Rothenstein Castle

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Rothenstein Castle
Northwest wall of the courtyard

Northwest wall of the courtyard

Creation time : First mentioned in 1037
Castle type : Höhenburg, spur location
Conservation status: ruin
Place: Bad Grönenbach- Rothenstein
Geographical location 47 ° 51 '51.3 "  N , 10 ° 12' 5.4"  E Coordinates: 47 ° 51 '51.3 "  N , 10 ° 12' 5.4"  E
Height: 727  m above sea level NN
Rothenstein Castle (Bavaria)
Rothenstein Castle

The castle Rothstein is the ruins of a hilltop castle above the hamlet Rothstein , a local part of the market Gronenbach in the Swabian district of Unterallgäu in Bavaria ( Germany ). After the castle was first mentioned in 1037, it was expanded and rebuilt several times. It was the ancestral seat of the noble Rothenstein family .

In a conflict that lasted for several years around 1500, the Rothensteiners finally lost their ancestral castle to the Pappenheimers . At the end of the 17th century the castle came into the possession of the prince monastery of Kempten . In 1803 it was annexed by the Bavarian state in the course of secularization . A landslide in 1873 caused it to collapse. The unsecured castle fell into disrepair in the years that followed. Only in the 1970s and 1980s was the remnants of the wall secured. The ruin is part of the LEADER project Burgenregion Allgäu .

Geographical location

Historical map with Rothenstein Castle on a first recording from 1808–1864

The castle ruins are located on an elevation south of the hamlet of Rothenstein at an altitude of 727  m above sea level. NN . The spur castle was built on a narrow, very steep hill spur, which is bordered in the south by a ditch . A path leads from the hamlet of Rothenstein up to the castle ruins. The ruin takes up almost the entire plateau . The underground of the castle hill consists of the Upper Freshwater Molasse and was formed in the second half of the Miocene .

history

General

The construction of castles in the Allgäu followed the Central European castles without developing their own special forms. Essentially, the construction of the castle began to serve as the residence and administrative seat of the ruling people. In the 11th and 12th centuries, the typical castle structure in German-speaking countries consisted of a partly square tower house , which was enclosed by a tightly-fitting curtain wall. Because of the advent of firearms , many castles, including Rothenstein Castle, were reinforced with artillery rounds, round towers and kennels towards the end of the 15th century.

Beginning until the end of the Rothenstein rule in 1514

Coat of arms of the Rothensteiner

The spur castle was probably built at the beginning of the 11th century, the first documentary mentioning comes from the year 1037. The castle Rothenstein was created by the men of the same name von Rothenstein, who were servants of the prince monastery Kempten around 1180. Ludwig the Old von Rothenstein was the sole lord of the castle from 1339 to around 1350, the ownership of which passed to his son Heinrich and his sons Konrad and Ulrich. From 1409 the castle was briefly owned by Konrad's son-in-law, head of Pappenheim, the husband of the Korona (or Corona). From 1412 to 1414 Ulrich, Konrad's brother and uncle of Ludwig and Thomas von Rothenstein, owned the castle. The two brothers managed it together after the death of their uncle Konrad (1414) until 1440. From 1440 until his death around 1472 Thomas was the sole master of the castle. With his death the family castle fell to Ludwig. Ludwig von Rothenstein bequeathed the castle in his will not to his Rothenstein relatives who were still alive, but to his nephew Heinrich von Pappenheim , the son of his sister Korona, who was married to Haupt von Pappenheim . With this, the Pappenheimers came into possession of the castle, but this was contested by the Rothensteiners. The disputes between the Rothensteiners and the Pappenheimers over Ludwig's legacy prompted the Pappenheimers to strengthen and expand the castle after 1482. The government of Innsbruck awarded the castle again in 1508 to the Rothensteiners, who had their seat on the Falken and in Ebenhofen. In 1514 the castle again fell to the Pappenheimers, as the Rothensteiners felt compelled to sell it, with which they finally lost control of their ancestral castle .

Pappenheim rule until it was handed over to the Princely Monastery of Kempten in 1692

From 1514 to 1692 Rothenstein Castle remained in the possession of the Pappenheimers without interruption. At first it was jointly owned by the sons of Wilhelm von Pappenheim and after the death of the other siblings it belonged to Wolfgang von Pappenheim from 1530 to 1555 . His son Philip accepted the Reformed Confession in 1559 . In the same year he invited the Swiss preacher Bächli to Rothenstein Castle. He preached there "under the linden tree in the building yard" at Rotenstein. During the Peasants' War in 1525, the castle was taken by rebel farmers, Marshal Wolfgang von Pappenheim and Alexander's widow, Barbara von Ellerbach, had to flee to Kempten.

During the Thirty Years War , Rothenstein Castle and the High Castle in Bad Grönenbach were plundered by the Swedes in 1632. The Swedes came to Bavaria a second time in 1646 and in the summer or towards the end of 1646 the Swedish Field Marshal Carl Gustav Wrangel moved into quarters at the castle for several months .

Princely monastery Kempten up to modern times

Rothenstein Castle in the mid-19th century before it collapsed in 1873

In 1692 the Kempten monastery bought the castle for 65,000 guilders from Philipp Gustav von Pappenheim. In 1695 it was incorporated into the territory of the monastery as the eighth nursing court, together with Grönenbach, which was also acquired . In 1803 it was closed in the course of the secularization of Kurpfalz-Bavaria . The Bavarian state sold the castle to the Döring family, who had already managed it as Meier during the time that it belonged to the prince monastery of Kempten .

On March 19, 1873, the walls and tower of Rothenstein Castle collapsed due to subsidence and most of them fell down the slope. After the collapse, the castle continued to lose its structure. In 1909 the Döring family sold the castle ruins to goods dealers for destruction.

The castle ruins as well as the entire area of ​​the castle hill and the former upstream farm yard are registered as a building or soil monument. In addition, the castle ruins are classified as a landscape-defining monument by the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation .

description

Floor plan of Rothenstein Castle

Of the medieval complex, only the foundation walls that were secured in the second half of the 20th century are essentially preserved. From the collapse in 1873 until it was secured, the ruin lost even more of its structural fabric. The masonry essentially consists of large Nagelfluh blocks and tuff stones in the area of ​​the gate construction. The Nagelfluh blocks were lifted without stone tongs.

In the far south was the outer bailey with the former farm yard, which was built over in a modern way. The farm yard was formerly connected to the actual castle by a stone bridge over a neck ditch. In place of the bridge there is now a narrow dam that connects the area of ​​the farm yard with the castle. Today's access to the ruins is north of this dam. The area between the main and outer bailey was probably secured towards the end of the 15th century by an artillery tower with an outer diameter of 6.5 meters and a narrow kennel . The artillery tower with an onion hood is shown in drawings from 1830 and 1854 .

Further north, behind the narrow kennel, was the actual entrance to the main castle. The gate was housed in a projecting gateway . Locking devices for clamping and locking bars can be seen in the preserved gate reveal with tuff stone blocks . The southern outer wall of the gate building is approximately 7.80 meters long and 1.15 meters wide. The historical plaque from 1934 is set in this. This bears the inscription:

"Wasserburg and Herrschaft Rothenstein
1180 of the Kemptischen servants Ritter von R.,
since 1482 the Reichsmarschalle von Pappenheim,
1559 reformed under the linden tree in the building yard,
1646 Swedish headquarters, 1692 acquired
from Kempten Monastery, 1803 Bavarian Palatinate,
collapsed in 1873."

- Notice board, 1934

Contrary to the inscription, Rothenstein Castle was never a moated castle. The opposite wall of the gate building is no longer there. The castle courtyard was reached through the gate, which was later built over under the Pappenheimers. This is where the window openings built into the preserved and heavily renovated northwest wall come from. From the castle courtyard itself, in addition to the north-west wall, which formerly tapered to the south-west, there are still low wall remains in the south. The length of the courtyard was around 8.90 meters, the width around 15 meters in the south and around 8.60 meters in the north.

Following the courtyard, the square, residential tower-like was Palas with an exterior length of about 10 meters. The entrance to the cellar, which was opened around 1500, is located in the hall. with a staircase with a barrel vault made of brick. The cellar was divided into two vaulted rooms with shaft windows. A branch passage led into the southern, smaller vaulted room. The openings of the still preserved cellar vault have meanwhile been closed (2016). The foundation walls of the palace and a larger fragment of the wall on the north-west wall that extends into the castle courtyard still exist.

Rothenstein Castle housed a castle chapel , the position of which is unknown. Holy masses were still celebrated in this chapel around 1660 .

The castle mill with a reservoir, an oil ramming machine, a forge and a mill was located on the Rothensteiner Bach. The latter stood on the site of the listed farmhouse from the 18th century with the address Rothenstein 2. According to legend, Rothenstein Castle is said to be connected to the High Castle in Bad Grönenbach about 1.8 km away via an underground passage .

  • View from the north corner of the hall towards the cellar vault

  • Gate reveal with tuff stone blocks on the south deck of the main castle

  • Remains of the gate building on the southeast side with the information board from 1934

literature

  • Joseph Sedelmayer: History of the market town Grönenbach . Historical association for the overall promotion of local history in the Allgäu, Kempten 1910, OCLC 162925576 , p. 248–250 (supplement to: Allgäuer Geschichtsfreund. Born 1910, ISSN  0178-6199 ).
  • Tilmann Breuer: City and District of Memmingen . Ed .: Heinrich Kreisel and Adam Horn. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 1959, OCLC 159881481 .
  • Karl Schnieringer: Grönenbach - Its development from taking land on the Ach to a market and Kneipp spa . Kurverwaltung Grönenbach, Grönenbach 1975, OCLC 723602835 , p. 54-59 .
  • Toni Nessler: Castles in the Allgäu, Volume 2: Castle ruins in the West Allgäu and in the neighboring Vorarlberg, in the Württemberg Allgäu, in the northern Allgäu around Memmingen, in the northeast Allgäu around Kaufbeuren and Obergünzburg as well as in the eastern Allgäu and in the adjacent Tyrol . Allgäuer Zeitungsverlag, Kempten 1985, ISBN 3-88006-115-7 , p. 131-147 .
  • Dieter Buck: Castles and ruins in the Allgäu - 33 excursions in the footsteps of knights . Konrad Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-8062-1602-9 , p. 35-37 .
  • Joachim Zeune : Allgäu Castle Region . Holzer Druck und Medien, Eisenberg-Zell 2008, OCLC 633364235 , p. 104, 105 .

Web links

Commons : Burg Rothenstein  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Rothenstein castle ruins. (No longer available online.) Burgenregion Allgäu, archived from the original on April 2, 2016 ; Retrieved April 6, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / burgenregion.de
  2. ↑ Geological map on the pages of the BayernAtlas. Bavarian Surveying Administration, accessed on April 9, 2016 .
  3. ^ Joachim Zeune: Allgäu Castle Region . 2008, p. 9 .
  4. ^ Joachim Zeune: Allgäu Castle Region . 2008, p. 12, 13 .
  5. ↑ Document on the handover of Rothenstein Castle to Wilhelm and Gangolf in the Augsburg State Archives ( StAA, Fürststift Kempten Urkunden 6370 ( Memento of the original from January 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original - and archive link according to instructions and then remove this note. ), 1508, Provenance: Fürststift Kempten, archive, registration signature: box: 176; Drawer: D; Number 1; Additional: 2, old archival signature: BayHStA, Mediatisierte Fürsten, Pappenheim 26 I. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.gda.bayern.de
  6. ^ Joseph Sedelmayer: History of the market town Grönenbach . Ed .: Historical association for the overall promotion of local history of the Allgäu. Kempten 1910, p. 18 .
  7. ↑ Johann Baptist Haggenmüller: History of the city and the princes of Kempten from the earliest times to their union with the Bavarian state . Tobias Daunheimer, Kempten 1840, p. 475 .
  8. ^ A b Karl Schnieringer: Grönenbach - Its development from the land acquisition on the Ach to the market and Kneipp spa . Kurverwaltung Grönenbach, Grönenbach 1975, p. 57 .
  9. ↑ a b c Dieter Buck: Castles and ruins in the Allgäu . Konrad Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-8062-1602-9 , p. 37 .
  10. ↑ a b c d Joseph Sedelmayer: History of the market town Grönenbach . Ed .: Historical association for the overall promotion of local history of the Allgäu. Kempten 1910, p. 249 .
  11. ^ Gerhard Immler : Kempten, Fürstabtei: Territorium und Verwaltung, in: Historisches Lexikon Bayerns
  12. ^ Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments: Entry D-7-78-144-39.
  13. ^ Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation: Entry D-7-8127-0022.
  14. ↑ a b c Joachim Zeune: Allgäu Castle Region . 2008, p. 104, 105 .
  15. ↑ Joachim Zeune, Andreas Koop: Notice board at the Rothenstein castle ruins . 2007.
  16. ↑ a b Toni Nessler: Castles in the Allgäu . 1st edition. tape II . Allgäuer Zeitungsverlag, Kempten 1985, ISBN 3-88006-115-7 , p. 134 .
  17. ^ Toni Nessler: Castles in the Allgäu . 1st edition. tape II . Allgäuer Zeitungsverlag, Kempten 1985, ISBN 3-88006-115-7 , p. 131 .
  18. ^ Toni Nessler: Castles in the Allgäu . 1st edition. tape II . Allgäuer Zeitungsverlag, Kempten 1985, ISBN 3-88006-115-7 , p. 145 .
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on May 11, 2016 .