Buttenhausen

Buttenhausen (Münsingen), The county of Reutlingen

There were once two castles in Buttenhausen. One was located as a hilltop castle on a protruding spur, where today’s cemetery is, while the other was a lowland castle or moated castle below in the valley and is now completely overgrown.

The date of origin of both castles is still unknown. A castle in Buttenhausen is first mentioned on April 19, 1389, when the knight Friedrich III of Gundelfingen sold the bailiwick in the village to the provost of Güterstein Monastery. The upper castle complex is explicitly mentioned in 1569. It can be assumed that this noble residence probably dates back to the 13th century. Whereas it is unclear who the builders or early owners of the castle were, it appears in the 14th century under the control of the Lords of Gundelfingen. Therefore, it could have belonged to them earlier. The village of Buttenhausen, first mentioned in 1275, was presumably the relatively old property of the related Steußlingen-Justingen-Gundelfingen families. In 1330, Anselm von Justingen and his wife Haylgun donated the Leutkirche church in Buttenhausen and the upper Maierhof farm for their salvation. In 1364, the Gundelfingen lordship of Buttenhausen was granted to Eglolf of Freyberg. There were further changes of ownership in the following centuries. Christian of Münch acquired the estate in 1812 and was succeeded as heir by his daughter Barbara of Weidenbach. This family is also responsible for the construction of the younger Weidenbach Castle.

By then, the medieval castles had long since ceased to be used as manor houses. However, the remains of "two castles" still existed in the first half of the 19th century. One of them was located on the hill behind the church and was used as a fruit store. The other was located "on the water" and was demolished "in more recent times" and used as farm buildings. As early as 1778, a distinction is made between an "old castle on the hill" and a "lower castle" or "moated castle".

Later, parts of the older castle were demolished and the current cemetery was built within the remains. Parts of the polygonal enclosure walls, which are still up to 5 m high on the spur side, still exist today. A castle plan from the 1920s/30s still shows a larger building on the spur side, including the vaulted cellar below and a staircase leading down from there. Older photographs also show parts of these buildings, which were only finally demolished or overprinted in the recent past. The castle area within the outer walls measured around 38 x 40 m. According to a 16th century view, the core of the complex may have been a relatively high, tower-like structure, which was probably still well preserved at the time. Overall, the state of research on Buttenhausen Castle is relatively poor.

Even less can be said about the appearance of the lower castle or the so-called "moated castle", which was located around 150 m to the west in the floodplain of the Lauter valley. In the late 18th century, there was apparently a "stone gate with the Liebenstein family coat of arms, which led into a castle courtyard behind it". According to this, the complex was surrounded by a stone-built enclosure wall, which was not necessarily part of the original castle complex, however, but can probably be attributed to a more recent expansion stage. It possibly owed its repeated designation as a moated castle to a wider moat that served as a fortification and was fed by the Roßbach stream running through it. Beyond this, there is hardly any further evidence of the castle's design above ground in the area, which is now almost completely overgrown.