Erenstein Castle

Erenstein Castle (also Ernstein) is a vanished medieval spur castle near Züttlingen, a district of Möckmühl in the Heilbronn district in northern Baden-Württemberg.

The castle site is located about 300 meters south of Züttlingen train station in the upper slope forest on a north-northeast-facing 255 m above sea level mountain spur, which is bordered in the northwest by the opposing Jagst river, in the northeast by the ravine of the Ernsteinbach stream flowing into it, and in the east by a steep side ravine of the same. The neck ditch is still clearly visible in the terrain; of the buildings, essentially only the tower base and a few isolated wall sections remain.

In the High Middle Ages, the castle was the seat of a low-ranking noble family who named themselves after it and owed feudal allegiance to the Lords of Dürn, later the Lords of Weinsberg. The Ernsteiners, first mentioned in 1258, were probably relatives of the early local nobility of Züttlingen and owned property there as well as in Schlierstadt, Schefflenz, Helmbund, and other surrounding places. The castle was the property of a ganerbenverband (a community of co-heirs), which also included the Lords of Neudeck. When the Lords of Ernstein died out around 1400, the castle passed through the marriage of the Ernstein daughters to the Lords of Helmstatt and from them to the Rüdt von Bödigheim. The latter sold the castle in 1443 to Konrad von Weinsberg, who at that time also held a Würzburg castle fief there. With this, the documentary records about the castle end. It may have been destroyed in the Cities' War of 1449. In 1624, the land register reported that only masonry remained of the castle.