Schluesselberg Castle Stables

Schluesselberg Castle Stables
	The castle rocks of the Schlüsselberg Castle above the powder mill
Creation time :	Between 1216 and 1219
Castle type :	Höhenburg, spur location
Conservation status:	Neck ditch
Standing position :	Noble free, knight
Place:	Waischenfeld powder mill
Geographical location	49 ° 50 '4 " N , 11 ° 20' 45" E Coordinates: 49 ° 50 '4 " N , 11 ° 20' 45" E
Height:	410 m above sea level NN

The castle stable in Schlüsselberg is an old high medieval aristocratic castle above the powder mill, a southern district of Waischenfeld in the Upper Franconian district of Bayreuth in Bavaria .

The castle stable is freely accessible.

Geographical location

The castle is located in the Franconian Switzerland-Veldenstein Forest Nature Park on the Schlüsselberg, today's Galgenberg in the Wiesent valley . The rock spur on which the castle lay is actually in the shape of a key, so maybe the castle got its name from a hallway name.

Right above the powder mill, which was formerly known as the key mill, are the rocks with the stables of the former spur castle at 410 m above sea level. To see NN .

The easiest way to get to the former castle is from the east side of the Galgenberg. There, at a monument on the edge of the forest, a path goes into the forest. Follow the path until you reach a tight bend. There you are already in the throat ditch of the castle.

There are several other castles and ruins nearby: to the north are the Waischenfeld castle ruins with the stone bag and the former Gutenbiegen castle near the village of the same name, to the south-east are the Rabenstein castle and the castle stables Wal to the high hole and the Alte Veste . Rabeneck Castle is located downstream of the Wiesent valley . Also directly opposite the Galgenberg there was a presumably prehistoric fortification on the Kreuzberg.

History of the castle

Coat of arms of the Counts of Schluesselberg

The Schluesselberg Castle gave its name to one of the most powerful and influential Franconian aristocratic families until the middle of the 14th century. When the Lords of Waischenfeld died out around 1216, their property passed to the Lords of Otlohesdorf-Creußen- Greifenstein , probably by inheritance. They first called themselves von Schlüsselberg in 1219 .

The Schlüsselberg Castle must have been built between 1216 and 1219. It was never mentioned in documents, which is unusual for a family castle. The task of the castle was to protect the roads and the border to the Pottenstein domain, which ran through the grinding ditch directly next to the castle.

When Konrad II von Schlüsselberg , who had preferred the castle in Waischenfeld and the much more defensible castle Neideck , fell in 1347 as the last of the Schluesselberg family to siege Castle Neideck, the victors, the burgraves of Nuremberg and the bishops of Bamberg and Würzburg took over the holdings of the Schlüsselberger. The Schluesselberg Castle was not mentioned, it may have been abandoned or destroyed by then.

In 1770, the remains of the castle wall could still be seen, in 1820 the southern slope of the Schlüsselberg was still covered with stone rubble from the ruins. Today, apart from the trenches and the rock stairs, nothing remains of it.

Description of the castle stables

The Galgenberg has a wide plateau on its east side and merges into a narrow rock spur on the west side , which was used to build the castle. At the transition from the plateau to the rock spur, an approx. 19 meter wide and 3 meter deep neck trench was created. Immediately after the ditch there was perhaps a wall or a tower on a 6 meter high rock.

The entrance to the castle was probably on a narrow ledge on the south side of the rock.

The rock continues to the west as a ridge about 20 meters wide. The former outer bailey probably stood there, as the rock work shows. The terrain drops steeply to the north and south into the valley of the Wiesent and the Schleifgraben.

75 meters after the neck ditch, a second, twelve meters wide and three meters deep section ditch separated the outer bailey from the main castle.

The former main castle is divided into four areas from north to south. To the north is a deep, narrow ledge on which apparently buildings stood; you can see a pit and a six-step rock staircase carved out of the rock. Kunstmann suspects the cistern there , but nothing can be seen anymore. Then a two-part rock reef rises five to ten meters high from east to west, of which the western part was probably built on. The western rock reef also forms the western end of the castle stables and drops about 15 meters vertically.

Then there is a level ledge south of the rocky reefs, the safest and most representative place in the castle, on which the palace , the keep or a smaller tower probably stood.

In the south of the main castle there is a level area two to three meters below. The area of the main castle also slopes steeply to the north and south. There are no more remains of the wall to be seen in the entire area of the castle stable.

On the plateau, 200 meters east of the neck ditch, according to oral tradition, there was a tower of Schluesselberg Castle on a circular elevation, possibly a watch tower from which one could look to the east. This was not possible from the castle.

Later the Waischenfelder built a gallows on the foundations of the tower , from which the Galgenberg takes its name.

literature

Rüdiger Bauriedel, Ruprecht Konrad-Röder: Medieval fortifications and low-nobility mansions in the Bayreuth district. Ellwanger Druck und Verlag, Bayreuth 2007, ISBN 978-3-925361-63-0 , p. 151.
Gustav Voit u. a .: From the country in the mountains to Franconian Switzerland. A landscape is discovered. Verlag Palm & Enke, Erlangen 1992, ISBN 3-7896-0511-5 (The Franconian Switzerland; 8).
Hellmut Kunstmann : The castles of eastern Franconian Switzerland . Commission publisher Ferdinand Schöningh, Würzburg 1965, pp. 83-89.

Web links

Extract from the work of Gustav Voits