Location: Ottrott, Bas- Rhin department Map
The ruin of Birkenfels Castle (French: Château du Birkenfels,
less often also Château de Birkenfels) stands two kilometers
southwest of the Odilienberg on the territory of the Alsatian
municipality of Ottrott.
The hill castle was built by the Be
(r)ger family and is one of a total of nine fortifications that
stand on only a few square kilometers around the Odilienberg. After
the Begers died out, Emperor Charles V granted the imperial fief to
his Vice-Chancellor Matthias von Held, who sold it to the Joham von
Mundolsheim family in 1537. Already in the second half of the 16th
century the castle was abandoned. After the Thirty Years' War, it
finally fell into ruin, before, during the French Revolution, it
became the property of the city of Obernai (German Oberehnheim), on
whose territory it stood. The city is still the owner today, but has
placed the facility in the care of the Association pour la
Conservation du Patrimoine Obernois, an association dedicated to the
preservation of monuments around Obernai.
The castle, which
used to be called Bergfels, Bergfeldschloss and Birkwaldschloss, is
now also referred to briefly only as Le Birkenfels (German der
Birkenfels). It has been listed as a Monument historique since 16
November 1984 and is freely accessible.
The castle ruins stand on a sandstone rock at an altitude of 675 m above sea level. NN in the hinterland of the middle Vosges and thus had hardly any strategic value. In addition, the plant did not include any surrounding land ownership and no supply yards. It probably had more of a protective function for the forest or could have controlled the high road running east and south of the castle rock from the Odilienberg over the Champ du Feu to the Breuschtal. Only about 1.2 kilometers away in the direction of the north is the ruin of Dreistein Castle, from which it is just as far as the ruin of Hagelschloss. Kagenfels Castle is located to the northwest just over two kilometers from Birkenfels, and Landsberg Castle is located about three kilometers away to the southeast.
The core castle of the small complex consists of the remains of a
residential building, which is preceded by a pentagonal keep on the
southern attack side. Birkenfels thus corresponds in its constellation
to the typical defense standard of the 13th century. To the east of the
two buildings, the area of the former bailey is located a little lower.
The entire complex was protected on the south side by an only very
shallow, probably unfinished neck ditch. The red sandstone standing on
the rock was used as the building material. In the immediate vicinity of
the ruin there are still two quarries of the castle construction site,
among other things, the rock obtained during the creation of the
southern neck trench was used. The door and window frames are made of
house stone.
Access to the castle is provided by a round-arched
portal in late Gothic forms on the south side of the complex. In the
past, it was perhaps only accessible via a drawbridge. After crossing
the gate, the visitor stands in the area of the former bailey from the
second half of the 15th century. The 32-meter-long area is surrounded by
a ring wall made of quarry stone with a final defensive passage, which
had a breastwork and battlements. On the north side there is a small
side gate that leads to a terrace. This could have once been a garden.
Access to the three-storey residential building of the castle was
provided by a pointed arch gate on the first floor of the building. Two
cantilever stones located below once carried a wooden porch. This was
replaced in the second half of the 15th century or in the first half of
the 16th century by a two-storey, tower-like quadrangular building made
of stone, to the south side of which a ramp carved into the rock with a
subsequent drawbridge led. At the same time, this quadrangular building
protected the gate in the northern ring wall of the outer bailey. Today,
only the lower, reconstructed part of it remains. The ground floor of
the residential building served as a warehouse and for defensive
purposes, as evidenced by the high slit slits on both long sides. The
upper floors housed the living quarters of the lordship of the castle.
The outer walls are still 14 meters high today and 1.8 meters thick on
the ground floor. They taper upwards by about 20 centimeters per floor.
The upper end was formed by a defensive corridor, of which small remains
of the breastworks have been preserved. Above the entrance gate there is
a fortified dungeon, the console stones of which have been preserved.
The south and the west walls are clad externally with humpback blocks,
while the north and the east walls are made of hammer-right blockwork.
On all sides there are rectangular double windows with simple central
supports on the upper floors, but with the exception of one copy, all of
them are no longer original, but copies from the 19th century. Many
windows are located in arched niches with benches. Inside, the building
measures about 19 meters in length and has a width of about 6.5–9
meters. On both floors there was only one room with a fireplace, of
which small remains are still preserved on the inner walls. The
remaining rooms were heated by tiled stoves. The walls of the building
show traces of a large fire.
On the endangered south side, a
pentagonal keep is placed in front of the residential building. Its
masonry of humpback cuboids with pincer holes still stands up to a
height of eight meters and is therefore lower than the residential
building. Based on the interlocking stones present in the higher parts,
it becomes clear that the tower was once planned higher, but was never
completed. Another indication of this is the lack of access. This was
obviously planned via the weir at the roof level of the residential
building. Birkenfels is the only castle in Alsace for which it is known
that the keep was never completed. In the middle of its three-meter
thick south wall there is an abort in the wall thickness. Because of the
enormous thickness of the wall, the interior of the keep is quite small,
it measures only about 4.5 meters × 2.8 meters.
What is striking
about the castle complex is that during its construction, preference was
given to comfort over fortitude. The defensive elements are only
slightly pronounced for a late medieval complex, for example, the keep
stands on the unsafe attack side south of the residential building, but
covers only a part of it. On the south side, the palace even has large
double windows on the upper floors.
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Since there are only a few documentary testimonies about Birkenfels
Castle, the history of the complex is based not only on contemporary
documents, but also on construction surveys and excavation results.
The castle was first mentioned in a document in 1289, when King
Rudolf of Habsburg, with the consent of the citizens of Obernai, granted
the "mountain rock under the spell of Ehenheim" to Burkhard Beger
("Burckart den wiser Beger"), a minister of the Bishop of Strasbourg.
The Begers are attested as important Strasbourg servants from 1200
onwards. In the document, which is no longer preserved and only
partially handed down, it was stipulated that the feudal lord had to pay
a pound of wax to the Liebfrauenkapelle in Obernai every year, because
the castle had probably been illegally built on the land of the city by
Burkhard's father Albrecht Wisseberger at the behest of Bishop Walter
von Geroldseck. Research considers such a thing possible only for the
time of the Interregnum, since the bishop of Strasbourg was only the de
facto ruler of the lands around Obernai and the Odilienberg, which
actually belonged to the Holy Roman Empire, from 1246 to 1262. After
Conrad III of Lichtenberg had been elected bishop of Strasbourg and
Rudolf I as king in 1273, the situation between the bishopric of
Strasbourg and the empire relaxed again, as Conrad was known as a friend
of the Habsburgs. The majority of research dates the construction of the
castle to the time around 1260, only Charles-Laurent Salch (see
literature) suspects that the complex was built only between 1285 and
1289. As a reason, he gives the similar-sounding feudal contract
concluded in 1285 for the Kagenfels Castle, which was built under the
same circumstances. He assumes that an official loan would have already
taken place for Birkenfels earlier, if the castle had already existed at
that time.
After the first mention, there is nothing left about
the castle in the tradition for a long time. It is only in 1434 that she
finds herself in a document as "die zarge Birkenveltz". There it is
mentioned as a fief of Caspar Beger and his brothers and confirmed as an
imperial fief, but the choice of words suggests that it was a ruin at
that time. Based on the traces of fire found in the interior of the
residential building, it is assumed that the complex burned down in the
13th or 14th century and had not been rebuilt until 1434. However,
excavations in the northern part of the outer bailey have brought to
light numerous archaeological finds that prove an intensive use of the
castle in the 15th century, although there is no material that can be
dated earlier. The finds, in combination with still preserved wall
remains, show that the castle was rebuilt and repaired in the 15th
century. Thomas Biller and Bernhard Metz suspect that the castle's
history proceeded as follows: begun around 1260, the complex was a far
advanced shell construction in the spring of 1262. After the Strasbourg
bishop had suffered a defeat against the troops of the Strasbourg
citizenship in the Battle of Hausbergen in March of this year, the
Strasbourg people first devastated Obernai and then sent a delegation to
the castle construction site of Birkenfels to set fire there as well.
Since the Beger family had neither the opportunity nor interest in
further construction for the time being, Birkenfels Castle remained a
shell ruin until the early 15th century. Only then did the owners have
the facility repaired and further built, but without ever completing the
keep. The long time as a ruin would also be a possible reason why the
castle does not appear in documents for about 150 years. As early as
1465, the Begers no longer resided on Birkenfels themselves, but had the
complex managed by their Burgvogt Fritsche von Nideck. Around 1470-1477
they gave her as an afterlehen to Emmerich Ritter.
in 1521, the
feudal rights of the Beger family were once again confirmed by Emperor
Charles V. When she died out in the male line with Matthias the
Nonsensical in 1532, the emperor confiscated the completed imperial fief
and gave it to his Vice-Chancellor Matthias von Held. He sold the castle
five years later to the Strasbourg patrician Conrad Joham von
Mundolsheim, whose family remained the owner until the French
Revolution. But she also did not live in the facility herself, but had
it managed by Vögten. In the second half of the 16th century. At the
beginning of the twentieth century, Birkenfels was completely abandoned
and abandoned as a residence. In the following period, the buildings
fell into disrepair and were used as a quarry by the residents of the
surrounding area. The castle is no longer listed on the Alsace map made
by Daniel Specklin up to 1576. During the revolution, the ruin became
the property of the city of Obernai, to which it still belongs today.
In 1869, the Société pour la conservation des monuments historiques
d'Alsace (German Society for the Conservation of the Historical
Monuments of Alsace) had security work carried out on the ruin. In 1973,
the city of Obernai gave it to the care of the Association pour la
sauvegarde de l'architecture médiévale (A.S.A.M.) (German Association
for the Salvation of Medieval Architecture), which carried out
excavations in the northern third of the outer bailey until 1979 and
restored the ring wall and carefully reconstructed the access ramp and
the entrance tower of the residential building. In 1984, the Association
pour la Conservation et la Rénovation du Château du Birkenfels (today
the Association pour la Conservation du Patrimoine Obernois) was finally
founded, which takes care of the preservation of the castle.