Alt-Ehrenfels

Hayingen, The county of Reutlingen

The ruins of Alt-Ehrenfels Castle are situated on a rocky spur about 2 kilometres west of Hayingen between the Glastal valley and the Schweiftal valley. The castle was once the seat of the Lords of Ehrenfels.

The exact moment when Ehrenfels Castle was constructed is unknown. However, it can be assumed that it was built at the beginning of the 13th century, as Anselm of Ehrenfels appears among the witnesses of Ulrich of Gundelfingen in March 1257. The castle itself was first mentioned in a document in 1265. It was probably under Gundelfingen sovereignty from the very beginning. They gave it to the family of Ehrenfels as a fief. By 1330, however, the Lords of Ehrenfels had lost the castle and, in 1337, the castle belonged to the knight Swigger of Gundelfingen of Ehrenfels, whose family had already held property rights there earlier. From this time at the latest, it served as the seat of a Gundelfingen collateral line until it passed to the Kaib of Hohenstein family in 1408. Hans Simon Kaib sold it in 1469 together with the associated mill and all accessories to Ulrich the Much-Loved, Count of Württemberg, who in turn ceded it to the Monastery of Zwiefalten in 1474. In 1516, the castle was finally destroyed by the monastery, as it apparently served as a hideout for road bearings.

Between 1735 and 1740, a new Ehrenfels Castle was built around 700 metres south of the ruins by the Abbot of Zwiefalten, which was given to Phillipp Christian Friedrich of Normann as a fiefdom in 1803. The castle ruins, on the other hand, were left to decay. Today, the most striking part of the castle is the remains of the angled shield wall together with the integrated round tower on the field side of the complex. Beyond this, only small remains of the wall have been preserved.