Burgstall Old House (Hirschbach)

Burgstall old house
Burgstall Ratzenberg - West view of the central rock tower on which the main building of the castle stood (2012)
Alternative name (s):	Ratzenberg Castle
Creation time :	around 1200
Castle type :	Höhenburg, hillside location
Conservation status:	Burgstall, two moats visible
Standing position :	Ministerialenburg
Place:	Hirschbach - Ziegelhütte near Achtel - "Karrnberg"
Geographical location	49 ° 35 '11 "  N , 11 ° 35' 16.7"  E Coordinates: 49 ° 35 '11 "  N , 11 ° 35' 16.7"  E
Height:	488  m above sea level NN

The Postal Old House is the Outbound Castle Ratzenberg , as has only recently emerged. The small-scale castle complex, which probably only consisted of a smaller residential or watchtower and a few outbuildings, rose on a low ridge that extends from the Karrnberg. The Burgstall is located immediately southeast of the brickworks at Achtel in the Bavarian municipality of Hirschbach in the Upper Palatinate district of Amberg-Sulzbach in Germany . Only two trenches have survived from the castle, on the south side there is a small, presumably remnant of the wall. The Burgstall is a ground monument .

View of the castle hill (with the small hut) from the southwest (2012)

Fig. 2: View of the western ditch, seen from the outer bailey (2012)

Geographical location

The Burgstall is located about 140 meters south-east of the desert brick hut at Achtel or 4800 meters north-east of the Evangelical St. Wolfgang Church in Hirschbach . The place of the lost castle is in the Middle Franconian Jura , on a foothill of the 522  m above sea level facing west . NN high Karrnberg. On the back of this spur rises up to 488  m above sea level. NN high rock tower that drops vertically to the north and also has very steep slopes on the remaining sides, partly interspersed with rocks. On the south side of the rock there was still a bailey, which in turn slopes gently to the south only a few meters into a valley, the so-called Big Treasure Trove. To the west and east, the facility was secured on the ridge by a ditch, to the north the castle area drops steeply by 28 meters into the adjoining Wolfstal, a dry valley , and is naturally best protected on this side.

There are other former medieval castles nearby. Three kilometers to the south-east is another, unknown castle stable, the Alte Bürg , of which only a few remains of the wall have survived and which was also mistakenly interpreted as Ratzenberg Castle in the past. To the north-east lies the Breitenstein castle ruin on the Schlossberg, southeast of Königstein , of which only the Romanesque double chapel from the 12th century has survived. A little further in this direction is the also unknown Burgstall Im alten Haus at 561  m above sea level. NN high Mühlberg, historical data are not available. There was also a castle in Königstein during the Middle Ages. It was later converted into a castle . Veldenstein Castle, which has largely been preserved, lies to the north-north-west ; to the west there was a castle in Grünreuth , which later became a castle and is now demolished, and another castle stables on the Hasenleite , a little further on Hartenstein Castle . The Hauseck castle ruins are located 4200 meters to the south-west , only a few remains of the wall in a promising location have been preserved.

history

The nameless castle stables Altes Haus could only recently be identified as Ratzenberg Castle by the archaeologist Ferdinand Leja; earlier researchers suspected it to be in the Sonnefelder Forest, near Burgkunstadt and other places in Upper Franconia . The Nuremberg castle researcher Hellmut Kunstmann then said he had found it in the southeastern castle stable Alte Bürg near Eschenfelden , as the following entry can be found in a topographical description of the area around Nuremberg: “ Ratzennberg, a sheep farm, is one of Preitensteiner's to Eschenfelden, fr. [ fraisch ] Sulzpach ”. In addition, in 1497, Jörg von Breitenstein with the tithe to the Ratzenberg was also awarded a farm by the Wildenhof, this Wildenhof is located 2250 meters northeast of the castle stable. Kunstmann obviously did not know the Altes Haus castle stable, the nearby hamlet of Ratzenhof would probably have caught his attention. Armin Stroh then took over this incorrect location in his inventory of the surface monuments of the Upper Palatinate. Stefan Helml also followed this view.

The first documentary mention of today's Ratzenhof took place in 1208, there called Ratzeberg , in this place you can see the castle's farm yard at that time. It is possible that the Ratzenberg family, which came from the lower nobility, first sat on the Ratzenhof before the 13th century and then built a castle nearby as a new residence in the 13th century. The reason why they chose this naturally not particularly favorable location and did not build on more suitable rocks and knolls was probably due to the ownership situation at the time, but the course of an old road , from which a junction branched off in the immediate vicinity of the castle, was probably also of vital importance. The castle was in the gusset of this junction (Fig. 1).

Another mention of the place is known from July 13th 1383, at that time Hermann II. Von Breitenstein together with his sons Hans II. And Erasmus I as well as his wife founded an early mass in Eschenfelden, for which they gave Gülte zu Ratzenhof . Shortly afterwards, Ratzenberg Castle was already gone, because when, on April 8, 1386, Wernt II. Von Breitenstein commissioned the Bishop of Eichstätt to fief half of the Ratzenberg castle stable for the foundation of a perpetual mass , it was turned into a castle stable, i.e. one that was destroyed or one abandoned, ruinous castle. It is not known whether it took place in a military conflict or for other reasons. Later mentions only refer to the Ratzenhof, so in 1444 Erasmus II von Breitenstein bought the tithe to Ratzenberg [= Ratzenhof] from Heinrich Harsdörfer. Around 1570 the farm was a fiefdom of the Bamberg diocese and also belonged to the Breitenstein lordship.

description

The hilltop castle on the ridge was divided into an outer castle on the south side of a rocky reef and an upper castle on the 488 meter high dolomite rock reef. The outer bailey was about 150 meters long, stretched in an east-west direction and was bordered by two ditches on the ridge. The western trench is about 10 meters long, 1.20 meters deep and 6 to 7 meters wide (Fig. 2). The eastern trench is 8 meters long, 6 meters wide and 1.50 meters deep. An edge of the terrain is still visible on the gently sloping south side. There a remnant of the wall indicates the former boundaries of the castle. It was probably made of wood in the form of a palisade wall or possibly a stone wall. There are further traces of development on the east side of the outer bailey. An oval pit is 1.6 × 2.3 meters and 0.7 meters deep. The small size allows a cellar pit to be eliminated. Presumably it is a cistern or a castle well to supply the castle with water.

The upper castle lay on the stepped plateau of the rock tower (title picture) and was six to eight meters long and up to five meters wide. Due to the small area there was probably a tower-shaped building, probably made of wood or half-timbered, as no remains of wall or mortar can be found on the rock tower.

and display information about the image

Image 1: Location of the castle in the middle of the picture between the Wolf Valley on the left and the Great Treasure Trove Valley. In the foreground, another street branched off from a medieval old street to Königstein, which ran through the Wolfstal valley, and led through the large treasure trove to Eschenfelden. The castle probably served to monitor these road sections

literature

• Ferdinand Leja: Forgotten castle stables on the Franconian Jura - or where was the “Ratzenberg” castle? In: Contributions to archeology in the Upper Palatinate and Regensburg, Volume 5 . Publishing house Dr. Faustus, Büchenbach 2002, ISSN  1617-4461 , pp. 233-260.

Web links

Commons : Burgstall Altes Haus  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

References and comments

1. ↑ Place of the castle stable on the map of the BayernAtlas
2. ^ Stefan Helml: Castles and palaces in the Amberg-Sulzbach district . Druckhaus Oberpfalz, Amberg 1991, pp. 133-137
3. ↑ Robert Giersch, Andreas Schlunk, Berthold Frhr. von Haller: Castles and mansions in the Nuremberg countryside . Altnürnberger Landschaft, Lauf an der Pegnitz 2006, ISBN 978-3-00-020677-1 , pp. 150–152
4. ^ Stefan Helml: Castles and palaces in the Amberg-Sulzbach district . Druckhaus Oberpfalz, Amberg 1991, p. 179
5. ↑ It also refers to Curt Tillmann's lexicon of German castles and palaces, since the castle is located near Zant Castle (?) Near Mittelreinbach
6. ↑ Source history: Ferdinand Leja: Forgotten castle stables on the Franconian Jura - or where was the "Ratzenberg" castle? In: Contributions to archeology in the Upper Palatinate and in Regensburg, Volume 5 , pp. 251ff.