Ermreuth Castle

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Ermreuth Castle, 2008

Ermreuth Castle is a manor in the Upper Franconian town of Ermreuth , a district of Neunkirchen am Brand . The three-storey hipped roof building was owned by various Frankish knight families in the Middle Ages and early modern times. From 1926 the estate became a meeting point and training place for leading National Socialists and has been the residence of right-wing extremist Karl-Heinz Hoffmann since 1980 .

history

14th to 19th century

Predecessor buildings of the manor were mentioned before 1358. In the Peasants' War in 1525, insurgent farmers burned the castle down. The castle owner Stefan Muffel from the Nuremberg patrician family Muffel suppressed the uprising and rebuilt the building. In 1573 and 1579–1622 the estate belonged to the Stiebars , who built today's palace with the stair tower around 1600 . After ten years in the possession of the Wildenstein , the castle was sold to the Künsberg in 1632 , who expanded the upper floor in the 18th century, raised the stair tower and built an old extension with a parapet. According to an old legend, a black castle ghost is said to have lived there, who is said to have sat on their backs and pressed them when people walked past the castle in the dark. In 1858 the Künsbergs sold the castle to the hammer mill owner Andreas Schäff from Erlangen .

20th and 21st centuries

After the First World War, the castle served as a meeting center for the Stahlhelm Organization , Bund der Frontsoldaten . In honor of General Ludendorff , who stayed there as a guest, the National Socialist hiking association Ermreuth e. V. a Ludendorff home from 1926. During the Nazi era , the NSDAP set up a Gauführerschule in 1935 , the members of which probably took part in the desecration of the local Jewish cemetery , which was laid out in 1711, in 1936. During this time, the striker- editor Julius Streicher was a frequent guest at the castle.

Immediately after the Second World War, refugees and displaced persons from the former German eastern regions were accommodated in the castle. After they moved, it was expanded into a home for people returning home and was a retirement home of the Bavarian Red Cross until the end of the 1970s .

From 1978, Ermreuth Castle was the headquarters of the military sports group Hoffmann, founded in 1973, and became the residence of Karl-Heinz Hoffmann , the founder of the military sports group, after his partner Franziska Birkmann had acquired it. As a result of the prohibition of the military sports group in January 1980, a house search was carried out in the castle , with propaganda material and weapons being confiscated. Uwe Behrendt , deputy chairman of Hoffmann's Wehrsportgruppe and murderer of Shlomo Levin , the former chairman of the Israelite religious community in Nuremberg and his partner Frieda Poeschke, also lived there and fled to Lebanon after the double murder in December 1980. After the fall of the Wall , Hoffmann worked as an investor in Kahla , Thuringia , and returned to Ermreuth around 2000. Hoffmann still lives in parts of the castle today; However, it was acquired by a private citizen who had the first renovation work carried out.

On the Open Monument Day 2016, Ermreuth Castle was listed as a memorial in the official federal list of objects to be visited. It was removed from this list after popular protests.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Franconian Switzerland, bayern-online.de: The Ermreuther Castle
  2. ↑ Der Spiegel, November 19, 1984
  3. ↑ On the Open Monument Day 2016

Web links

Commons : Schloss Ermreuth  - Collection of images, videos and audio files


Coordinates: 49 ° 38 ′ 25 ″  N , 11 ° 11 ′ 26 ″  E