Burgstall Hacburg

Burgstall Hacburg
Burgstall Hacburg - View of the main castle hill
Creation time :	High Middle Ages
Castle type :	Höhenburg, spur location
Conservation status:	Burgstall
Place:	Happurg
Geographical location	49 ° 29 '32 "  N , 11 ° 28' 38.4"  E Coordinates: 49 ° 29 '32 "  N , 11 ° 28' 38.4"  E
Height:	460  m above sea level NN

The Burgstall Hacburg is a defunct aristocratic castle that lies above the parish village of Happurg in the Middle Franconian district of Nürnberger Land in Bavaria , Germany . Today the castle is almost completely gone, only very few remains, such as the moat carved into the rock, bear witness to it.

Geographical location

The castle stable of the Spornburg is located in the central area of ​​the Hersbrucker Alb , part of the Franconian Alb , at the top of a slope spur of the Bocksberg at about 460  m above sea level. NN height. The Bocksberg extends from the rising terrain on the eastern side to the northwest, to the north it is bounded by a Klingental valley, on the west and south side it drops about 100 meters into the already wide valley of the Happurger Baches . The place of the abandoned castle is about 380 meters east of the Protestant parish church Sankt Maria und Georg in Happurg, or about 29.5 kilometers east of Nuremberg .

There are other former medieval castles nearby, about 1.5 kilometers to the northwest is the Hundsdruck tower . In a north-northeast direction are the Lichtenstein castle ruins and a little further on the Purkstal tower , to the east and south-east of the Altes Haus castle stables and Reicheneck castle .

History of the castle

There is still no documentary mention of the castle , its original name or its builder are also completely unknown. From the year 1838 Wolfgang Wörlein reported that "quarry stones, which have now disappeared, are bonded with a mass of snow-white, porous brick-lime" at the castle site. He also suspected that the castle was destroyed by fire, as he found clear traces of a fire on the stones.

Due to the unfavorable location in the area and the unusual arrangement of the outer and main castle, Walter Heinz concludes that the Hacburg was a very early spur castle. According to Heinz, the task of the castle could have been to monitor an old road that led from Kastl in Upper Palatinate via Lauterhofen and Schupf to Hersbruck and on to Forchheim .

Today the place of the abandoned castle is densely wooded, only the moat has been preserved. The Burgstall, which is freely accessible at all times, can be reached from the so-called Hunnenschlucht gorge from Happurg. An information board was set up in the area of ​​the castle stables.

The ground monument registered by the Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments as "Medieval Castle Stables" bears the monument number D-5-6534-0013.

Description of the castle stables

The former hilltop castle is located at the top of a blunt slope spur that drops steeply to the north and west into the valley and slowly ends in the slope to the south. The east side first turns into level terrain and then rises to the highest point of the Beg at 616.6  m above sea level. NN height. On this side the castle had to be protected by a neck ditch .

The location of the spur castle is unusual, because instead of placing the main castle in the naturally best protected location at the spur tip and then opposing the outer castle to a possible attacker, both parts of the castle were placed side by side on the wide spur of the Hacburg. In addition to the very poor fortification situation due to the elevation of the foreland, the castle also offered a very broad attack surface.

The roughly rectangular castle area measuring 36 × 15 meters was separated from the mountain by a 48-meter-long, straight neck ditch. This trench is still a maximum of five meters deep and was probably just as wide at the bottom; at the crest of the trench it was 8 to 9 meters. Overburden mounds that were created by excavating the trench at one or both ends of the trench and are a sign of the artificial origin of the trench can no longer be seen today. Due to the steep slope of the terrain in the north, the hill has probably slipped into the depths over time.

On the southern part of the castle grounds there was probably the outer bailey or a forecourt, this trapezoidal area was about 16 meters long and maximally as wide. After a two meter high step, the north side was followed by the trapezoidal area of ​​the approximately 16 × 12 meter main castle. Remnants of walls or building traces of former buildings can no longer be seen today.

literature

• Robert Giersch, Andreas Schlunk, Berthold Frhr. von Haller: Castles and mansions in the Nuremberg countryside . Published by Altnürnberger Landschaft eV, Lauf an der Pegnitz 2006, ISBN 978-3-00-020677-1 , p. 173.
• Walter Heinz: Former castles in the vicinity of Rothenberg, Part 3 (Vom Rothenberg and its surroundings, issue 15/3) . Published by the Heimatverein Schnaittach e. V., Schnaittach 1992, pp. 141-147.

Web links

• Burgstall Hacburg on the page "Castles and manors in the Nuremberg countryside"

Individual evidence

1. ^ Topographic map 1: 25000, sheet 6534 Happurg
2. ↑ Robert Giersch, Andreas Schlunk, Berthold Frhr. von Haller: Castles and mansions in the Nuremberg countryside, p. 173
3. ↑ Walter Heinz: Former castles in the vicinity of the Rothenberg, Part 3 (Vom Rothenberg and his surroundings, issue 15/3), pp. 146–147
4. ^ The Burgstall Hacburg on the website of the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation