Aries Castle

Aries Castle
Creation time :	probably around 1200
Castle type :	Höhenburg, spur location
Conservation status:	tower
Place:	Rams
Geographical location	49 ° 19 '10.1 "  N , 9 ° 25' 21.9"  E Coordinates: 49 ° 19 '10.1 "  N , 9 ° 25' 21.9"  E

Widdern Castle was a spur castle in Widdern in the Heilbronn district in northern Baden-Württemberg . The castle was destroyed in 1458. Apart from the neck ditch , only a few stone fragments have survived.

Geographical location

The castle lay northeast over the city on the upward mountain spur between the valley of the Jagst and the flowing Kessach valley , about 50 meters above the village on the lower slope.

history

Presumably the Counts of Lauffen had extensive possessions in Aries, which came to the Lords of Dürn in 1216–1219 . The Dürner property in Widdern came in the course of the 13th century to the lords of Wertheim and the lords of Boxberg, who were related to them. Around 1300 the Wertheimers owned a quarter of Widdern Castle, the Boxbergers three quarters of the town that had become a town in the second half of the 13th century . In the 15th century there was a fragmentation of ownership. In 1443, the administration of Widdern was first documented by a group of Ganerbe .

In 1458 Philipp von Heinrieth owned a part of rams. He granted refuge to the robber barons Walter von Urbach and Ulrich von Helfenstein, whereupon the castle and town were destroyed on June 29, 1458 by Count Ulrich von Württemberg in union with the Brandenburg margrave Albrecht Achilles . The castle was not rebuilt, instead, in the period that followed, government offices and, in some cases, mansions of the Ganerbe were built directly in the village.

All that remains of the castle is the old tower , in which a tower keeper lived as a fire guard until the 19th century. When the tower became dilapidated in 1833, it was torn down in the same year and the so-called Dörnle was built on the slope of the Schlossberg as a new fire watchman's apartment using the stones of the tower .

From 1939 onwards, Ludwig Jehle , the headmaster of Widdern, did a great job of exposing the preserved parts of the castle .

literature

• Frank Buchali: Lexicon of castles and palaces in the Heilbronn district . 5th expanded and revised edition. Self-published, Lehrensteinsfeld 2012, ISBN 3-00-007056-7 , pp. 191–192.
• Local history association Widdern (ed.): Widdern once and today . Aries 2011.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Aries then and now 2011, p. 13.
2. ↑ Aries then and now 2011, pp. 13/14.
3. ↑ Aries then and now 2011, pp. 18/19.
4. ↑ Aries then and now 2011, pp. 21–23.
5. ↑ Aries then and now 2011, pp. 511–512.
6. ^ Günter Steinbach: Ludwig Jehle - teacher, local researcher and poet, Aries 2002.