Stahleck Castle

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.

[1] 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.

This made him one of the greatest lords of the Holy Roman Empire[3] 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.

[1] 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In 1828 the then Crown Prince Frederick William acquired it[1] in order to give it to his wife Elisabeth Ludovika of Bavaria; she was a Wittelsbach princess.

[11] 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.

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.

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.

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.

In 1930–31, the ground floor of the ruined palas was rebuilt, to make a dining hall, a dishwashing room, and a flat for the hostel manager.

In the presence of members of the Hitler Jugend, the Deutsches Jungvolk, the Bund Deutscher Mädel, and both the SA and the SS, Gauleiter Gustav Simon gave the dedicatory address.

However, the existing foundations would not have been able to bear the weight, so the ruin was pulled down, and in November 1938, work began on a completely new tower on a smaller footprint.

Male schoolchildren and students from Esch-sur-Alzette and Echternach were interned at the castle for 4 months as punishment for protesting against the announcement in 1942 of the introduction of required military service in Luxembourg and the forced conscription associated with it, as well as for participating in the general strike which followed.

The Health and Welfare Ministry of Rhineland-Palatinate opened a youth leadership school at the castle in January 1948 to train prospective hostel managers and staff, but was forced to close it at the end of the same year because of the state's poor financial situation.

Beginning in October 1965, a further building programme was carried out at the castle under government superintendent of works Heinrich Grimm, based on the plans of Stahl, who had died in 1957.

In addition, a large terrace was created on the south side, and beginning in 1966 the still incomplete keep[22] was built up a further 4 m and topped with a tall cone-shaped roof.

One was a double gate reached by steps from the Rhine Valley, leading into a small, elongated zwinger, from which entry to the castle was through a double-barred door in the northern shield wall, 8 m from the northwest corner.

[1] It is impossible to know exactly where the chapel was, but it is presumed to have been on the first floor of the palas, where Merian's engraving shows a small bay window on the Rhine side of the building.

The rebuilding plans were mostly the work of Ernst Stahl, who closely followed Merian's depiction and used other historical models where the engraving gave no information.

The size of the modern buildings approximates that of those in the original castle; the oldest portions are the foundations of the keep, parts of the cellar under the palas and sections of the curtain wall.

The palas (residential building) is 2 storeys high, built of crushed stone lined with Rhenish Schwemmstein (a traditional artificial material made of dried pumice and lime, similar to concrete), and stands at the eastern, Rhine valley end of the courtyard, over a vaulted cellar that Ernst Stahl dated to the time of Conrad of Hohenstaufen.

The inscription reads: Of the numerous details that Stahl once envisaged incorporating in the rebuilding of the castle, only the windows and chandeliers of the great hall exist today.

Although documentary evidence leads to the conclusion that the castle was built in the 12th century at the latest, the archaeological investigations have been unable to provide proof.

Some of the tall, narrow embrasures were subsequently walled closed at the base and fitted with wooden frames to absorb the recoil of early firearms.