Frankenburg (Palatinate)

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Part of the Frankenfelsen (February 2006)

The Frankenburg is a high medieval rock castle in the southern Weinstrasse district in Rhineland-Palatinate , today only preserved as a ruin with a few remains . It lay above the Modenbach valley at the spur-like end of the Frankenberg on and around a rock platform there, the so-called Franken-Felsen , a natural monument . Opposite it is the Meistersel Castle .

From the Frankenburg there are only very few remains of the wall and traces in the rock. The rock is located on the southeastern tip of the Frankenberg at 545 meters, making the castle one of the highest in the Palatinate .

history

The complex was first mentioned in documents in 1327, when Jakob von Ruppertsberg opened the castle to Count Jofried von Leiningen on the occasion of an ancient feud . Before 1353, the Frankenburg was in the control of the Lords of Dahn . Presumably it was destroyed during the 14th century.

Building description

Stairway to the upper castle (January 2011)
View into the outer ditch (January 2011)

The castle consisted of an upper castle on the 20 meter long and up to 6.80 meter wide rock platform and a lower castle that stretched around the upper castle up to the north-western narrow side of the rock platform.

The access to the upper castle was via a staircase hewn out of the rock on the southern long side of the rock. Several small buildings, a courtyard and, on the main attack side in the northwest, probably a short shield wall stood on the platform . Buildings leaned against the foot of the castle rock on the south-western long side, as can be seen from building traces. They still belonged to the upper castle and are separated by a ring wall from the lower castle, which is a little further down on the mountain slope.

The access to the castle is interrupted by two ditches, an outer, shorter ditch that does not run across the entire width of the mountain spur and probably served as a quarry for building castles and was spanned by a bridge, as three beam supports show. A little further on is a wide trench in the neck that blocked off the entire spur.

The humpback blocks and individual ceramic finds that still exist there allow a rough date of the castle's existence from the second half of the 12th century to probably the 15th century.

literature

  • Jürgen Keddigkeit (Ed.): Palatinate Castle Lexicon . Volume 2. Institute for Palatinate History and Folklore, Kaiserslautern 2002, ISBN 978-3-927754-48-5 , pp. 111–115.
  • Rüdiger Bernges: Rock castles in Wasgau - Investigations of a special type of castle in the southern Palatinate Forest and in the northern Vosges . Warlich Druck, Wuppertal 2005, pp. 237-238

Web links

Commons : Frankenburg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
  • Entry on Frankenburg in the scientific database " EBIDAT " of the European Castle Institute

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Arndt Hartung: Palatinate castles . In: Palatinate Castle District . Landau / Palatinate 1985.
  2. ^ Günter Stein : Neuscharfeneck . In: Castles and palaces in the Palatinate . Frankfurt / Main 1976.
  3. ↑ Jürgen Keddigkeit: Palatinate Castle Lexicon . Volume 2. p. 111
  4. ↑ Jürgen Keddigkeit: Palatinate Castle Lexicon . Volume 2. pp. 111-112
  5. ↑ Jürgen Keddigkeit: Palatinate Castle Lexicon . Volume 2. p. 112
  6. ↑ Jürgen Keddigkeit: Palatinate Castle Lexicon . Volume 2. pp. 112-113
  7. ↑ Jürgen Keddigkeit: Palatinate Castle Lexicon . Volume 2. p. 114
  8. ↑ Jürgen Keddigkeit: Palatinate Castle Lexicon . Volume 2. p. 115

Coordinates: 49 ° 16 ′ 36 "  N , 8 ° 2 ′ 19"  E