Schwalbennest (castle ruins)

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Swallow's nest
Nsteinach-schwalbennest.jpg
Alternative name (s): Schadeck
Creation time : 1230
Castle type : Hillside castle, rocky location
Conservation status: ruin
Standing position : Free nobles
Place: Neckarsteinach
Geographical location 49 ° 24 '25.2 "  N , 8 ° 49' 28.2"  E Coordinates: 49 ° 24 '25.2 "  N , 8 ° 49' 28.2"  E
Height: 190  m above sea level NN
Swallow's Nest (Hesse)
Swallow's nest

The castle ruin Schwalbennest , actually Schadeck , is the ruin of a medieval hillside castle on a rock at 190  m above sea level. NN near Neckarsteinach in the Bergstrasse district . It is the youngest of the four Neckarsteinach castles Vorderburg , Mittelburg , Hinterburg and Schwalbennest.

location

Unlike the other three castles, the Schwalbennest (Schadeck) castle ruins are not located on the mountain tongue, but down the Neckar on a steeply sloping mountain range.

history

The castle was probably built by Ulrich II's youngest son, Ulrich II., As the fourth and youngest castle of the four castles near Steinach. The client had to break a large piece out of the rock wall in order to obtain enough building space for the castle. The name of the castle, "Schadeck" (formerly: "Schadheck") means swallow's nest, and from this name the name of the noble line Landschad von Steinach is derived , to distinguish the other lines of the lords of Steinach that still existed at that time. After the older line died out, the Landschad also came into the possession of the Vorderburg , so that half of the small Schadeck was sold in 1335 by Bligger X. and Dieter I. Landschad von Steinach to the monasteries in Worms and Mainz. In 1350 the Worms part seems to have come to Mainz by force. In 1395 the castle was pledged in splintered shares to the descendants of the sons of Eberhard von Rosenberg, the Mainz bailiff of Walldürn, who in turn ceded these shares to other lower aristocrats. In 1428 the entire castle was in the possession of the Archbishop of Mainz Konrad , who pledged it to Dieter II. Landschad von Steinach. The castle remained in the possession of the Landschad von Steinach and, since the episcopal pledge was no longer redeemed, it became the allodial property of the family, where the castle remained until the Hanseatic main line of Landschad died out with the death of Dieter VIII in 1625. Dieter VIII's daughter Eva Elisabeth, widow Wolf Conrads Greck von Kochendorf , sold Schadeck with the remaining allodies of the Landschad on May 6, 1657 to Wolf Heinrich Metternich zu Burscheid, who from Speyer and Worms sold the fiefs over the place that had been drawn in after the Landschad died out , Vorderburg and Mittelburg as well as half of the rear castle. After the Burscheider line of Metternich expired in 1753, not only the previous fiefdom property, but also allodial property and thus the Schadeck came to the Speyer and Worms monasteries. After 1803 the territorial ownership of the pens came to the State of Hesse , which still owns the castle today.

investment

Floor plan of the swallow's nest

The entrance to the castle was originally possible via a serpentine path and later via a neck ditch carved into the rock .

Instead of the keep , the castle has a two-winged shield wall , the point of which points towards the rock massif. A battlement runs along the shield wall . During reconstruction work in the 15th century was the Palas in the protected, but wet angle of the shield wall laid and the battlements received at its two ends in each case a tower. The octagonal tower on the north tower dates from the romanticization of the 19th century, similar to the middle castle .

One of the former palace buildings was in the current courtyard, where the still visible window openings offer a wonderful view of Neckarsteinach and the remains of residential buildings can still be seen inside the core castle .

  • Battlement with towers on the shield wall

  • Interior view of the battlement

  • View of the castle from the Neckar

  • View of the castle from the mountain side

reception

There are a number of romantically transfigured legends and reports about Neckarsteinach, the Landschad von Steinach and the Schwalbennest. This is how the French poet Victor Hugo came up with an incident in the swallow's nest in 1838:

“A farm was made out of one of the four keep and a summer house out of the second. The other two, which are completely dilapidated, destroyed or abandoned, interested me in particular and persuaded me to return several times. One was called Swallow's Nest in the 12th century and is still called Swallow's Nest because it towers as if it had been built by a huge swallow on a rock plinth on the wall of a large sandstone mountain. In the time of Rudolf von Habsburg, this was the manor house of a terrible nobleman and robber baron, whom they called Bligger the Scourge. The whole valley from Heilbronn to Heidelberg was the prey of this sparrow with a human face. Like all his kind, he was ordered before the Reichstag. Bligger did not go. The emperor banned him from the Reich. Bligger just laughed at it. The Rhenish Confederation sent its best troops and its best military commanders to besiege the swallow's nest. After three raids, the Scourge had slain the besiegers. This bligger was a huge warrior who struck with the arm of a blacksmith. Eventually the Pope excommunicated him and all his followers. When Bligger heard one of the heralds of the Holy Roman Empire reading the excommunication bull at the foot of his castle wall, he just shrugged his shoulders. When he woke up the next morning, he found his castle deserted, the gate and the side gate walled up. All his arms bearers had left the cursed citadel under cover of night and bricked up the exits. One of them, who was hiding on a mountain rock from where he could observe the interior of the castle, saw Bligger the Scourge lower its head and slowly march up and down his courtyard. He did not enter the keep for a moment, but went back and forth alone until evening and let the tiles ring under his iron heels. As the sun sank behind the hills of Neckargemünd, the dreaded burgrave hit the pavement lengthways. He was dead. His son could only exempt the family from the church ban by taking the cross and bringing the sultan's head with him from the Holy Land, who is still emblazoned on the coat of arms of a stone knight called Ulrich Landschad, who was the son of Bligger and now lies on a tomb in the church of Steinach. This noble family has died out today. "

- Quoted from Victor Hugo

In his book Bummel durch Europa , Mark Twain describes a raft trip on the Neckar from Heilbronn to Heidelberg , during which he also passed Neckarsteinach:

" The graceful towers and battlements of the two medieval castles" The Swallow's Nest "and" The Brothers "enhanced the romantic impression of the landscape around the bend in the river on our right. "

Others

An inscription on the tower of the Schwalbennest castle ruins

On one of the two upper towers there is an enigmatic inscription that refers to the year 1871. Whether there is a connection with the Franco-German War has not yet been clarified.

literature

  • Walter Möller u. Karl Krauss: Neckarsteinach, his lords, the city and the castles , Mainz 1928
  • Thomas Steinmetz: Schadeck Castle near Neckarsteinach - A castle founded by Archbishop Baldwin of Trier. In: The Odenwald. Journal of the Breuberg-Bundes 55/3, 2008 pp. 92-102.
  • Thomas Steinmetz: Castles in the Odenwald. Verlag Ellen Schmid, Brensbach 1998, ISBN 3-931529-02-9 , pp. 85-88.
  • Rolf Müller (Ed.): Palaces, castles, old walls. Published by the Hessendienst der Staatskanzlei, Wiesbaden 1990, ISBN 3-89214-017-0 , p. 266.

Web links

Commons : Swallow's Nest  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Victor Hugo: Heidelberg , Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-7973-0825-6