12th to 14th century: Frankenberg as a strategic base and stage for local power struggles Frankenberg Castle, originally Burg Vorderfrankenberg, had a predecessor in the same area, Burg Hinterfrankenberg, which later became its local political hostile opponent
12th to 14th century: Frankenberg as a strategic base and stage for local power struggles
Frankenberg Castle, originally Burg Vorderfrankenberg, had a predecessor in the same area, Burg Hinterfrankenberg, which later became its local political hostile opponent. As a result, the ruins of Burg Hinterfrankenberg, which can still be found in the northwest of the palace complex, formed the “original” castle of Frankenberg.
A fortification on the Hexenstuhl located 500 meters to the east already existed in Carolingian times, probably dating back to before the 7th century. Remnants of the Hexenstuhl, in the form of two broken steps, can still be seen today in the nearby forest area of Frankenberg.
Burg Hinterfrankenberg was built around 1166 and is said to have been destroyed as it was considered to be the lair of Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa’s (1122 – 1190). During the years to follow, Burg Probsteiwald, now also a ruin, was built over the ruins of Burg Hinterfrankenberg. Remnants of the double tower, a well and a wall are still preserved on the plateau. Built around 1200, as a four-part complex with two main castles and two outer baileys, by the bishop of Würzburg Konrad von Querfurt (1160 – 1202), it was first mentioned as a “castrum” in 1225.
In 1254 Burgrave Conrad I of Nuremberg (1186-1260/61) of the House of Hohenzollern built Burg Vorderfrankenberg as a counter-fortress, which represents the actual origin of today’s Frankenberg Castle, as a result of territorial power struggles below Burg Hinterfrankenberg. In 1271 the 14th Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, Gottfried von Hohenlohe (1265 – 1309), a relative of the Burgraves of Nuremberg, was appointed patron of Burg Hinterfrankenberg. He was also given the surrounding forests and associated forestry, which also guaranteed him a considerable additional profit. As a result, the Bishop of Würzburg, Manegold von Neuenburg (†1303) handed over Burg Vorderfrankenberg to the von Seinsheim brothers, who were already occupying the castle, in order to keep an eye on the fiercely contested area around the Herrschaftsberg and Scheinberg. In 1290, Bishop Manegold transferred the castle to the cathedral provost Heinrich II of Wechmar (†1309). The castle then fell into disrepair and was declared dilapidated in 1344, which is why all cathedral provosts were obliged to pay 40 guilders for the maintenance of the castle in 1397. This resulted in a total amount of about 800 guilders, which today would correspond to about € 280,000.
15th and 16th centuries: during the Reformation – the Margrave Wars and the House of von Hutten
During the First Margrave War (1449–50), disputes between the Free Imperial City of Nuremberg and Albrecht III Achilles, Elector of Brandenburg (1414 – 1486), the castle was badly damaged in 1450, and also burned by Sigismund von Schwarzenberg (1430 – 1502) in 1462. Between 1481 and 1488, the castle was rebuilt by the provost and vicar general of Würzburg, Kilian of Bibra (1425 – 1494).
In the so-called Blaubeurer Vertrag (Treatry of Blaubeuren), Ulrich Lorenz von Hutten (1493 – 1531), the lesser known cousin of Ulrich von Hutten (1488 – 1523), Renaissance humanist, imperial knight and rebellious supporter of the Reformation, was granted an impressive sum of 27,000 guilders as a penalty for manslaughter. This was to compensate the death of Ulrich’s older brother Johann (1486 – 1515), who was killed by Duke Ulrich of Württemberg (1487 – 1550). What made Duke Ulrich kill Johann, however, remains a mystery to this day.
A second construction phase, initiated by Konrad von Hutten (1522 – 1556), in which the northeast wing with its staircase tower and dungeon was built, began around 1550. In March 1554, the adjacent Burg Hinterfrankenberg was destroyed by Albert Alcibiades (1522 – 1557), Margrave of Brandenburg-Kulmbach, and became a ruin. Just one month later, nearby Burg Hohenlandsberg, which is within sight, was first captured and then blown up. The fact that Vorderfrankenberg remained unscathed during the Second Margrave War (1552 – 1554) seems to have been a strategic masterpiece by Konrad von Hutten.
The Second Margrave War was a conflict between 1552 and 1555 involving numerous raids, plundering, and the destruction of many towns and castles in the empire, especially in Franconia, and a result of the uprising in which the protestant princes fought for religious freedom. Margrave Albrecht was initially able to assert himself successfully against the Catholic monasteries of Bamberg and Würzburg, as well as the two imperial cities of Nuremberg and Schweinfurt. Albrecht wanted to secure a position of supremacy in Franconia for the House of Brandenburg-Kulmbach but was ultimately defeated by a counter-alliance of numerous Catholic princes. After the end of the war, Konrad von Hutten was able to continue work on the castle until his death in the summer of 1554. Since the Frankenberg line died out with Konrad, protracted disputes arose over the fiefdom with the Margrave of Ansbach. After eleven years, a decision was finally reached by which the von Hutten line of the Birkenfeld dynasty emerged victorious. In 1568 the House of Ansbach and the Prince-Bishopric of Würzburg jointly decided to enfeoff the two brothers Georg Ludwig (1545 – 1613) and Bernhard (1546). – 1613) von Hutten with Frankenberg. As a result, the older brother Georg Ludwig received Schloss Birkenfeld, the ancestral seat of the Birkenfeld line in Haßberge, Lower Franconia, while Frankenberg Castle went to Bernhard. In 1570, under Bernhard, the castle complex was completed in its basic structure including its three towers as it is today. Between 1592 and 1593, an outer bailey was also built to delimit Vorderfrankenberg to the east towards the mountain.
17th century: Expropriation and devastation – Frankenberg as a pawn in the Counter-Reformation and the Thirty Years’ War
Frankenberg Castle was occupied by the von Hutten family until 1783, when the Birkenfeld line died out. However, the more than 250-year rule of the von Hutten family was interrupted in the course of history when the estate was confiscated by an imperial commissioner on 20 October 1630. The House of von Hutten was accused of high treason. The accusation was that Wolfgang Albrecht von Hutten (1599 – 1626), who had fallen in military service in Hungary as an officer, had served against the Emperor and the Holy Roman Empire. At a court assembly in Linz a month later, a contract was signed between Emperor Ferdinand II (1578 – 1637) and Philipp Adolf von Ehrenberg (1583–1631), Prince Bishop of Würzburg, in which the Emperor left his right of cassation to the Prince Bishop. Philip Adolf von Ehrenberg acted with an iron fist and little mercy against any sympathisers of the reformation, alleged heretics and witches.
He was a co-initiator of the Counter-Reformation which gained a foothold in the Holy Roman Empire from 1631 onwards, but it was his bloody persecution of witches, which was a measure of re-Catholicisation, that best demonstrated his merciless approach. As the chief person responsible for by far the most serious wave of witch persecutions in the Würzburg monastery between 1626 and 1630, the Prince Bishop ordered around 42 fires in which at least 219 people were burned at the stake in the city of Würzburg alone. Under his regency, the total number of executions amounted to well over 900, a considerable number suggesting legal arbitrariness. Even children were burned, especially blind children, because they had been “possessed by the devil”. To prevent further executions with immediate effect, the Reichskammergericht or Imperial Chamber Court, and the Reichshofrat or Aulic Council, the two supreme courts of the Holy Roman Empire, intervened in 1630.
In 1632, the direct spiritual rule of the Würzburg monastery over Frankenberg was ended and the castle was again allowed to be administered by the von Hutten family. In the winter of 1639/40, a decree was issued to return the property to the House of von Hutten.
Nevertheless, it was a time that was still marked by conflicts within and outside the Holy Roman Empire. As a result, Frankenberg was not spared the devastating Thirty Years’ War (1618 – 1648) which had long since developed into more than just a religious war. In the summer of 1645, the castle was attacked and plundered by former Weimar troops who belonged to the Protestant Union, or Evangelical Union, a coalition of Protestant German states. Interestingly, this incident occurred despite the fact that the von Hutten family had been committed to the Reformation from the beginning and the von Hutten brothers had served on the Protestant side. This incident makes it all the more clear that, towards the end of the war, arbitrary raids had replaced religiously motivated campaigns. Enemy soldiers plundered everything of value. The landlord, Veit Ludwig von Hutten (1596 – 1655) later stated that he did not have a single ring on his hands or any money left. Mercilessly and relentlessly, they also destroyed the Meierei, first documented in 1429, at the foot of the Herrschaftsberg, and thus robbed the inhabitants of the castle of their economic foothold.
For almost 300 years, the manor had great agricultural significance, as between 1556 and 1848 an area of over 300 hectares of land belonged to the manor, which was mainly divided into arable land, meadows, wasteland, and sheepfold.
17th and 18th centuries: Periods of peace and upswing
Frankenberg’s peak under the auspices of the lords of von Hutten
The beginning of the 18th century was to usher in a new phase in which the estate underwent a number of economic and architectural innovations when, in 1700, Frankenberg passed on to Johann Friedrich von Hutten (1666 – 1716). The new lord had the abandoned Meierei, which had previously successfully guaranteed Frankenberg’s autonomy for over two centuries, rebuilt in 1704 at the request of his first wife Eva Juliana (1656 – 1700) in order to restore the organic connection between the castle and the farmyard. This was necessary as the farmyard, which had been largely destroyed in the Thirty Years’ War, had once again been seriously damaged by a major fire in 1702.
In the 18th century, a number of agricultural innovations followed, with a greater focus on the production of wine. Of the approximately 300 hectares of agricultural land in Frankenberg, only a small part of the lands were vineyards at that time, although the economic importance of this area was to increase at least temporarily. To clarify this, it should be mentioned that the size of the vineyards had varied considerably over the last 500 years. In 1530, the acreage planted with vines was about 1.4 hectares, and in 1623 it was already 5 hectares. By 1783, the area had more than doubled and had grown to well over 10 hectares, a very large area at that time.
The last innovations to the palace complex under the rule of the von Hutten family came in 1753 with the construction of the stone bridge over the moat and the subsequent construction of the Baroque Amtshaus (an administrative building), the construction of which Johann Phillip Friedrich von Hutten (1711 – 1783) had commissioned in 1759.
In their rule of more than 250-years over Frankenberg, the von Hutten family succeeded in forming a relatively closed and rounded knighthood in Franconia and securing their local supremacy and importance. Until 1783, the rulers of Frankenberg possessed high jurisdiction, as the well-preserved vaulted cellars with a cell tract, which most likely also had adjacent torture chambers, still bear witness today.
The high jurisdiction sometimes dealt with the “four high accusations”, i.e. murder, robbery, arson and rape. In addition to these capital crimes, the Zentgericht, a magisterial court, which consisted of lay judges under the chairmanship of a count as ruling civil servant, also dealt with serious thefts, brawls, poaching and, above all, the financially lucrative and frequent fornication offences.
The capital crimes judged at Frankenberg mostly ended in execution at the execution location in Ippesheim. These were large-scale, staged, public events which often attracted more than 6,000 spectators. For example, when a poisoner was executed in 1739, the roofs were covered to allow the onlookers a better view of the event. Between 1597 and 1752, seven executions for theft, murder, sodomy, stolen goods and poaching were recorded in the sparse sources of Frankenberg. The use of torture in the course of trials was also widespread up to the 18th century.
End of the 18th century till 2006: A gradual process of decay
In 1783 the rule of the von Hutten family, whose burial grounds are at the local church of Reusch to the south-west, came to an end. With the death of Johann Phillip Friedrich von Hutten, who had no descendants, the Frankenberg property passed into the possession of the von Poellnitz family after protracted inheritance disputes.
It can be assumed that this was a conspiracy which, from the outset, had excluded all the relatives and indirect descendants of Johann Phillip Friedrich, such as the daughters of his sister Elisabeth Juliana Martha. A document dated 25 December 1772 shows that Margrave Alexander von Brandenburg-Ansbach-Bayreuth (1736 – 1806) had already unofficially bestowed the Frankenberg fiefdom to his close confidant and , Ludwig Karl von Poellnitz (1758-1826), eleven years before the death of the lord of the palace at that time. It soon turned out, however, that owning the large palace complex was more of a burden than a gain for von Poellnitz. The buildings were in a ruinous state, the farm stripped of all real estate, and the vineyards dilapidated. This ultimately led to the von Poellnitz family having to file for bankruptcy in 1814.
The von Poellnitz family however remained in possession of Frankenberg until the extinction of its line with the death of Baroness Marimathilde von Poellnitzs (1898 – 1971). Thereafter the lords of Lerchenfeld, ancient Bavarian nobility, became the new owners of the castle.
https://europeanheritageproject.com
Gratis
info@schloss-frankenberg.com
Privateigentum, nur außerhalb zu besuchen