Hohenhundersingen

Hundersingen (Münsingen), The county of Reutlingen

Hohenhundersingen Castle, the younger of the two Hundersingen castles, was situated on a steep castle rock high above the valley Großes Lautertal. It had been the seat of the Lords of Hundersingen since the 12th century.

Around the year 1100, we first hear of a noble family named after a place called "Hundersingen". By then, they seem to have had an early seat in the village of the same name on the Danube. The first seat of power in the valley Lautertal can be traced back to the establishment of the “Hochburg” Hundersingen, which probably took place in the first half of the 12th century. Hohenhundersingen Castle, on the other hand, is first clearly mentioned in 1314. Archaeological finds indicate that it was already built in the second half of the 12th century. The apparently always narrow property base could have been partly responsible for the rapid decline of the lordship after 1300. As early as 1314, Württemberg acquired the right to use the "Fortress of Hundersingen" as an open castle as well as to receive military support from the brothers Rudolf and Sibot of Hundersingen. In 1352, Württemberg finally bought the entire lordship with all associated rights. Subsequently, Württemberg bailiffs sat in the castle, which was pledged to the Speths in 1452 and passed to the Truchsessen of Bichishausen in 1464. By the 16th century at the latest, but probably earlier, the castle was finally no longer inhabited.

In the 19th century, there were several major wall collapses at the ruins. The municipality of Hundersingen carried out conservation work on the ruins in 1967. Since 2001, there has been a support association that has been working to maintain the site. The ruins of Hohenhundersingen lie to the west of the village of Hundersingen on a rocky spur below the local plateau. The core of the complex is formed by an irregularly quadrangular keep, about 12 m high, with sides about 4 to 5 m long and a high entrance 6 m above the ground. To the south below the core castle rock is another part of the castle, which was long referred to as the "outer bailey", but which was probably the actual residential area of the castle complex, which was well protected behind the tower and shield wall and was oriented towards the valley in a representative manner. For a long time, little attention was paid to an extensive outer enclosure that extended uphill in front of the core castle. Massive moats and ramparts protected it from the slightly elevated plateau. Uncertain traces of the terrain also suggest the existence of buildings in this area or the existence of individual buildings, although it is not yet possible to make any further statements about their range of uses or exact chronological classification. Behind this outer bailey area, the almost 15 m deep and approximately 10 m wide neck ditch of the core castle falls away, which is apparently a natural rocky cleft that has been widened into a ditch.

Burg Hohenhundersingen von Horst Guth, Cinecopter