Rieneck Castle

Louis I, Count of Loon and Rieneck, had the so-called castrum Rinecke built around the year 1150 on the northeastern border of the County of Rieneck to secure his sphere of influence against the interests of the surrounding territories of Electoral Mainz, the Prince-Bishopric of Würzburg, and Fulda Abbey. The small hill in the Sinntal offered excellent conditions for this due to natural obstacles: The castle only had to be additionally secured in one direction by the construction of a moat and the smallest possible attack surface on that side. In 1188, a "castrum (German: castle) Rienecke" is mentioned in a treaty between Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa and King Alfonso VIII of Castile, in which the marriage between Frederick's son Conrad and Alfonso's daughter Berengaria was agreed upon. Rieneck Castle, along with 29 other Staufer properties, belonged to the bride's morning gift. However, this marriage was never put into practice.

This is clearly visible in the floor plan of the keep, the 19 m high Thick Tower, which externally forms an irregular heptagon, one point of which points towards the nearby hills. The castle complex initially consisted only of the castle courtyard surrounded by fortifications and the keep with its four to eight meter thick walls. Within the castle walls, half-timbered buildings were also erected, including residential buildings, warehouses, and stables, of which essentially only the castle's present vaulted cellar remains. Since living in the castle tower was relatively uncomfortable, it was only inhabited during wartime. There was no entrance on the ground floor (the current entrance dates from the 19th century), but there were two entrances on higher floors, to which quickly removable wooden stairs led on the outer wall. The access at the level of the second upper floor opened up the main room of the tower, the Count's hall. Equipped with a cooking area, washbasin, and a secret place (toilet), it was very comfortably furnished for the time. The third floor, equipped with its own access, housed the Kemenate, where the Countess and her retinue were safely and – because of the fireplace in the Count's hall – warmly accommodated during a siege. This floor also houses the tower chapel, unique on the European mainland. It is completely embedded in the outer wall of the tower, which must have posed a great challenge to the builder at the time. The few preserved stonework on the walls still convey an impression of the formerly magnificent furnishings. Around the year 1200, the castle complex was more strongly fortified and the now 29 m high octagonal Thin Tower was built to secure a larger castle garrison. It also originally had no windows and no ground-level access. Inside the tower, all traces of the former furnishings have now been erased, and its exterior has also been significantly altered. The Adlerhorst as the sixth floor and the current roof of the tower were only added in the 20th century. In the course of the expansion of the fortifications, the Romanesque courtyard chapel was also built. Only parts of the portal of its gable wall remain. The origin and meaning of the two figure plates from around 1300 on the outer facade are not clear. It is therefore uncertain whether they originally belonged to the castle or were only installed in the 19th century.

The castle formed an attraction for the surrounding population. This contributed to the growth of the village of Rieneck, located below the castle hill, which has been referred to as a town since the beginning of the 13th century. There are two different accounts in the literature regarding the castle's transition into a condominium shared between Electoral Mainz (¾) and the Hanauers (¼):

When the Rieneck-Rothenfels line died out in 1333, Ulrich II of Hanau inherited ¼ of the town and Rieneck Castle through his mother, Elisabeth of Rieneck-Rothenfels; Electoral Mainz retained the rest. The House of Rieneck died out with Count Philipp III of Rieneck on September 3, 1559. He had worked closely with Philipp III of Hanau-Münzenberg. When it became foreseeable that Count Philipp III of Rieneck would die without male heirs, the two agreed to appoint the Hanau Count as heir. However, the project failed due to a formal error. (Details can be found here.) A dispute arose between Electoral Mainz and Hanau over the inheritance. This was finally resolved by forming a condominium, which was ¾ Electoral Mainz and ¼ Hanau-Münzenberg. Since the castle was now in foreign hands, it was unsuitable as a residence for the Counts of Rieneck, and they moved to Lohr am Main. The castle retained its strategic importance as it controlled the Birkenhainer Straße, the most important medieval trade route in the region. In the 16th century, this use was also abandoned, and the castle increasingly fell into disrepair. The Mainz share was bought in 1673 by Johann Hartwig Count of Nostitz, who thereby secured the noble rights of an Imperial Count with a seat and vote in the Reichstag. This share was sold in 1803 to the Counts Colloredo and Mansfeld. In 1806, Rieneck was then mediatized and assigned to the Principality of Aschaffenburg. With it, it fell to the Grand Duchy of Frankfurt and, with Napoleon's defeat in 1815, to the Kingdom of Bavaria.