9 ° 16' 58"  E Coordinates: 49 ° 9 '14 "  N , 9 ° 16' 58"  E
Height:	272.2  m above sea level NHN

Castle hill from the southwest

View from the west

Burg Weinsberg 1515 (later redrawing of an original by Hans Baldung Grien). The damage caused by the conquest in 1504 can be clearly seen.

The Weibertreu castle ruin is the ruin of a hilltop castle, probably built in the early 11th century, in the town of Weinsberg in the Heilbronn district in Baden-Württemberg .

The castle is known for the eponymous "Treu-Weiber-incident" on December 21, 1140, when, after the surrender of the besieged castle, the women (later called "Treue Weiber von Weinsberg") saved their men from execution by rescuing them carried down the mountain on their backs.

Due to its exposed location in the southwest corner of the Weinsberger Kreuz of federal motorways 6 and 81 , the castle ruins are known to many drivers by sight. It is located northwest and above the city center at 272.2  m above sea level. NHN high castle hill, which is now almost entirely used for viticulture. The owner of the facility, which can be visited for a fee, is the "Justinus-Kerner-Verein und Frauenverein Weinsberg eV"

story

Weinsberg Castle was probably built for military purposes in the early 11th century. It becomes tangible for the first time in the founding history of the Canons' Monastery of Öhringen , founded around 1430 , in which it is reported that the founder, Countess Adelheid von Metz and von Egisheim, lived up to the foundation at Burg Weinsberg. Countess Adelaide was his first wife, the mother of Emperor Konrad II. Therefore, and as ancestress of Salierhauses referred. In her second marriage she was the mother of Bishop Gebhard III. from Regensburg .

Faithful women and gentlemen from Weinsberg

In 1140 the castle was owned by the Guelphs , who fought with the Hohenstaufen for power in the empire. King Conrad III. , in his entourage his brother Friedrich II. of Swabia and several bishops and princes (including Margrave Hermann III of Baden ), besieged the castle for several weeks and on December 21, 1140 defeated Welf VI, who was approaching for relief, in an open field battle . Shortly afterwards the castle surrendered. According to the report of the Cologne royal chronicle , the king promised the women at Weinsberg Castle free withdrawal and gave permission "that everyone could carry away what they could on their shoulders". Death was waiting for the men. The women took the king at his word and carried their husbands down on their backs, thus saving their lives because the king kept his word. The women became known as Treue Weiber von Weinsberg , and it is because of this event that the castle got its name Weibertreu (probably during the 18th century).

With the surrender, the castle came into the possession of the Hohenstaufen, who appointed a ministerial family , the Lords of Weinsberg , to the castle. In 1188, the castrum Winisperch cum omnibus pertinenciis (German: Burg Weinsberg with all accessories) was signed in a contract between Emperor Friedrich I Barbarossa and King Alfonso VIII of Castile , in which the marriage between Friedrich's son Konrad and Alfons daughter Berengaria was agreed, mentioned. The castle and 29 other Hohenstaufen goods were part of the bride's morning gift. However, this marriage was never put into practice.

The Lords of Weinsberg held the castle as an imperial fiefdom until 1450 and appointed the Archbishop and Elector of Mainz ( Konrad II von Weinsberg ) at the end of the 14th century and the Imperial Heir ( Conrad IX von Weinsberg ) at the beginning of the 15th century ). They also claimed control of the city of Weinsberg; however, the city resisted and sought the status of an imperial city , which it succeeded in 1430. As early as 1440, however, the city became part of the Electoral Palatinate and in 1450 the Lords of Weinsberg sold the Weinsberg Castle to the Electoral Palatinate for lack of money.

South-eastern tower of the main building that has not been preserved. Two half-timbered floors and a roof used to sit on top of the sandstone masonry.

Württemberg

In 1504 Duke Ulrich von Württemberg captured the castle and town of Weinsberg in the Landshut War of Succession after a three-week siege. The castle suffered great damage to the keep and the northern curtain wall as a result of cannon fire . In 1512, the transition from castle to town was also contractually recognized by the Electoral Palatinate. In the following years Duke Ulrich probably had the so-called thick tower, a battery or gun tower, re-erected in the northeast of the castle and connected to the keep to the west by a reinforced inner castle wall.

On Easter Sunday (April 16), 1525, the castle and town were conquered by the rebellious peasants in the Peasants' War , as was the rest of Württemberg at that time . Since the destruction of 1504 had only been poorly repaired, they had an easy time of it. They fell into the hands of Margaretha von Helfenstein, the wife of Weinsberg bailiff Ludwig Helferich von Helfenstein , and her little son. Both were sent to Heilbronn , allegedly on a dung truck. The castle was looted and set on fire and has been in ruins ever since. Ludwig von Helfenstein and his companions were also captured and executed by the farmers at the gates of Weinsberg. The act, known as the Weinsberg Blood Easter , aroused great fear among the nobles and on May 21, after the defeat of the peasants, led to the burning of the town of Weinsberg by the mercenary troops of the Swabian Federation under Georg Truchsess von Waldburg-Zeil and to the loss of the town charter 1553.

Duke Johann Friedrich von Württemberg tried before or at the beginning of the Thirty Years War to have the ruins fortified again, but did not complete his efforts. The strengthened north-western curtain wall with a side gate is a testament to the fortification efforts of that time . It is also possible that the Big Tower dates back to this time instead of the early 16th century.

Over the centuries the castle fell into disrepair and was used by the Weinsbergers as a cheap stone spring, usually without permission. After the Weinsberg town fire of 1707, the Württemberg rulers allowed the removal of rubble stones to rebuild the town. The valuable ashlar stones were to remain in the castle, but this did not prevent the citizens from driving them off anyway. The current shape of the castle is essentially due to this approved and unauthorized removal of stones.

Justinus Kerner

The remains of the keep

Justinus Kerner , who came to Weinsberg as senior doctor in 1819, prevented further deterioration. Together with six women from the Weinsberg dignitary group, he founded the Weinsberg women's association on December 8, 1823. The co-founders were Josephine Pfaff, wife of the city school clerk Heinrich Pfaff , Friederike Walker, wife of the preceptor of the Latin school, Philippine Hildt, wife of the builder Johann Georg Hildt , Katharine Endres, wife of the clerk and city clerk, Friederike Wolf, wife of the local chief magistrate Gottlieb Benjamin Wolf and Kerner's wife Friederike. Queen Pauline of Württemberg took over the patronage of the association, which was able to acquire the vineyards within the castle walls , which were laid out between 1712 and 1716 and were enfeoffed with the ruins by King Wilhelm I of Württemberg on August 30, 1824.

Kerner had the rubble removed from the ruins and the vineyards cleared. Today's footpath to the castle was laid out, and an external access to the basement (powder magazine) of the thick tower was broken into the walls. The chapel was built from the rubble stones according to plans by the Württemberg court architect Nikolaus Friedrich von Thouret . The interior of the castle was designed like a park and has been open to the public ever since.

The thick tower from the northwest

In order to be able to finance the acquisition of the land and the extensive work, the association published a call for the rescue of the castle ruins, presumably written by Kerner, in the Morgenblatt für educated estates of January 10, 1824, which asked for donations and every donor (because the call was addressed to women ) "A nicely crafted ring in which a stone from the castle ruins is set", promised. Thus Kerner attacked a custom of 1789, from the early days of the French Revolution , to, as citizens in Paris to demonstrate their republicanism rings with stones of the demolished Bastille contributed. The Weinsberger rings, made of 14-carat gold and costing 1 guilder 30 kreuzers to manufacture , were often used as engagement rings. The association received many donations, mostly in the amount of 4 to 5 guilders. The nobility also donated generously: 100 guilders came from Queen Pauline, and 1000 rubles (500 guilders) from Grand Duchess Helene of Russia, a born princess of Württemberg. For decades the rings brought money into the coffers for the maintenance of the ruins, even if not as much as in the first years from 1824.

Thick tower from the inside (with aeolian harp and parts of the "stone album")

In the spring of 1855, the architect Carl Alexander von Heideloff , according to whose plans Lichtenstein Castle was built, came up with the plan during a visit to his friend Justinus Kerner to build a hall of fame for important German women as a kind of counterpart to the Walhalla for the great German men. The hall should be built in the Gothic style, the existing wall remains integrated if possible. While Queen Pauline took over the protectorate of the project, King Wilhelm I gave the project a rejection disguised as a commitment in principle, which postponed the project to "quieter times". The “quieter times” never came, and Heideloff's “castle in the air”, as Kerner called it in a letter, was never built - much to the relief of the poet, who compared the project to “a confectioner's marzipan baked goods”.

After Kerner's death

Staufer stele at the entrance to the castle ruins

The royal wall

A look inside the thick tower , where prominent castle visitors of the 19th century were immortalized in the so-called stone album

After Justinus Kerner's death in 1868, his son Theobald took over the chairmanship of the women's association, which he held for decades until 1902. The “Stone Album” goes back to him: Verses by Justinus Kerner, Theobald Kerner, Karl Mayer , Eduard Mörike , Nikolaus Lenau and others were carved into the walls of the castle. The mere names of prominent visitors were also immortalized, at the so-called King's Wall southeast of the chapel, visitors were preferred by nobility such as Emperor Franz I of Austria , who visited the castle in 1813, and King Karl von Württemberg , who came to Weinsberg as Crown Prince in 1857.

Decades later, the city of Weinsberg tried to compensate for the loss of importance suffered by the dissolution of the Upper Office Weinsberg in 1926 with new functions in the National Socialist state. So in 1934 the plan was pursued to have Weinsberg named the “capital of German woman loyalty”. However, a move in this direction by Joseph Goebbels failed. The suggestion made in 1936 by Mayor Weinbrenner to the Reichsfrauenführer Gertrud Scholtz-Klink to set up a training center for the Nazi women on the ruins of the Weibertreu and to raise the castle to "the Valhalla of German women" was equally unsuccessful . For the 800th anniversary of the Treu-Weiber incident in 1940, large festivities were planned from 1938 onwards, on the occasion of which the castle was to be handed over to the Reichsfrauenführer as the “Walhalla of the German woman”. The beginning of the war on September 1, 1939 ruined the plans.

From 1957, the Justinus Kerner and Women's Association had extensive renovation work carried out on the masonry, including the construction of the current wooden porter's house and the restoration of the northern curtain wall. This was followed by extensive excavations from 1959 to 1961, to which a large part of today's knowledge about the castle complex is owed. Archaeological finds from these excavations can be viewed in the so-called chapel on the castle since 2005. After the excavations had to be stopped for lack of money, further restoration work took place between 1962 and 1963, during which the paths were restored and bushes and trees were planted. To this day (as of August 2006), restoration and renovation work is always necessary.

In May 2007, the Weibertreu castle ruin was Monument of the Month by the Baden-Württemberg Monument Foundation . On September 19, 2009, a Staufer stele was inaugurated at the entrance to the castle ruins .

investment

Site plan of the castle ruins

Access to the castle is in the south and is possible from the city and from a parking lot below the mountain on a footpath through the vineyards, which then leads through a wall breakthrough at the level of the former third entrance gate. There is also the original, very steep access path (Treu-Weiber-Weg) , via which in principle the approach from the northeast can be made, which, however, except for delivery vehicles and the like. Ä. Is blocked because there is no parking space at the castle.

Not much is left of the former castle complex. The curtain wall still exists (or has been rebuilt in some parts), as does the southeast tower of the main building ( Palas ). The tower, which is round at the bottom and octagonal at the top, used to be two half-timbered floors higher and functioned as the stair tower of the palace. Today it serves as a viewing tower and offers a very good view of Weinsberg and the surrounding landscape. Only remains of its counterpart in the southwest remain, which were uncovered during the 1959 excavations. Apart from the two towers, almost nothing has survived from the main building itself. Both towers are still connected by a low wall. To the north of this wall there is a small quarry that was used after the castle was destroyed. A large and shallow cistern (water basin) south of the previous main building was excavated in 1961.

Part of the battlements still exists on the western curtain wall. Only remains of the keep and two gate towers are preserved . In the south-west of the site there is still the so-called chapel , which was only built in 1824 and is not a chapel, but served as an exhibition or storage room. A small museum has been set up here since September 11, 2005 , in which finds and photos of the excavation work in 1959/61 are presented.

The thick tower added later (see above) in the north-east of the castle, the exit gate in the north-west, the reinforced inner castle wall between the thick tower and keep and a cistern are still largely intact . Justinus Kerner had Aeolian harps installed in the loopholes of the Dicken Turm , which have been back in place for a number of years and can be heard in strong winds.

Faithful women and faithful women in legend, literature and art

The women of Weinsberg by Lovis Corinth (1894)

The battlement

The story of the Faithful Women is first mentioned in the Cologne royal chronicle from around 1175 or 1200 . Assumptions that it was taken from the Paderborn annals (written around 1144, lost, but reconstructed around 1870) could not be confirmed. It then seems to have been forgotten for centuries. It was not until 1500 that Johannes Trithemius , abbot of Sponheim Monastery , brought the story back to mind, which he had probably discovered in the Cologne royal chronicle, by including it in the Hirsauer Chronik and later in the Hirsauer Annals . From there it was included in the world chronicle of Johannes Nauclerus , which was printed in 1516. The Treuen Weiber appeared in print for the first time and, since the work had several editions, quickly became known in educated circles. Historians were able to trace the story back to the Cologne royal chronicle in the following centuries, but beyond that they could not prove with any certainty that it actually happened, nor that it is only an imaginative embellishment of the Cologne chronicler.

The story of the Faithful Wives was widely circulated; Often it was solved - as a so-called hiking legend - by Weinsberg and the Weibertreu and assigned to other castles or cities. In 1774 Gottfried August Bürger wrote a ballad, Die Weiber von Weinsberg , which made Weinsberg and the castle famous. In 1818 the Brothers Grimm included their version of the story in the second part of their German sagas . Justinus Kerner dedicated a few poems to the castle. In 1831 Adelbert von Chamisso wrote a ballad Die Weiber von Winsperg (published for the first time posthumously in 1852), the final verse of which ("In the year eleven hundred and forty, as I found it recorded / the king's word was still sacred in the German fatherland.") As a reaction to the broken promises of democratization of the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III. applies. Gustav Schmidt composed the opera Weibertreue or Kaiser Konrad vor Weinsberg , which premiered in Weimar in 1858 and re-enacted in many cities, in 2004 and 2006 in Weinsberg at the Weibertreu itself as part of the Weibertreu Festival . In 1909, Hermann Essig published the comedy Die Weiber von Weinsberg . In 1967 Paul Wanner wrote the play Schwäbische Weibertreu , which was premiered by the Heidenheimer Volksschauspiele on June 24, 1967.

The visual artists also took up the topic. Well known are pictures after the woman loyal theme u. a. by Tobias Stimmer , Jacob Jordaens , Matthäus Merian , Nicolas Guibal , Alexander Bruckmann , Lovis Corinth and Alfred Kubin .

Landscape protection area

As early as July 24, 1937, the then Heilbronn District Office had designated the Burgberg as a landscape protection area in an ordinance for the protection of parts of the landscape in Weinsberg . On July 21, 1978, this ordinance was renewed after the Nature Conservation Act of Baden-Württemberg came into force in 1975. An area of ​​17.3 hectares was protected under the name Burgberg mit Weibertreu landscape protection area. The main protection purpose is the preservation of the characteristic landscape of the castle hill with the ruin Weibertreu and the protection of the much-visited mountain from building and other landscape pollution. Today the area has the protected area number 1.25.002. The area is classified in the IUCN protected area category V and has the WDPA ID 320197.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Map services of the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation ( information )
2. ↑ http://www.justinus-kerner-verein.de/
3. ^ Peter Koblank: Treaty of Seligenstadt 1188 on stauferstelen.net. Retrieved April 7, 2017.
4. ↑ Hans-Martin Maurer: Justinus Kerner, the Burg Weinsberg and the women's association. In: Journal for Württembergische Landesgeschichte 58 , Stuttgart 1999, p. 169/170.
5. ↑ Weinsberg 2009 on stauferstelen.net. Retrieved March 23, 2014.
6. ^ Photo of the information board on the tower, on commons.wikimedia.org
7. ↑ World Database on Protected Areas - LSG Burgberg with Weibertreu (English)

literature

• Simon M. Haag: Romans - Salier - Staufer - Weinsberger. A brief history of the castle and town of Weinsberg . Edited by City archive Weinsberg. Verl. Nachrichtenblatt der Stadt Weinsberg, Weinsberg 1996, ISBN 3-9802689-9-3 Brief
  overview on 74 pages in pocket format.
• Rosemarie Wildermuth: "Twice there is no dream to dream". The women of Weinsberg and the woman faithful . German Schiller Society, Marbach 1990 (Marbacher Magazin, 53)
• Kurt Seeber: Castle Weibertreu. Tour, history, inscriptions . Updated by Manfred Wiedmann. Justinus Kerner Association and Women's Association Weinsberg, Weinsberg 2006
  Updated new edition of the castle guide in pocket format.
• Uwe Israel: Of facts and fictions in history. The modern life of the "women of Weinsberg" . In: Journal of History . 7/52/2004. Metropol Verlag , pp. 589-607, ISSN  0044-2828

Web links

Commons : Burgruine Weibertreu  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Wikisource: Weiber von Weinsberg  - Sources and full texts

• The Weibertreu castle ruins at the Justinus Kerner Association and Weinsberg Women's Association
• Weibertreu Castle at burgenwelt.de
• Weibertreu Castle at Burgenarchiv.de
• The wind harps of the faithful woman
• The women of Winsperg by Adelbert von Chamisso

This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on January 12, 2006 .