The Königsburg is a ruined medieval castle southeast of Königshütte, a village in the borough of

Oberharz am Brocken Oberharz am Brocken () is a town in the Harz District, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. It was formed on 1 January 2010 by the merger of the town of Elbingerode with the municipalities of the former ''Verwaltungsgemeinschaft'' ("collective municipal ...

, in Harz district in the German state of

Saxony-Anhalt Saxony-Anhalt (german: Sachsen-Anhalt ; nds, Sassen-Anholt) is a state of Germany, bordering the states of Brandenburg, Saxony, Thuringia and Lower Saxony. It covers an area of and has a population of 2.18 million inhabitants, making it th ...

Site

The ruins are located above the confluence of the

Warme Bode The Warme Bode is the right-hand headstream of the Bode in the High Harz mountains of central Germany in the states of Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt. It is long and is formed by the confluence of the Große Bode and Kleine Bode rivers. Name Th ...

and Kalte Bode rivers in the

Harz Mountains The Harz () is a highland area in northern Germany. It has the highest elevations for that region, and its rugged terrain extends across parts of Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia. The name ''Harz'' derives from the Middle High German ...

in central Germany. They lie at a height of 460 metres above

sea level Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical datuma standardise ...

on the edge of a wooded plateau and offer a good view of the Wurmberg and the

Brocken The Brocken, also sometimes referred to as the Blocksberg, is the highest peak in the Harz mountain range and also the highest peak in Northern Germany; it is near Schierke in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt between the rivers Weser and El ...

, the highest mountains in

Lower Saxony Lower Saxony (german: Niedersachsen ; nds, Neddersassen; stq, Läichsaksen) is a German state (') in northwestern Germany. It is the second-largest state by land area, with , and fourth-largest in population (8 million in 2021) among the 16 ...

and the

Harz The Harz () is a highland area in northern Germany. It has the highest elevations for that region, and its rugged terrain extends across parts of Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia. The name ''Harz'' derives from the Middle High German ...

respectively.

History

In 1312 the site is first mentioned in the records as ''castrum Königshof'' when Bishop Albrecht von Halberstadt purchased the castle from Knappen Heinrich von Botvelde. In 1324 there is another mention of it as ''castrum Köningshof acqisivit'', then all went quiet until it is described in 1709 for the first time as ''Königsburg''. At that time it had already fallen into ruins. When Paul Höfer carried out extensive excavations in the years from 1898 to 1901, he assumed he had discovered the long sought after palace (''Pfalz'') of

Bodfeld Bodfeld was a small royal palace or lodge (german: Königspfalz) that was primarily established for hunting purposes and, when the town of Elbingerode emerged, for the administration of ore mining in the central Harz that underpinned the power of ...

and produced several publications about it. In 1931,

Carl Schuchhardt Carl Schuchhardt (August 6, 1859 – December 7, 1943) was a German archaeologist and museum director. For many years, he was the director of the pre-historic department of the Ethnological Museum of Berlin. He was involved in numerous excavations ...

suggested, through advances in soil research, that this was incorrect and, a little later, this was confirmed by Paul Grimm, who was able to establish that the finds, especially the pottery, were not older than the 13th century. Although the results of this research from the 1930s have been consistently acknowledged within the scientific community, Königshütte still advertises today that the Königsburg is the Bodfeld hunting palace and one of the most significant historical sites in the Harz.

Site and hiking

Only remnants of the ''

bergfried ''Bergfried'' (plural: ''bergfriede''; English: ''belfry''; French: ''tour-beffroi''; Spanish: ''torre del homenaje'') is a tall tower that is typically found in castles of the Middle Ages in German-speaking countries and in countries under Germ ...

'' and several

ditches A ditch is a small to moderate divot created to channel water. A ditch can be used for drainage, to drain water from low-lying areas, alongside roadways or fields, or to channel water from a more distant source for plant irrigation. Ditches ar ...

and ramparts bear witness to the former castle. The ruins of the Königsburg are incorporated as No. 41 into the system of the checkpoints in the

Harzer Wandernadel The Harzer Wandernadel is a system of hiking awards in the Harz mountains in central Germany. The hiker (or mountain biker) can earn awards at different levels of challenge by walking to the various checkpoints in the network and stamping his or ...

Gallery

File:Grundmauern Königsburg.JPG, Foundation walls of the

palas A ''palas'' () is a German term for the imposing or prestigious building of a medieval ''Pfalz'' or castle that contained the great hall. Such buildings appeared during the Romanesque period (11th to 13th century) and, according to Thompson ...

(left) and inner castle (right) with the Wurmberg behind File:Stempelstelle Harzer Wandernadel.jpg, Information board by the castle ruins with checkpoint 41 of the

: ''Ruine Königsburg'' File:BodeZusammenfluss.jpg, Confluence of the Warme Bode (left) and Kalte Bode (right) near Königshütte Koenigsburg2.jpg Koenigsburg3.jpg Königsburg.JPG Ruine_Königsburg.jpg

References

: ''Die Burg im Wandel der Weltgeschichte.''

Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion The (AVG, AVg, Aka, AV; English: Academic publishing company) in Leipzig was an important German academic publisher, which was founded in 1906. The original Jewish owners of the publishing house and key employees were expropriated during the t ...

, Potsdam, 1931, p. 227. Harzer Wandernadel
''Stempelstelle 41 / Ruine Königsburg''
at harzer-wandernadel.de

External links