Königsburg

For places with similar names, see Königsberg (disambiguation).

Königsburg
The keep of Königsburg Castle
Location within Germany
General information
Type	hill castle
Classification	ruins
Location	Königshütte
Coordinates	51°44.505′N 10°46.031′E / 51.741750°N 10.767183°E / 51.741750; 10.767183Coordinates: 51°44.505′N 10°46.031′E / 51.741750°N 10.767183°E / 51.741750; 10.767183
Completed	first mentioned 1312
Height	460 m above sea level (NN)

The Königsburg is a ruined medieval castle southeast of Königshütte, a village in the borough of Oberharz am Brocken, in Harz district in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt.

Site

The ruins are located above the confluence of the Warme Bode and Kalte Bode rivers in the Harz Mountains in central Germany. They lie at a height of 460 metres above sea level on the edge of a wooded plateau and offer a good view of the Wurmberg and the Brocken, the highest mountains in Lower Saxony and the Harz respectively.

History

In 1312 the site is first mentioned in the records as castrum Königshof when Bishop Albrecht von Halberstadt purchased the castle from Knappen Heinrich von Botvelde. In 1324 there is another mention of it as castrum Köningshof acqisivit, then all went quiet until it is described in 1709 for the first time as Königsburg. At that time it had already fallen into ruins.

When Paul Höfer carried out extensive excavations in the years from 1898 to 1901, he assumed he had discovered the long sought after palace (Pfalz) of Bodfeld and produced several publications about it, although this has been subsequently questioned by later researchers like Paul Grimm and Carl Erdmann. Even today it is advertised that the Königsburg is one of the most historic places in the Harz.

Layout

Of the original castle only the remains of the keep and several moats and ramparts remain today. It is checkpoint number 41 on the Harzer Wandernadel hiking trail network.

Gallery

Confluence of the Warme Bode (left) and Kalte Bode (right) near Königshütte
Information board about the castle

External links

Reconstruction drawing by Wolfgang Braun

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/21/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.