Altenhausen moated castle

Altenhausen moated castle
Creation time :	Probably 14th century
Castle type :	Niederungsburg
Conservation status:	Burgstall, moat visible
Standing position :	Hall city nobility
Place:	Schwäbisch Hall- Altenhausen
Geographical location	49 ° 7 '19.1 "  N , 9 ° 47' 38.3"  E Coordinates: 49 ° 7 '19.1 "  N , 9 ° 47' 38.3"  E
Height:	392.9  m above sea level NN

The Altenhausen moated castle is a lost moated castle near the Altenhausen district of the city of Schwäbisch Hall in the Schwäbisch Hall district in Baden-Württemberg .

history

To this day, not much is known about the history of this moated castle, neither who built it, nor who sat on it. Presumably it belonged to a noble family called Unmuss , also called Unmaze , from nearby Schwäbisch Hall. They have been attested there since 1225 and have been called von Altenhausen since the 14th century . Elisabeth von Zimmer, the widow of Heinrich "V [= U] mmosse" von Altenhausen, is named as the seller of several goods between 1361 and 1374.

It is unknown whether they acquired the noble residence in Altenhausen or whether they themselves came from there. The family held important political functions in Hall, the brothers Heinrich and Burkhard "Unmaze" , for example. B. as a witness in a document of King Henry VII for the Schöntal monastery . They apparently committed a manslaughter, whereupon the imperial city of Hall "took the Wasserhausz zu Alttenhauszen [...] and, because they did not enter the perpetrator, burned it" . That is why the Schuppach Chapel in Hall is said to have been donated in 1322 . However, this information only comes from Haller chronicles of the 16th century, several hundred years after the events, so that they cannot be proven with certainty. The family was still in possession of their estates in Altenhausen at least in 1374.

After that, the Wasserburg came into the possession of the Kleinkunz family in Hall. It was sold in 1394 at the latest, because from that year four female members of the family sold parts of the Altenhausen castle stables to Heinrich Keck, a citizen of Hall, who then owned the entire castle stables in 1401. At that time, the complex no longer served as a noble residence. The castle site came from Keck to another Haller citizen, Götz von Bachenstein , who owned other estates and farms in Altenhausen. He sold these goods as well as "the Burgstadel and the lake there" in 1481 to the city of Hall, which transferred them to the Heiliggeistspital in the same year . This property belonged to the hospital until the 19th century.

At the beginning of the 17th century there was a Seehäuslin on the castle stables ; It is not known whether this construction goes back to the earlier castle buildings or whether it was completely rebuilt. There is also talk of a pond with four days of work and a hunter's house within a lake in a Salbuch from Altenhausen from 1700, it was built by the city of Hall. In the 19th century, this hunter's house became a rural property, which included a farmhouse with a barn. It was later relocated to a slightly lower location, parts of the castle site were still used as a garden. The last time a sheepfold was demolished there in 1914. Today the moat is largely filled in and the castle hill leveled, only the remains of the moat are visible in the southern part of the complex.

description

The castle site is 392.9  m above sea level. NN in the Langäcker corridor north of Altenhausen, on meadow terrain sloping slightly to the south. To the south, the castle area is now bordered by the damp, west-east running creek valley of the upper Otterbach , the remaining sides were secured by artificial ditches . However, these trenches are only weakly visible today, they were almost completely filled in by the dumping of excavated earth .

A few meters east of the castle site, the Altenhausen – Veinau connecting road runs over a dam through the lowland, through which the Otterbach was previously dammed in its course. The lake thus created surrounded the south side of the moated castle, through the moats in the north this castle side was also surrounded by a moat . The lake was first mentioned during the 15th century and was only drained again in the 19th century.

The approximately square area of ​​the moated castle with a side length of around 100 meters was once divided into two areas, according to the findings in the area, one into a northern outer castle and one inner castle . The outer bailey with its rectangular floor plan measured about 32 by 78 meters, and formed a spur of the terrain on each of its two southern corners. The hill of the outer bailey is completely sanded today and therefore hardly appears any more. The north end of the complex is only recognizable by the ditch indicated by the rain of a dirt road running from east to west.

Another ditch separated the raised hill of the inner castle from the outer castle. This ditch is also only visible today as a flat and wide hollow. The also rectangular top of the hill had an area of ​​about 14 by 22 meters and probably only supported a presumably tower-shaped residential building. The main castle was accessible from the north, via a later built dam through the section ditch . To the south the crest drops about four meters into the wide brook valley, the edge situation of the facility is still best visible here. The remaining sides merge almost seamlessly into the neighboring area. Traces of building are no longer visible from the entire complex, at least above ground.

literature

• Alois Schneider: The castles in the Schwäbisch Hall district. An inventory (= research and reports on the archeology of the Middle Ages in Baden-Württemberg. Vol. 18). Konrad Theiss, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-8062-1228-7 , pp. 212-214.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Source history: Alois Schneider: The castles in the Schwäbisch Hall district. 1995, p. 213 ff.