Stahleck

Holzelfingen (The municipality of Lichtenstein), The county of Reutlingen

The former castle was located in the Zellertal on a steep rock on the edge of the adjacent plateau. A noble family residing at Stahleck is first mentioned on the 26th of April 1254, when a Cunradus de Stahelekke is named as a witness in a document of Count Ulrich of Württemberg. Although his connection to the castle of Stahleck is questionable, some of the other witnesses also come from the area around Lichtenstein, which makes it more likely that he indeed was a member of Stahleck’s noble family. In 1304, a member of the Stahleck family was a nun in the nearby Offenhausen monastery and in April 1322, a Dietrich of Stahleck is mentioned in historical sources. Hence it is plausible, that the family residing at Stahleck were knightly vassals or ministerialis to the Greifenstein family. Archaeological finds imply that the castle was inhabited from the middle of the 13th to around the middle of the 14th century. The reason why it was abandoned remains unclear. It could have been destroyed in the Reichskrieg of 1311. Recent archaeological excavations suggest there were several construction phases as well as a fire catastrophe whose dimensions and timing have not yet been clarified.