Burgstein Castle Stables

Burgstein Castle Stables
Burgstein Castle Stable - View of the castle stables from the east
Creation time :	probably 11th century
Castle type :	Höhenburg, mountain corner
Conservation status:	Burgstall
Standing position :	11th century - 1203: Noble Free, after 1203: Hochstift Bamberg
Place:	Menschenbach- Ortspitz
Geographical location	49 ° 42 '5.7 "  N , 11 ° 11' 18.8"  E Coordinates: 49 ° 42 '5.7 "  N , 11 ° 11' 18.8"  E
Height:	503  m above sea level NN

The Postal Burgstein is the residue of a dialed , presumably high medieval castle that once stood on a rocky corner of two small valleys. The Burgstall is located north of the village of Ortspitz in the municipality of Leutenbach in the Upper Franconian district of Forchheim in Bavaria , Germany . The castle, which was probably founded as early as the 11th century, was probably the ancestral seat of the noble lords of Leutenbach, which fell into disrepair after its extinction around 1200. Only the impressive neck moat with outer wall and a few traces of building have survived from the castle . The Burgstall serves as a vantage point on the Leutenbach and the Ehrenbürg.

Image 1: View of the castle stone from the south from the Moritzbachtal

Geographical location

The site of the former hilltop castle is located in southwestern Franconian Switzerland , part of the Franconian Jura , at 503  m above sea level. NN high summit . It is located about 1,600 meters south-southeast of the Catholic parish church Sankt Jakobus in Leutenbach and about 260 meters north of the center of Ortspitz.

The north and east sides of this hill , known as Burgstein , rise a few meters above the surrounding plateau, while the other two sides, which are best protected by nature, fall into the valley of the Moritzbach.

There are other former medieval castles in the vicinity, just a few kilometers to the northeast is Hundshaupten Castle , formerly a medieval castle, and a little further on is the Burgstall Altes Schloss on the Zaunbacher Berg. To the west there is Egloffstein Castle and another castle stable called the Old Castle . In an east-southeast direction, the Schlossberg castle stables lie above the village of Haidhof and Thuisbrunn Castle , to the south is the site of the former Regensberg Castle in the village of the same name.

History of the castle

There is no historical information about the small, abandoned castle near Leutenbach, but according to the Nuremberg castle researcher Hellmut Kunstmann it could have been the ancestral seat of the noble noble family von Leutenbach, from which the noble von Niesten also descended. This noble family first appeared in 1079 with Frederich I, albeit without a family name, in a letter from Pope Gregory VII, but he is assigned to the Leutenbacher family. 1112 "Engilhard, liber homo de Ludunbach" was so Engilhard, free of people stream, in a certificate Emperor Henry V called. With Otto II von Leutenbach, the aristocratic family died out in 1203.

The castle, which was called “Schloss Oberleutenbach” in a legend, may be the successor to a castle that was located on the site of the nearby St. Moritz branch church. This chapel, first mentioned in a document in 1465, could have emerged from the castle chapel of this former castle, as its patronage of St. Moritz, which is typical for castle chapels in the area, suggests. The oldest part of the chapel, the choir, dates from around 1400, the remaining buildings were renovated in the 17th century after being destroyed. The chapel also served as a hereditary burial place for the von Leutenbach family, which is also underlined by the remains of a nobility epitaph .

According to the shape of the castle complex, which is similar to the nearby Dietrichstein Castle Stables and Ebermannstadt Castle Stables, it could be very old. The almost circular facility offered an attacker a broad attack front, so that it could not last long. This design was common during the 11th century. After the Lords von Leutenbach died out, the castle became the property of the Bamberg Monastery. However, there are no documents about the castle from this time either, so that the bishopric probably had no use for them and let them expire.

The castle's task was probably to monitor an old road that led from Eggolsheim via Weilersbach , Kirchehrenbach and Leutenbach past the castle, then continued to Ortspitz, Haidhof , Thuisbrunn and Dörnhof and joined the street in the Trubachtal. At the village of Ortspitz, so directly at the castle, a direct connection to Egloffstein branched off from the road .

Today the place of the former castle is overgrown with forest, of which only the mighty neck ditch with outer wall, the cistern and some stairs carved out of the rock are preserved. An information board was set up in the area of ​​the castle stables.

The freely accessible Burgstall serves as a resting place and a lookout point to the Ehrenbürg opposite . It can be reached from Leutenbach via the Franconian Switzerland cultural experience. It leads through the valleys of the Trubach and Wiesent and connects the castle stables Reifenberg, Ebermannstadt and Schlüsselstein , the castle ruins Streitberg and Neideck and the castle Gößweinstein .

The ground monument recorded by the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation as a "presumably (e) hilltop settlement of the Urnfield period and medieval castle stable" bears the monument number D-4-6233-0019.

description

The place of the lost hilltop castle is on a small knoll that rises a few meters high on a mountain corner (title picture). Two sides of this summit drop very steeply, partly with vertical rocks, into the adjacent valley (Fig. 1), the north and east sides also drop about ten meters with a steep slope to a saddle that connects the Burgstein with a north-east hilltop .

The roughly round surface of this probably one-piece castle complex measured about 35 × 30 meters. Traces of former buildings can no longer be seen above ground on the relatively flat surface. A three-quarter-round neck trench was dug on the north and east side of the hilltop, which is naturally the worst protected , with an outer wall in front of it (Fig. 3). The moat is about 15 meters wide and 3.5 meters deep from the castle area. At both ends of the trench you can still see ramparts about two meters wide and half a meter high, presumably the remainder of the trench barrier walls, which were supposed to prevent the trench from penetrating from the side. The western end of the ditch runs out a few meters before the steep drop into the valley in the steep embankment, the southern end runs up to the steep drop and there forms another overburden mound that has the shape of a small terrace. Outside the trench there is a rampart that is still around three meters high today, which was created when the neck trench was deepened.

According to Kunstmann, a recess in the rocky ground is the remainder of a cistern , and according to Ernst von Aufseß the entrance to a cellar room. In 1858 steps and remains of walls made of tuff stone were allegedly still carved into the rock . At the top of the rock in the southwest, on which there is now a viewing platform, four steps carved into the rock can still be seen, which lead to a lower rock niche, probably remnants of a building of the castle.

The entrance to the castle was on the east side of the complex, in the neck ditch a rock about two meters long and a few centimeters high can be seen (Fig. 4). It probably served as a bridge pillar, as was the case with the nearby Schlossberg castle stables near Haidhof. The outer wall is also about half a meter lower at the point of access.

photos

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  Photo 2: View from the Burgstein to the St. Moritz chapel, the town of Leutenbach and the Ehrenbürg

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  Image 3: View of the neck ditch with the outer wall, the castle area on the right

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  Image 4: The presumed bridge pillar in the moat, in the foreground the castle area

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  Image 5: View of the St. Moritz chapel with the hermit's house

literature

• Hellmut Kunstmann : The castles of south-western Franconian Switzerland . 2nd edition, Kommissionsverlag Degener & Co., Neustadt an der Aisch 1990, pp. 169–171.
• Gustav Voit, Walter Rüfer: A castle trip through Franconian Switzerland - In the footsteps of the draftsman AF Thomas Ostertag , 2nd edition, Verlag Palm & Enke, Erlangen 1991, ISBN 3-7896-0064-4 , pp. 175–178.

Web links

• Information board about the Burgstein castle stable on the Kulturerlebnis Fränkische Schweiz.de page

Individual evidence

1. ^ Topographic map 1: 25000, sheet 6233 Ebermannstadt
2. ^ The Burgstall on the website of the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation
3. ↑ ^{a b} Source: Information board at the chapel
4. ↑ Source: Information board at the Burgstall (see web links)
5. ↑ Source with a few exceptions: Hellmut Kunstmann: Die Burgen der Südwestlichen Fränkische Schweiz, p. 170ff
6. ^ The Burgstein castle stable on the website of the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation