Stahleck Castle

About

Stahleck Castle (German: Burg Stahleck) is a 12th-century fortified castle in the Upper Middle Rhine Valley at Bacharach in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It stands on a crag approximately 160 metres (520 ft) above sea level on the left bank of the river at the mouth of the Steeg valley, approximately 50 kilometres (31 mi) south of Koblenz, and offers a commanding view of the Lorelei valley. Its name means "impregnable castle on a crag", from the Middle High German words stahel (steel) and ecke (here: crag). It has a water-filled partial moat, a rarity in Germany. Built on the orders of the Archbishop of Cologne, it was destroyed in the late 17th century but rebuilt in the 20th and is now a hostel.

From about 1000 AD, Bacharach is presumed to have been a possession of the Archbishops of Cologne. They had the castle built, perhaps as a southern outpost to guard the far-flung archbishopric; their Vogt resided there. It is uncertain when the present castle was built to replace an earlier fortification; perhaps around 1135. It was the first large castle north of Bingen and Rüdesheim.

A "Gozwin von Stalecke" is first mentioned in charters in 1120–21. This was Goswin von Falkenburg, who is also referred to in 1135 by the Latin translation "Cozwinus de Staelechae" and was the first attested holder of the castle in fief. He was a member of a Main-Frankish family and had come into possession of the castle through marriage to Luitgard von Hengebach, the widow of Heinrich I of Katzenelnbogen, who died in 1102. From then on he called himself Goswin von Stahleck.

In 1125, Goswin's son Hermann married Gertrud of Swabia, sister of King Conrad III of Germany. After receiving Stahleck Castle in fief from his brother in law in 1140, he was additionally granted the County of Palatinate by Rhine. This made him one of the greatest lords of the Holy Roman Empire and the Four Valley Region, which consisted of the settlements of Bacharach, Steeg (now part of Bacharach), Diebach and Manubach plus the castles of Stahleck, Fürstenberg and Stahlberg, and made Stahleck the centre of power of the heart of what later became the Rhineland territory of the Counts Palatine. They developed Bacharach into a trading town, among other things for the wine trade, and the castle was thus used to enforce payment of duties. When he went on the Second Crusade, Conrad made Hermann his regent.

After Hermann's death in 1156, Emperor Frederick Barbarossa bestowed the title of Count Palatine on his half-brother Conrad of Hohenstaufen. After the death of his remaining son in 1189, Conrad's only heir was his daughter Agnes. So that the castle and the title could remain in the family, that year King Henry VI commuted the fief from a personal to a hereditary one. In the future this led to repeated conflicts between the Counts Palatine and the See of Cologne, since Stahleck was a possession of the Electoral Archbishop and not the king's to modify.

It was her father's wish for Agnes to marry King Philip II of France, but instead when Conrad was away from the castle in January or February 1194, she secretly married Henry the Elder of Brunswick, son of his enemy the Welf Duke Henry the Lion, to whom she had previously been engaged; the marriage, performed by Johann I, Archbishop of Triers, is known as the Stahleck Marriage or the Bacharach Marriage. After Conrad's death, Henry succeeded him as Count Palatine and so came into possession of the castle. However, in 1212 he renounced the title and the rights associated with it in favour of his son Henry the Younger. When the latter died young and childless in 1214, his younger sister Agnes inherited Stahleck. The non- allodial remainder of the County reverted to the Crown and was subsequently bestowed on the Bavarian Duke Ludwig I of the House of Wittelsbach.

In order to secure possession also of the castle and the overseership of Bacharach, Ludwig I arranged a marriage in 1222 between his son Otto and Agnes. Under Otto (Otto II) in 1243, the long-running conflict with the Archbishopric of Cologne was settled, and he received Fürstenberg and Stahlberg Castles as additional fiefs.

Ludwig I transferred his primary residence to Heidelberg, so that from then on, Stahleck was used only occasionally and was overseen by counts, who called themselves "Ritter (Knight) von Stahleck". From the 15th century on, it was administered by bailiffs. However, although the castle was no longer the administrative centre of the Palatinate, important gatherings of the nobility continued to take place there into the 15th century, including the election of Ludwig IV as King of Germany in May 1314 and the wedding of Emperor Charles IV and Anna, only daughter of Rudolf II, Count Palatine, on 4 March 1349. In addition, the castle was used several times during the 14th century as a pledge. In December 1314, to cover the costs of his election, Ludwig IV pledged it for 58,300 pounds of Hellers to John of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia, and his uncle Baldwin, Electoral Archbishop of Triers. In July 1328, they were required to surrender Stahleck and also Stahlberg and Braunshorn Castles as security for a fine payable to Countess Loretta of Sponheim. The castle was thus administered by Count Wilhelm I of Katzenelnbogen as regent until the entire sum of 11,000 pounds had been paid. The castle was also opened for military use to Gerlach of Nassau, Archbishop of Mainz, in 1346.

In 1353, the Palatinate was divided and Stahleck Castle passed to Rupert the Younger, after which it was incorporated into the fortifications around the town of Bacharach. In late 1400, Rupert's son, also named Rupert, celebrated there his election as King of Germany and Rome after the deposition of King Wenceslaus of Luxembourg. In 1408, Rupert hosted a banquet for the Electors of the Holy Roman Empire, but after that Stahleck gradually lost its importance for the empire. In 1442 Ludwig IV, Count Palatine, held a reception and electoral banquet there for King Frederick of Habsburg as he was en route to Aachen to be crowned Emperor, but during the 15th and 16th centuries the castle sank into insignificance.

After the introduction of cannon, an artillery platform was added to the medieval castle on the northeast side to cover the access route, but its exact date of construction is unknown. Despite this, the castle was besieged, conquered, and sacked a total of eight times during the Thirty Years' War. On 4 October 1620, it and the town of Bacharach were taken by Spanish troops commanded by Ambrogio Spinola, but the Spaniards were evicted by Protestant Swedes on 9 January 1632. The castle was heavily damaged during the siege leading up to its recapture. A copper engraving in Matthäus Merian 's 1646 Topographia Germaniae depicts the battle.

In July 1635, Imperial troops under Matthias Gallas, Count of Campo, successfully besieged Stahleck. They were evicted four years later, in July 1639, by Weimaran soldiers, but the castle was then occupied by Bavarian troops in March 1640. They stayed only a short time, and after their withdrawal the Weimaran troops reoccupied the castle and the town. In autumn 1640, after a 14-day siege, Spanish troops once more took their place.

In September 1644, the castle and the town were taken by French soldiers after a 10-day siege; the following month, Cologne troops attacked them and forced them to retreat to the castle with heavy losses. The Cologne commander, Constantin von Nievenheimb, therefore ordered the bombardment and "more or less ruination" of the castle, but did not attempt to capture it. The French soldiers remained until 24 July 1650 but had to vacate the castle under the terms of the Peace of Westphalia, which returned it to the Palatinate and Count Palatine Karl Ludwig. In 1666, he had the castle repaired and made some alterations: he greatly changed the interior of the palas and between it and the northern rampart built a massive new building with a Fachwerk half-timbered upper storey. An inscribed stone tablet on the palas commemorates his rebuilding of the castle.

During the War of the Palatine Succession, the castle was decisively destroyed, like most of the fortifications in the Upper Middle Rhine Valley. Its commander, von Dachenhausen, surrendered it to French troops on 11 October 1688, but on 15 March 1689 they blew it up. The explosion completely destroyed both the ring wall and the keep, the residential buildings burned out in the resulting fire, and debris from the explosion destroyed the Gothic Werner Chapel at the foot of the castle hill. The castle was so heavily damaged that it was not rebuilt. Under the 1697 Treaty of Ryswick, the ruin reverted to the Palatinate, where it remained until the dissolution of the County at the end of the 18th century.

After the occupation of the parts of the Palatinate on the left bank of the Rhine by French Revolutionary troops in 1794, in 1801 the Treaty of Lunéville awarded the ruined castle to the French; in 1804 they offered it for sale. In 1815 the Congress of Vienna resulted in its passing into the possession of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1828 the then Crown Prince Frederick William acquired it in order to give it to his wife Elisabeth Ludovika of Bavaria ; she was a Wittelsbach princess. In association with a visit by her in the 1850s, large parts of the toppling walls were cleared, and the rubble spread over the courtyard and used to fill the moat. All that remained was the wall of the palas on the courtyard side, the ring wall on the Steeg valley side to the height of the chemin de ronde and a small piece of the inner or shield wall.

The ruined castle became well known among romantics and nationalists and was often depicted in the 19th century. Beginning in 1907, Axel Delmar had plans for a home for artists in the ruins of the castle, but the Prussian royal family refused to sell the site.

The first work to stabilise and rebuild the ring wall and shield wall, costing 3,500 marks, began only in 1909, after the ruin had been transferred from the Prussian Crown to the Rhenish Association for Landmark Preservation and Landscape Protection. The Association was able to raise the 5,000 mark purchase price through donations. Work was interrupted by World War I, and the castle suffered further vandalism and decay. In 1924 Richard Blankenhorn, the owner of the villa above the castle, wished to start a business in the ruins, but there was no response for 5 years to his enquiry concerning a lease.

Early in 1925 the decision was taken to construct a youth hostel at the castle. Firm plans were made in March of that year. The Association contracted with the architect Ernst Stahl to "build in the ruin, in the spirit of the old buildings and making use of the old walls, a building which [would] fit well into the landscape". Financing of the initial work was ensured by an endowment of 50,000 ℛ︁ℳ︁.

Stahleck became the Association's prestige project. The intention was to completely rebuild the castle. Stahl based his designs on historical models and appended them to remaining structures, but changed his plans again after ancient, previously unknown building foundations came to light in excavations beginning in August 1925. The excavations and the attendant repeated surveying of the site delayed the start of building to late summer 1925. The first building, the longhouse, was intended as a hostel for boys. On the first floor, executed in Fachwerk, were a flat for the hostel manager and an adjacent dormitory with washroom. On the ground floor, built in crushed stone, were the kitchen and a day-room, while the top floor, which has dormers on the courtyard side, housed further sleeping and washing space. The design adhered as far as possible to the use of space in the old castle. An old cellar at the east corner of the site was rebuilt and roofed over in reinforced concrete to make a viewing terrace. Further excavations took place parallel to the construction work, and recovered stones were used as building material in rebuilding the ring wall and the foundation of the keep.

The official dedication of the youth hostel took place on 12–13 June 1926 and was followed by a second building phase, from autumn 1926 to July 1927, in which the tower building, with two wings at right angles and a turret at the angle, was built as a girls' hostel on the foundations of two Fachwerk buildings against the shield wall. The ground floor consisted of a large day-room; on the first floor were a large dormitory, washrooms and living and sleeping space for matrons. Further sleeping space was under the single-pitched roof, and in addition there was a 4-bed room inside the turret. Rebuilding of the entire ring wall and the shield wall lasted until 1927.

Once open, the youth hostel was almost always oversubscribed, leading to problems with the water supply. Insufficient water frequently led to a complete ban on washing. The problem was alleviated by tapping a new source of water on the western hillside.