Alsbach Castle

Alsbach Castle near Alsbach-Hähnlein on the Bergstraße, in the district of Darmstadt-Dieburg, is more of a fortress and was formerly called Bickenbach Castle.

It is located south of Darmstadt near Alsbach on the edge of the Odenwald on the Hessian Bergstraße, north of Bensheim. The castle was built on the western tip of a mountain ridge, about 260 meters high and now forested compared to its construction era, below the Melibokus, overlooking the Rhine plain. It thus stands about 150 meters above the lowlands stretching from north to south to its west.

Its northern neighbor is Frankenstein Castle near Nieder-Beerbach and its southern neighbor is the castle ruin "Schloss Auerbach" above Auerbach (a district of Bensheim).

Bickenbach Castle was built around 1235 by the Lords of Bickenbach on the 257 m high hill above the village of Alsbach, which was first mentioned in the Lorsch Codex in 773. Its predecessor was probably a motte near Alsbach, on the so-called Weilerhügel. From the 14th century, the castle was a Ganerbenburg (a castle owned jointly by several families) in the common possession of six owners. After robberies by one of the co-heirs, Hartmann (also Hamman) Ulner von Dieburg, on merchants from the city of Frankfurt am Main, the city besieged the castle in 1463 and burned it down. However, the complex was soon rebuilt.

From 1483 to 1502, one of the co-heirs, Erasmus Schenk von Erbach († 1503), succeeded in buying out almost all the other co-heirs (including the Archbishop of Mainz and the Counts of Mansfeld) and bringing 5/6 of the castle and lordship into his own possession, and as early as 1488 he called himself "Lord of Erbach and Bickenbach".

When the Landshut War of Succession, the so-called "Bavarian Feud", broke out in 1504, Ruprecht von der Pfalz was placed under the imperial ban by King Maximilian I on April 23 due to his inheritance dispute with Duke Albrecht IV of Bavaria. Landgrave Wilhelm II of Hesse, entrusted by Maximilian with the execution of the ban, first captured the Palatinate castle of Otzberg and then, since the Schenken von Erbach were Palatinate vassals, besieged Alsbach Castle. The castle commander Hans Gans (von Otzberg) did not let it come to a storm and handed over the keys of the castle to the Landgrave on June 9, 1504. After the end of the War of Succession, Landgrave Wilhelm did not return the castle and the office of Bickenbach. Wilhelm's son Philipp the Magnanimous had the defensive works repaired and reinforced. In his will, he transferred the castle and the office of Bickenbach to his sons from his morganatic marriage with Margarete von der Saale, the Counts of Diez. They seem to have held it as early as 1562. After the last of the Counts of Diez died in 1575, the property fell to Landgrave Georg I of Hesse-Darmstadt in 1577.

In the course of the 17th century, but especially in the 18th century, the castle increasingly fell into disrepair, so that the complex is now preserved only as a ruin.

The core castle was laid out in a classic triangular shape. Parts of the outer ring wall and a narrow zwinger (outer bailey) are also preserved. The most impressive feature is certainly the mighty - restored - keep, which is accessible, among other things, from the curtain wall.