Wartberg Castle Stables (Kosbrunn)

Wartberg Castle Stables
Figure 1: View from the east (April 2010)
Creation time :	before 1149
Castle type :	Höhenburg, summit location
Conservation status:	Castle stable, moat and remains of the foundation wall have been preserved
Standing position :	presumably noble free
Construction:	probably quarry stone masonry
Place:	Pegnitz - Kosbrunn - "Warenberg"
Geographical location	49 ° 47 '1.4 "  N , 11 ° 30' 1.8"  E Coordinates: 49 ° 47 '1.4 "  N , 11 ° 30' 1.8"  E
Height:	608  m above sea level NN

The Wartberg Castle Stables is a long -lost aristocratic castle high above the town of Kosbrunn in the town of Pegnitz in the Upper Franconian district of Bayreuth in Bavaria .

The castle site is freely accessible and serves as a lookout point.

Geographical location

The former small summit castle is located in the Franconian Switzerland-Veldenstein Forest Nature Park , about 700 meters east of the village of Kosbrunn at 608  m above sea level. NN on the summit of the Warenberg in the immediate vicinity of the A 9 and about 19 kilometers south of Bayreuth .

Nearby are the Hollenberg castle ruins , presumably founded by Emperor Charles IV, and immediately west of the city of Pegnitz, the Böheimstein castle stalls on the Schlossberg . To the north of it stands the Trockau Castle .

History of the castle

Lords of Wartberg

In the years 1149 and 1188 a Friedrich von Wartberg appeared as a documentary witness, he is listed among 19 members of noble families in 12th place between the noble lords of Volsbach and the lords of Nedemaresdorf (Nemmersdorf), so that one can assume that the Lords of Wartberg were of the noble class. Whether this family from Wartberg was an independent noble family or was descended from another noble family cannot be said precisely, also because the first name Friedrich was very common among noble families of that time. After it was performed in front of the whalepot descendant Friedrich von Nemmersdorf, one could think of a connection with the noble sex of the whale pots.

Friedrich of 1188 stands between Eberhard the Younger von Wolfsberg and the Ministerial Eschuin von Rabenstein ; Probably the document witnesses from 1149 and 1188 were not a single person, but rather the father in 1149 and his son of the same name in 1188.

It was not until 1308 that the castle reappeared in Gottfried von Schlüsselberg's will, when a "Hermann Motzidel" forty pounds Haller should be paid for the castle. Wartberg Castle was probably owned by the Schlüsselberg family and was looked after by Hermann Motschiedler, a ministerial of the Schlüsselberg family, for which he received the forty pounds of Haller. The fact that he and other Schlüsselberger ministerials witnessed a notarization of the renunciation of inheritance by Agnes, the daughter of Konrad von Schlüsselberg , who died in Neideck Castle , also proves that he was a Schlüsselberger ministerial.

Bamberg diocese

According to Gottfried's will, his brother Ulrich von Schlüsselberg , provost of St. Stephan in Bamberg , should own Obersenftenberg Castle in Senftenberg and Gößweinstein Castle until the orders were enforced. At that time, Wartberg Castle probably belonged to the Gößweinstein Castle complex, as Körbeldorf with its five estates near the castle also belonged to the Gößweinstein office in 1348.

According to the episcopal Urbar A of 1323/27, the Wartberg Castle was owned by the Bamberg diocese at the time ; it was assigned to the diocese by Provost Ulrich after the noble lords of Wartberg died out. Before 1243 it was pledged to the Schluesselberger with the Gößweinstein Castle and various villages.

From the episcopal Urbar B from 1348 it emerges that a bailiff was sitting in the castle , he was assigned a guard and a servant , who also had to take on the job of porter. The guard also included two other men, one Ulrich Gailnreuther, who lived below the castle, and Ulrich Cultellifex (= cutler).

In 1383, the royal court judge Premislaw , Duke of Teschen , confirmed the usufruct of all bishopric properties to the bishopric of Bamberg .

In 1400 the castle was a fiefdom of Heinrich von Rabenstein , he lent it to Fritz Wannbacher. In 1409 and 1410 Wilhelm von Wiesenthau named himself after Wartberg. From 1430 the castle is no longer mentioned in the enfeoffments. It was probably destroyed in the Hussite Wars in 1430, as can be deduced from later pledging deeds in which the new owners had to undertake to restore the castle.

In 1435, Wartberg Castle was pledged against a loan of 500 guilders to the brothers Thomas and Lorenz von Rabenstein; they were given the condition to decorate the tower at their own expense. On October 10, 1437, Bishop Anton von Rotenhan sold the Wartberg Castle for 850 guilders to Lorenz von Rabenstein with the right of repurchase and the instruction to build 300 pounds of Haller in the castle. They should use it to repair the war damage caused by the Hussites . Lorenz called himself zu Wartberg for the last time on January 23, 1463 and died soon afterwards. Wartberg passed through his widow to their son Georg XIII. von Egloffstein from his first marriage.

Bishop Anton then occupied Wartberg Castle. Since all of Georg's objections were unsuccessful, a bitter feud broke out between him and the bishop, and he sent him the feud letter in 1466 . Georg took Wartberg and fell into the monastery area and also into Bamberg . Prisoners were taken to Wartberg Castle. The bishop then conquered the castle and freed the prisoners. The feud was settled in 1467, Georg and his mother had to do without the castle. The bishop then pledged it to Hermann von Rabenstein.

Wartberg Office

From 1472 at the latest, Wartberg Castle became the seat of an episcopal office, Heinz von Rabenstein appeared as bailiff in 1472, 1474 and 1475. The Wartberg office remained pledged together with the castle. Pledges included: 1477 Hans von Ochs and Hans von Giech , 1514 Konz von Egloffstein, 1534 Pankraz Lochner von Hüttenbach , 1546 Wolf von Rabenstein zu Kirchahorn, from 1548 his son Daniel, to whom it was pledged again in 1561 and 1581, and from 1565 together with his brother Hector. In the case of pledges from 1561 onwards, there is only talk of the office, not the castle. The reason was the destruction of the castle in the Second Margrave War between 1552 and 1555, in which Margrave Albrecht Alcibiades primarily fought the (Catholic) monasteries and wanted to create his own duchy. In a Fraischbeschreibung from 1562 there is talk of the destroyed castle, and the description of offices from 1565 mentions a desolate castle. Presumably, Wartberg was captured, burned out and not rebuilt on September 24th and 25th, 1553.

The Wartberg office was owned by the Rabensteiners until 1617, when the diocese was triggered in the same year. From 1618 to 1622 there are episcopal official accounts.

Current condition

The castle site is wooded, the castle plateau is quite heavily overgrown with bushes, so that it is difficult to see the entire complex. No wall remains of the castle have survived above ground, but the slopes of the conical mountain are littered with stones that come from the former castle, as traces of mortar show. Fragments of roof tiles and ceramic shards can also be found in the area of ​​the castle and on the slopes.

The castle stable is a monument D-4-72-175-58 "Burgstall Wartberg, neck ditch and wall remains of the former castle of the 12th / 15th. Century, decayed from the middle of the 16th century ”, as well as recorded as ground monument D-4-6235-0002“ Medieval Castle Stables ”by the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation .

description

The former castle was about 160 meters above the town of Kosbrunn (Fig. 2) at a height of 608 meters on a wooded dolomite crest of the Warenberg (Fig. 1). It is connected to the neighboring, 627-meter-high Kleiner Kulm with its observation tower by a narrow saddle . There, an old road also reaches the top of the pass , which leads from Velden via Plech , Neudorf, Körbeldorf to Büchenbach, Trockau , Gesees and Bayreuth . The surveillance of this old road was probably also the reason for the construction of the Wartberg Castle and the nearby Hollenberg Castle.

The Warenberg slopes steeply to the north and west towards the valley, on the remaining sides it rises about twelve meters from the adjacent Jura plateau (Fig. 1).

The castle rock is separated from the saddle by a 50-meter-long and 17-meter-wide neck ditch (Fig. 3). The saddle in the area in front of the ditch is leveled; buildings used to stand there.

The surface of the castle rock (Fig. 4) is only a small area of ​​about 42 by 11 meters and shows few remains of the foundation wall and depressions of former buildings. According to the Nuremberg castle researcher Hellmut Kunstmann , a tower-like building with an inner diameter of six and a wall thickness of two meters could have stood in the southern part of the castle plateau (Fig. 5). Possibly, these were around the keep of the castle, who could defend the east, the well ran from the south over the saddle and then over the moat and continue on the castle rock. There could have been a cistern to the northeast in the vicinity , a little further to the north a further depression probably shows the location of the former main building.

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  Photo 2: View of the Wartberg castle stables from the west (April 2010)

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  Image 3: Profile of the neck ditch, view to the southwest (April 2010)

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  Photo 4: View over the neck ditch to the rock of the core castle (April 2010)

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  Figure 5: Location and remains of the foundation wall of a tower-shaped building (April 2010)

literature

• Hellmut Kunstmann : The castles of eastern Franconian Switzerland . Commission publisher Ferdinand Schöningh, Würzburg 1965, pp. 351–361.
• Klaus Schwarz: The prehistoric and early historical monuments in Upper Franconia . (Material booklets on Bavarian prehistory, series B, volume 5). Verlag Michael Lassleben, Kallmünz 1955, p. 132.
• Hellmut Kunstmann: Castles in Upper Franconia, ownership, building history and fates. Part 1: The castles of the noble families in the Wiesent area . Verlag EC Baumann, Kulmbach 1953, pp. 153–157.

Web links

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

Individual evidence

1. ^ Location of the Burgstall in the Bavaria Atlas
2. ↑ Source history: Hellmut Kunstmann: The castles of eastern Franconian Switzerland , p. 351 ff.
3. ↑ List of monuments for Pegnitz (PDF) at the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation (PDF; 143 kB)