Burgstall Wichsenstein

Burgstall Wichsenstein
Burgstall Wichsenstein - View of the castle rock above the village from the south (March 2011)
Creation time :	probably around 1100
Castle type :	Höhenburg, summit location
Conservation status:	Burgstall
Standing position :	Bamberg Ministeriale
Place:	Gößweinstein - Wichsenstein
Geographical location	49 ° 44 '17.1 "  N , 11 ° 16' 3.5"  E Coordinates: 49 ° 44 '17.1 "  N , 11 ° 16' 3.5"  E
Height:	587  m above sea level NN

The Wichsenstein castle stable is the remnant of a lost aristocratic castle on a steep rocky reef above the church village of Wichsenstein in the Upper Franconian district of Forchheim in Bavaria . The castle is completely gone off , no remains are evidence of her Castle Rock serves as a lookout .

View of Wichsenstein from the west

Geographical location

The castle stable of the Gipfelburg is located in the central area of Franconian Switzerland , part of the Frankenjura low mountain range , on the natural monument Wichsensteiner Fels, a rocky hilltop at about 587  m above sea level. NN Höhe on the northern edge of the village Wichsenstein, about 20 meters above the village and about 60 meters north-northwest of the Catholic parish church of Sankt Erhard and about 15 kilometers northeast of Forchheim .

There are other former medieval castles in the vicinity, the remains of Bieberbach Castle in the nearby village of Bieberbach , and the prehistoric Heidelberg ring wall in a south-westerly direction on the Heidelberg over Äpfelbach. To the south of it is the old castle stables on the Altschlossberg near Affalterthal and a stalls of the same name near Oberzaunsbach on the Zaunsbacher Berg. To the west, the Postal Saddle castle is on the Hetzel rock and the Postal Thüngfelderstein and the Postal Wolkenstein

History of the castle

View of the castle rock from the east (March 2011)

The name of Burg Wichsenstein is derived from the personal name Wikker and the addition of stone for castle, which means the Wikker's castle. The Nuremberg castle researcher Hellmut Kunstmann has proven that castles with a combination of personal names and stone in the Franconian region indicate a great age. Examples are Gößweinstein Castle , which was first mentioned in 1076, Hiltpoltstein Castle (first mentioned in 1109), the former Gernotenstein Castle near Michelfeld, which is mentioned in the Michelfeld Monastery deed of foundation in 1119, and Pottenstein Castle , which is believed to have been between 1057 and 1070 Founded.

The function of Wichsenstein Castle could have been to monitor an old road that led from Pretzfeld and Wannbach via Wichsenstein to Biberach, Waidach and Stein bei Pegnitz, further into the Upper Palatinate and Bohemia .

When and by whom the castle was founded is not known exactly, but in 1118 a "Wikker" was mentioned in a document. It is possible that the father of "Eberhard von Wikkeristein", mentioned in 1122, built the castle shortly before. The Wichsensteiners were ministerials of the Bamberg diocese , who had a blue jumping wolf on a silver background in their coat of arms . Eberhard was named in 1121 and later as "Eberhard de Lapide", which means from stone . In 1133 the brothers Eberhard and Wikker de Lapide were named together as witnesses in a document from the Ensdorf monastery . According to Kunstmann, the reason for the name change could have been that the ancestral castle of the Wichsensteiners, the small Stein Castle , today a castle stable in the village of Stein south of Pegnitz , had to be abandoned for unknown reasons and they built a new castle as their own. Also in 1165 a "Eberhard II. De Steine" was listed as an episcopal ministerial, in 1201 Wikker II. De Steine ​​was a witness in a document from Prince-Bishop Timo . In 1240 Eberhard III. also as a witness in a document from Friedrich III. Named Walpot for the Banz Monastery .

Wichsenstein Castle was first mentioned in a document on October 30, 1310, when Konrad I. von Wichsenstein received 60 pounds of  Haller from Bamberg's Bishop Wulfing von Stubenberg and had to “wait” ten years with the castle, i.e. with his part of the castle and its crew fight on the side of the diocese in the event of war. In 1328, Bishop Heinrich II. Boppo von Wichsenstein lent another hundred pounds to Haller for his part of the castle pledged to the bishop. He had to give the bishop the right of first refusal, so the castle was still the free property of the Wichsensteiners.

The Wichsensteiners got into financial difficulties , probably with the economic upswing of the cities during the 13th and 14th and the great agricultural crisis in the second half of the 14th century, they became robber barons . Georg von Wichsenstein was in the service of the brothers Heinrich and Eberhard von Berg, who had also become robber barons at the time, and was captured by King Wenzel in 1397 during the siege of Spies Castle near Betzenstein . After he had given up the names of a few " perennial pike ", he was executed in Nuremberg.

In 1421 were Hans II., Kunz IV., Fritz II. And Hermann III. von Wichsenstein in feud with the bishopric of Bamberg and the imperial city of Nuremberg . In the same year, Hans von Wichsenstein and Michael von Streitberg attacked and looted a Leipzig merchants' procession and took some people prisoner, whereupon Wichsenstein Castle was destroyed by Bishop Albrecht von Wertheim because of robber barons and could not be rebuilt without the permission of the bishop. In 1432 the ruin was mentioned as an episcopal fiefdom ; in the event of a reconstruction, it had to be an open house of the bishopric, in 1436 it reappeared as Wichsenstein Castle. So it was rebuilt within four years, but the extent of the destruction is not known.

In the following years parts of the castle were fiefdoms of the Ministerial Jörg von Rabenstein , further shares in the castle were held in 1476 by the Wichsensteiner line to Bieberbach and another line, whose ownership was still free. Another line of the Wichsensteiner was enfeoffed in 1484 with the Lower Franconian Castle in Hainstatt by the Bishop of Würzburg.

After 1507 all enfeoffments of the castle ended, on a map from the middle of the 16th century it is shown as a ruin, the final destruction probably took place in 1525 during the Peasants' War .

In 1609 even larger remains of the ruins were preserved, as can be seen from a text about the manor Wichsenstein. After the family with Georg von Wichsenstein zu Kirchschönbach (near Prichsenstadt ) died out in November 1606, the manor was sold by the heirs to the diocese of Bamberg on November 24, 1621. In the deed of sale, however, it was described as free aristocracy, there was no mention of an episcopal fiefdom, and the castle was not mentioned either.

In 1828 the cathedral capitular Franz Karl Freiherr von Münster made the summit of the castle rock accessible. In 1876 even larger remains of ruins were visible, in 1879 the Bayreuth agricultural department mentioned "away from the rocks and more in the lowlands and in the private forest, wall ruins".

Today there are no more traces of the castle, the freely accessible castle stable serves as a lookout rock and can be climbed from Wichsenstein via 207 steps.

The ground monument registered by the Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments as "Medieval Castle Stables" has the monument number D-4-6233-0095.

literature

• Walter Heinz: Former aristocratic residences in the Trubach Valley - a guide for friends of home and hikers . Palm and Enke Verlag, Erlangen and Jena 1996, ISBN 3-7896-0554-9 , pp. 244-257.
• Gustav Voit, Walter Rüfer: A castle journey through Franconian Switzerland , 2nd edition, Palm and Enke Verlag, Erlangen 1991, ISBN 3-7896-0064-4 , pp. 217-220.
• Hellmut Kunstmann : The castles of south-western Franconian Switzerland . 2nd edition, Kommissionsverlag Degener & Co., Neustadt an der Aisch 1990, pp. 244–248.

Web links

• Burgstall Wichsenstein on the Burgenwelt.de site

Individual evidence

1. ^ Topographic map 1: 25000, sheet 6233 Ebermannstadt
2. ↑ Walter Heinz: Former noble residences in the Trubachtal - a guide for friends of home and hikers, pp. 186–190
3. ↑ Guide to Archaeological Monuments in Germany, Volume 20: Franconian Switzerland, p. 157
4. ↑ Walter Heinz: Former noble residences in the Trubachtal - A guide for friends of home and hikers, pp. 191–194
5. ^ The Burgstall on the website of the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation
6. ^ The Burgstall on the website of the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation
7. ↑ On castle names see: Hellmut Kunstmann, Mensch und Burg, p. 18ff
8. ↑ Hellmut Kunstmann: The castles of southwestern Franconian Switzerland, p. 2
9. ^ Burgstall Wichsenstein on the website of the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation