Hiltpoltstein Castle () was originally a high mediaeval aristocratic castle dating to the 11th or 12th century. It stands in the centre of the market village of Markt Hiltpoltstein in the Upper Franconian county of Forchheim in the south German state of Bavaria. Its present appearance as a triple-winged building goes back to renovations carried out at the end of the 16th century.
Location The hilltop castle stands on a dolomite crag () and forms the heart of the village of Hiltpoltstein (). The roughly 20-metre-high rocks are - like most other examples in Franconian Switzerland – the remains of fossil sponge reefs of the White Jurassic. In the vicinity there are other hilltop castles which have been built on exposed rock formations: to the east is Wildenfels Castle and the burgstall of Strahlenfels Castle, to the northeast are the ruins of Stierberg Castle, to the north are Egloffstein Castle and the ruins of Wolfsberg Castle.
Architecture
Below the castle, on a plateau, is the pfleger mansion from the early 17th century (north wing, Am Schlosshof 4), which housed the offices and courtrooms of the Hiltpoltstein Pflegamt until 1806. The inner courtyard is reached via the archway of the pfleger castle. Here there is a second, east, wing in front of the castle rock. This 'modern' building (cf. copper plate by Johann Alexander Böner) with its southwards-oriented gable was added in the second half of the 17th century, it was here on the upper storey that the pfleger had his residence. The house opposite, with a gable roof, dates to the 17th century (Am Schlosshof 6) and was first described, erroneously, as the Neues Schloss ("New Palace") on a copper plate by Christoph Melchior Roth. This name was, however, constantly used by locals to refer to the pfleger house in contrast to the castle (the Altes Schloss or "Old Palace"). To the southwest the courtyard was bounded by a low extension off the chancel to St. Matthew's Church, and, even on the copper plates by Johann Alexander Böner of 1696 and 1699, a surrounding wall can be made out east of the church. Thanks to this enclosing wall, this courtyard was used by the village population as a fortification during the course of several sieges in the Thirty Years' War. Since the 19th century, a small house has stood on the southern side of the courtyard (Am Schlosshof 8).
The only approach to the castle runs through the gateway in the 'new' pfleger house. A passageway, which has several embrasures and smoke exhaust holes facing south, runs on the right hand side on the level to the stables. The building to the south with the hip roof was last remodelled in 1712 as the date over the entrance indicates. The hall was also used to stable coaches and is appropriately decorated with a cross vaulted ceiling and surrounding ornamentation. The beginning of the ascent to the castle which is in the same direction, leads up to a terrace at the top of the first flight of steps. From here there is a descent to a rather, lower terrace with the zwinger, whilst the route to the castle continues to the left up a further flight of steps.
The hilltop castle may only be accessed via a hexagonal staircase tower, which was built in 1595. A spiral staircase with 35 steps opens onto a wooden footbridge to the castle at the point where, until about 1800, there was a drawbridge. The present fixed wooden bridge was built following a survey in 1807, in order to enable the villagers to get to the cistern in the cellar of the south wing.
The three-winged castle has an open north side, the gable ends of the east and west wings flanking a courtyard. The south wing, together with the other two wings, forms a continuous outer wall. Up to what height the Hohenstaufen foundation walls have survived has not so far been investigated. The cross vaulting of the old castle chapel in the south wing and level with the courtyard, indicates that this part of the castle was extended in the 15th century. The vaulting covers the passageway from the staircase tower into the courtyard and the present chapel, reduced in size by an internal dividing wall.
A 1553 survey report mentions three cabinets in the castle.Joachim Zeune: Hiltpoltstein, Lkr. Forchheim. In: Björn-Uwe Abels, Joachim Zeune, et al.: Führer zu archäologischen Denkmälern in Deutschland, Band 20: Fränkische Schweiz. Konrad Theiss Verlag GmbH und Co., Stuttgart, 1990, , pp. 176–177. The present appearance of the east and west wings with their typical half-hipped roofs dates to around 1595. Since then their interiors have been altered several times, for example, in 1728 the floral paintings of the hall in the east wing were executed.
In the courtyard, which opens to the north, are the foundations of the octagonal bergfried with a diameter of roughly 9.30 metres. This partially collapsed in 1611 when it was hit by lightning and was then reduced to the height of the first floor together with its link to the east wing. The remaining, initially single-storey stump of the bergfried is recorded in a pen-and-ink drawing made during the Thirty Years' War.Alberti 2009, p. 40 Later it continued to decay. The remaining wall stones of the tower were rebuilt to a height of about a metre during its renovation in the 1960s. A roughly metre-high shaft in the courtyard, below the eaves between the south and west wings serves to collect rainwater and feed it into the cistern which is formed by a large cavern in the castle rock. The 1807 construction survey report mentions that this cistern was still important as a supply of drinking water around 1800. When the castle fell into ruins in the first half of the 19th century, the cistern became filled with rubble which has still not been cleared out.
History
Archaeology and architectural research Nothing is known about any settlement on the castle rock in pre-mediaeval times. During the renovation of the castle at the end of the 1960s, a late OttonianThe find was initially erroneously dated to the Carolingian, see: Hans Losert: Eine Scheibenfibel mit Grubenemail aus Hiltpoltstein. Landkreis Forchheim, Oberfranken. In: Das archäologische Jahr in Bayern 1987. Stuttgart, 1988, pp. 154–155. disc fibula made of bronze was discovered; its style dating to the end of the 10th century or first quarter of the 11th century.Mechthild Schulze-Dörrlamm: Kreuze mit herzförmigen Armen. Die Bedeutung eines Ziermotivs für die Feinchronologie emaillierter Bronzefibeln des Hochmittelalters. In: Archäologisches Korrespondenzblatt 18, 1988, pp. 407–415. There is a high probability that it originated from the workshop of Egbert of Trier. Because the ornamentation of fibulas soon fell out of fashion with the advent of the Salian dynasty, it was probably lost on the plateau of the zwinger prior to 1030. The brooch is displayed today in the Franconian Switzerland Museum in Tüchersfeld and is the oldest find from the castle hill. Although it is plausible that the castle rock was thus used as early as the early 11th century, no predecessor structures or remains of last Ottonian or Salian foundation walls have been found. What is certain is that the earliest record of the fortress occurred during the Hohenstaufen era, in an 1139 deed. Architectural and radiometric investigations of the foundation walls have not been carried out in sufficient detail to be able to date the castle more precisely than the sparse written records have indicated. Thousands of pieces of pottery, uncovered during the renovation of the castle in the 1960s in the courtyard and in the ground layers of the zwinger, date mainly to the Late Middle Ages (c. 1250 to 1500); older shards of pottery are the exception. The majority of surviving pottery pieces date to the period of the establishment of the Nuremberg pfleger office in the 16th century. A selection of these finds is displayed in a glass cabinet in the east wing of the castle.
High and Late Middle Ages (11th–14th centuries) The first record of the castle and village of Hiltpoltstein appears in connexion with Weißenohe Abbey, founded in 1100,Hubert Pöppel: Zur frühen Geschichte des Ortes und Klosters Weißenohe. In: Bericht des Historischen Vereins Bamberg, 149, 2013, pp. 93-136. when the castle is reported as the seat of the associated Vogt.Alberti 2009, p. 11 An authentic transcript of the privilege of Pope Paschal II to Weißenohe Abbey from the year 1109 is housed in the Bavarian State Library in Munich. Two transcripts, dating to around 1150, in the archives of Bamberg and Amberg, by contrast, contain not only the text of the Papal Bull, but also a list of all monastic estates, including Hilteboldesdorf cum castro (Hiltpoltstein and castle). These properties were apparently not added until the preparation of the transcripts. The document in Amberg also contains a copied signature of the pope as well as a real papal seal.Karl Theodor Lauter: Weißenoher Urkundenfälschungen. In: Archivalische Zeitschrift 39, 1930, pp. 226-259Alberti 2009, pp. 12-13 In spite of the deliberate backdating of the Weißenohe estates in these two examples, it may be assumed that the expansion of Hiltpoltstein Castle as a likely vogt seat occurred at the same time as the abbey was founded.Georg Adam Huber: Geschichte des Klosters und der Pfarrei Weißenohe. In: Josef Pöppel: Weißenohe: Zur Geschichte von Kloster und Pfarrei. 2013, pp. 119-121
The imperial ministerialis family of Hiltpoltstein-Rothenberg is first recorded in 1139 as Odalricus quidam de Hilteboldestein ("Ulrich of Hiltpoltstein") in a document from Bamberg's Michelsberg Abbey. In connexion with this name, the castle rock (the "Stein") (the "stone") is also confirmed as the seat of his office. In documents originating in the period between 1246 and 1276, a ministerialis called Hiltpold is named after the three associated lordly estates of Lauf (Wenzelschloss), the castle on the "Alter Rothenberg" hill and Hiltpoltstein. In 1251 he was called Hilteboldus de Hilteboldestein; in 1254, Hiltepoldus de Rotenberge. The "lead name" (Leitname), Hiltpold, was preserved throughout the Hohenstaufen period. After the execution of the last Hohenstaufen, Conradin, in 1268, the estate went to the Bavarian Duke Louis the Strict of the House of Wittelsbach. The family of the castellans of Hiltpoltstein-Rothenberg finally emerged at the end of the 13th century with the marriage of the last Hiltpold to Dietrich of Wildenstein. The old castle of Rothenberg, which had meanwhile become the seat of the Wildensteins, was intervisible with Hiltpoltstein Castle. It was abandoned in the first third of the 14th century in favour of the new fortification on the Rothenberg near Schnaittach.
When it was abandoned as the family seat at the end of the 13th century, for several decades, trances of the castellans of Hiltpoltstein disappeared from the records. It is likely, however, that it became a common fief with the nearby Winterstein Castle as the same lead name of Neidung is used in connexion with both castles. For example, in 1305, a Nendunch von Hilpolstein is mentioned; in 1326 a Neydungk von Winterstein. When in 1329, Emperor, Louis the Bavarian, on inheriting from his brother, divided the estate of Wittelsbach in the Treaty of Pavia, Hiltpoltstein went to Count Palatine Rupert and, thus to the Electorate of the Palatinate (until then Nordgau, later Upper Palatinate).
Under Bohemian rule (1353–1503)