Osterohe castle ruins

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Osterohe castle ruins
Osterohe Castle ruins - the stump of the keep from the southwest

Osterohe Castle ruins - the stump of the keep from the southwest

Creation time : probably around 1200
Castle type : Höhenburg, spur location
Conservation status: Partly restored ruin
Standing position : Presumably Reichsministeriale
Construction: Ashlar masonry
Place: Schnaittach- Schlossberg
Geographical location 49 ° 35 '15.4 "  N , 11 ° 22' 36.1"  E Coordinates: 49 ° 35 '15.4 "  N , 11 ° 22' 36.1"  E
Height: 515  m above sea level NN
Osterohe castle ruins (Bavaria)
Osterohe castle ruins

The ruins of the Osternohe Castle were a high medieval aristocratic castle above the village of Osternohe, northeast of Schnaittach in the Middle Franconian district of Nürnberger Land in Bavaria .

The lower castle is largely privately owned and cannot be entered, the upper castle is freely accessible and serves as a lookout point .

View of the town of Schlossberg with the ruins from the southwest

Geographical location

The ruins of the Höhenburg are located in the Franconian Switzerland-Veldenstein Forest Nature Park on a rocky spur of the Schlossberg facing south-west at an altitude of around 515 meters above the village of Schlossberg, a district of Osternohe in the municipality of Schnaittach . The ruin can be easily reached on hiking trails from Osternohe and Schlossberg.

There are other castles and ruins nearby: Hohenstein Castle to the east and the former Riegelstein , Spies and Wildenfels castles to the north . In a westerly or south-westerly direction you can see the castle stables on the Hienberg and the castle stalls Alter Rothenberg . The fortress Rothenberg is located about four kilometers south of the castle ruins Osternohe.

History of the castle

Image of a section of the Gallery of Masters and Grand Masters of the Teutonic Order in the chapter house of the Marienburg , on which Master Poppo von Osterna (Poppo IV) can be seen

There is as yet no archaeological investigation of the exact age of the Osternohe Castle. On historical photographs and a drawing by J. L. Hoffmann from 1773 is still the original dungeon to see the wall outer shell consisted of larger blocks and is therefore carefully dated to the decades around the 1200th

The name Osternohe first appeared in 1169 with the noble Poppo de Osternahe . It is not known whether this family was already sitting on the hilltop castle at that time, or, as Hellmut Kunstmann and Gustav Voit suspect, on a tower hill castle in the valley on the site of a documented “tower meadow”.

The hilltop castle Osternohe was attested in 1228 as "castrum Osternach" in a document confirmed by King Henry VII . The noble free von Osternohe probably belonged to the higher Reich ministry. Poppo II and his brother Konrad von Osternohe appeared in 1199 as documentary witnesses for King Philip . Poppo III. was canon of Würzburg from 1211 to 1220 . The most important family member was Poppo IV. In 1229 he took part in the crusade of the Roman-German Emperor Friedrich II. To Jerusalem and in 1241 took part in the Battle of Liegnitz . He served as Grand Master of the Teutonic Order from 1253 to 1257 . He was probably also involved in the founding of the Prussian city ​​of Königsberg . In 1257 he resigned from his position as Grand Master due to illness and in 1264 became Commander in Regensburg . After he died presumably in 1265, he was buried in Mallersdorf Abbey. The Easter oher were also related to the Franconian dynasty of the Hohenlohe . In 1254 Engelhard de Osterna sold the castle to Gottfried von Hohenlohe.

A document from 1327 shows that Rienold called himself from the family of Neidunge after Osternohe, and in 1330 a Wolfram Vogt von Osternohe was mentioned; For whom they administered the castle is not exactly known. It is believed that Gottfried von Hohenlohe-Brauneck sold, among other things, the Osternohe Castle in 1326 to Friedrich IV , the burgrave of Nuremberg . However, there is no evidence of this. It was not until 1354 that Berthold Haller, a bailiff of the castle, was mentioned at Easter. The castle had been a burgrave's seat since 1385 and a margrave's seat from 1427 .

The first partial destruction of the castle took place in the First Margrave War on March 9, 1450 by Nuremberg troops who burned the outer bailey and the lower castle. It was restored after 1457 by Hans von Egloffstein , who was the margravial bailiff at the castle until the 1470s.

In the Second Margrave War , in which Albrecht II Alcibiades, among others, marched against the imperial city of Nuremberg , the Ostohe Castle was plundered and set on fire by Nuremberg mercenaries on May 23, 1553, but was restored from 1573 at the latest; it continued to serve as the margravial official residence until 1722.

In 1766 the office, which had been elevated to the Oberamt since 1694, was abolished in the course of an administrative reform and assigned to the Oberamt Pegnitz. The castle was already no longer habitable and continued to deteriorate. After 1766 a lightning strike damaged the keep , the remaining buildings served the population as a quarry. The cartographer Johann Christoph Stierlein completed a very precise map of the castle area for the first time in 1816 with the existing inventory. At the beginning of the 19th century, the ruin was partially privatized and was later to be completely demolished, but Hellmut Kunstmann prevented this. The keep was not restored until 1968, but what was once a pentagonal keep was made into today's square tower stump. The rest of the castle complex continues to fall into disrepair.

literature

  • Robert Giersch, Andreas Schlunk, Berthold von Haller: Castles and mansions in the Nuremberg countryside - a historical manual based on preliminary work by Dr. Gustav Voit. Self-published by the Altnürnberger Landschaft e. V., Lauf an der Pegnitz 2006, ISBN 978-3-00-020677-1 , pp. 323-326.
  • Walter Heinz: Former castles in the vicinity of Rothenberg - A selection, 1st part: From Schnaittach to Wildenfels , ( Vom Rothenberg and its surroundings , issue 15/1). Schnaittach 1992, pp. 13-23.
  • Ruth Bach-Damaskinos, Jürgen Schnabel, Sabine Kothes: Palaces and castles in Middle Franconia. Verlag A. Hoffmann, Nuremberg 1993, ISBN 3-87191-186-0 , p. 138.

Web links

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