Burg Lahneck

 

Location: Rhineland

 

Description of Burg Lahneck

Lahneck Castle lies on the Eastern bank where river Lahn joins the Rhine.   Medieval fortress of Burg Lahneck Castle was build here in 1240. After the Thirty Years’ War the fort was abandoned and it fell in disrepair. Ruins of the castle overlooking the river attracted many tourists who explored grim abandoned fortress. On June 16th 1851 a seventeen year old Scottish girl Idilia Dubb went to explore the romantic countryside. However she failed to return and subsequent searches did not yield any results. In 1860 new owner set to restore the castle to its original appearance. During cleaning of the tower they stumbled on a human corpse. It was all that was left of Idilia. Her diary lay nearby. It turns out that she climbed the top of the tower, but rotten wooden stair collapsed trapping her. Her last words in a diary were: “All I know is that there is no hope for me. My death is certain. ... Father in heaven, have mercy on my soul”.

 

History

Since 1226 the Archbishop of Mainz and Elector Siegfried III. von Eppstein Logenecke Castle or Loynecke Castle, as it was called after the name of the Lahn at that time, to protect his area at the mouth of the Lahn, where both the town of Lahnstein and the Tiefenthal silver mine had come to Kurmainz in 1220 through imperial fiefdom of Frederick II. In contrast to many Rhine castles, Lahneck Castle was not used as a customs castle because it was too far from the Rhine. This task was assigned to Martinsburg Castle, which was located directly on the Rhine.

The castle chapel was built in 1245. In the same year the castle and a knight Emricho von Lahneck were mentioned as burgrave for the first time.

In 1298, King Adolf of Nassau was a guest at the castle, just before he fell in the Battle of Göllheim fighting King Albrecht I of Austria.

1332 granted Pope John XXII. an indulgence of 40 days for participating in the service in the castle chapel dedicated to St. Ulrich. A copy of the letter of indulgence can be seen in the chapel, the original is in the town archive of Lahnstein.

On July 15, 1338, the Mainz Elector and Archbishop Heinrich III. from Virneburg from Burg Lahneck to the meeting of the electors in Rhens, which then led to the Kurverein zu Rhense.

After 1365 the name of the castle changed with that of the Lahn from Loynecke to Lahneck.

On August 20, 1400, King Wenzel was declared deposed by the four Rhenish electors who were meeting at Lahneck Castle – the archbishops of Mainz, Trier and Cologne and the Count Palatine near the Rhine. As a guest of Mainz Archbishop Johann II von Nassau, Friedrich V, Burgrave of Nuremberg, stayed at the castle among many envoys from the cities. On the following day, Ruprecht of the Palatinate was on the king's chair in Rhens by the same electors, i. H. so with his own vote, elected German king.

In 1475, at the beginning of his second term in office, Archbishop Diether II of Isenburg built a second ring of walls with a kennel, three shell towers, the fox tower and a square gate tower on the attack side.

Albrecht Dürer's silverpoint drawing of two castles, which he made on his Rhine journey from Holland in 1520/1521, does not show Lahneck Castle, according to current understanding, but probably Rheinfels Castle near Sankt Goar and Stolzenfels Castle on the Rhine.

In 1632 and 1636, during the Thirty Years' War, Swedish and Imperial troops "rather mahsen" the castle, and the castle then lost its importance. During this time, Wenzel Hollar made a drawing of Lahneck Castle.

In 1688, during the Palatinate War of Succession, French troops set fire to the last roofs.

In 1803, in the course of Napoleon Bonaparte's secularization of the ecclesiastical principalities, Lahneck Castle came to the Duchy of Nassau, and in the same year to the bailiff Peter Ernst von Lassaulx.

In 1852, a neo-Gothic expansion began by the Scottish railway entrepreneur Edward A. Moriarty, director of the Rechts-Rheinische Eisenbahngesellschaft, who acquired the ruins in 1850, and since 1864 by Gustav Göde. A painting of Queen Victoria dates from this period.

In 1878, Count Ewald von Kleist-Wendisch-Tychow acquired the castle for his wife Anna, nee Baroness von Kleist, who died there in 1892. In 1893 the manufacturer Hauswald from Magdeburg became the owner of the castle. In 1907 the frigate captain and later vice admiral of the Imperial Navy Robert Mischke acquired the castle, which has since been owned by his family, the Mischke/von Preuschen community of heirs. Until 1937, further reconstruction took place under the direction of the Karlsruhe professor of architecture and doctor Karl Caesar (* December 24, 1874 in Münster, † May 10, 1942 in Berlin). 1936-38 the romantic crenellations and flat roofs were removed and partially replaced by pointed roofs.

The castle has been open to the public at certain times since the 1930s (see events). The living rooms on the 1st floor are still occupied at times. The castle complex is an example of the development of a fortification into a residential castle.