Burgstall Old Castle (Thannhausen)

Burgstall Old Castle
Creation time :	probably 12th or 13th century
Castle type :	Höhenburg, spur location
Conservation status:	Burgstall, trenches preserved
Standing position :	probably Reichsministeriale
Place:	Pfofeld - Thannhausen - "Weissenberg"
Geographical location	49 ° 7 '12 "  N , 10 ° 53' 35.7"  E Coordinates: 49 ° 7 '12 "  N , 10 ° 53' 35.7"  E
Height:	477.6  m above sea level NN

The Burgstall Altes Schoss is the remainder of an unknown abandoned medieval hilltop castle at 477.6  m above sea level. NN , which once rose on a foothill of the Weißenberg . The Burgstall is located 1300 meters north of the village of Thannhausen in the Pfofeld municipality in the Weissenburg-Gunzenhausen district in Bavaria , Germany .

To this day, nothing more is known about this small castle complex, neither who built it, who sat on it, or why it was destroyed. Today, only a rectangular moat is left of the object, which is protected as a ground monument.

history

To this day, no documentary mentions are known about this small castle complex ; it may have been the seat of the von Thannhausen family of ministers of the Reich . The minstrel Tanhûser is said to come from her, this "Siboto de Tanhusen" lived between 1205 and 1267. He probably also took part in Frederick II's crusade .

description

The one-piece Burgstall is located on a westerly foothill of the Weissenberg, which is designed as a narrow mountain ridge or mountain spur . The now wooded complex consists of a longitudinally rectangular castle hill, which was secured by a ditch running around it . Its dimensions are about 60 by 30 meters. The width of the trench is between ten and 15 meters, the depth on the east side is 2.50 meters, otherwise about 1.50 meters. The eastern narrow side of the trench extends as a neck trench slightly curved from the northern mountain slope to the southern slope. At no point in the trench is an outer wall visible. At its four corners and roughly in the middle of the northern long side, a further ditch runs from the ditch down the northern and southern mountain slopes, at the ends of which there are large mounds of rubble. The side trenches were probably used to drain the water, the mounds originate from the excavated material of the trench and were not, as was wrongly assumed in the past, burial mounds . A real burial mound is located about 150 meters west of the castle stables.

Today a forest path extends over the surface of the castle hill, leading from west to east, it crosses the two narrow sides of the ditch over two heaped earth dams. The hill rises about 3.50 meters from the ditch on its east side, the remaining sides rise up to five meters high from the ditch. The hill plateau is heavily ransacked today, a rest area is located on a semicircular piece of rampart roughly in the middle.

literature

• Ingrid Burger-Segl, Walter E. Keller: Archaeological Hikes, Volume 3: Middle Altmühltal and Franconian Lake District . Verlag Walter E. Keller, Treuchtlingen 1993, ISBN 3-924828-58-X , pp. 60-61.
• Fritz-Rudolf Herrmann: Thannhausen, Pfofeld community: Burgstall . In: Konrad Spindler (edit.): Guide to archaeological monuments in Germany, Volume 15: Weissenburg-Gunzenhausen district - monuments and sites . Konrad Theiss Verlag , Stuttgart 1987, ISBN 3-8062-0504-3 , pp. 174-175.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Fritz-Rudolf Herrmann: Thannhausen, community Pfofeld: Burgstall , p. 175
2. ↑ Ingrid Burger-Segl, Walter E. Keller: Archaeological Walks, Volume 3: Middle Altmühltal and Franconian Lake District , p. 61