Malsburg Castle (Ruin) (Zierenberg)

The Malsburg was a relatively small complex with an elongated rectangular main building. Today, remnants of walls are preserved, as well as remains of a tower with a diameter of 6.5 m with a spiral staircase and a well.

The Malsburg was first mentioned in 1123, but built earlier. In 1124, Volkold/Folkold and Udalrich von Warthbeche, sons of Volkold I, enfeoffed the Malsburg and the neighboring Schartenberg castle, inherited from their father, to Archbishop Adalbert I of Mainz. Volkold had already moved to Nidda, where his family owned property and he founded the short-lived lineage of the Counts of Nidda from the House of Malsburg. Mainz enfeoffed the Counts of Dassel with Schartenberg Castle, but occupied the Malsburg with its own castellans after Udalrich's death. In 1143, the ministerials Stephan and Dietrich von Malsburg were mentioned there, members of a lower noble family who were probably a branch of the Schartenberg family and now named themselves "von der Malsburg" after their castle seat. In 1213, the castle was a Mainz fief of a branch of the Groppe von Gudenberg family.

Landgrave Heinrich I of Hesse conquered the Malsburg in 1260 (?) during the Thuringian-Hessian War of Succession, but had to return it to Mainz. It then became part of the Mainz office of Hofgeismar.

In 1329, the noble squires Stephan and Hermann von der Malsburg, also on behalf of their sons and other brothers, pledged a castle seat on the Malsburg to the knight Rabe von Pappenheim and his brothers; however, the Pappenheimers were not allowed to cause any damage to the Malsburg's liege lords, the Archbishop of Mainz and Duke Otto of Braunschweig-Göttingen, from the Malsburg. In 1337, the Malsburg family opened their castle to the Archbishop of Mainz, his officials, and the city of Hofgeismar. They also enfeoffed him with their village of Esebecke and received it back as an hereditary castle fief.

In 1353, the Malsburg and Sababurg were transferred to Bishop Balduin of Paderborn for castle guard during a pledge, so that he would protect them and preserve them as open houses for the Archbishopric of Mainz.

After the decisive military defeats of Archbishop Konrad III von Dhaun of Mainz against the Hessian Landgrave Ludwig I near Fritzlar and Fulda in 1427, with which Ludwig finally secured territorial supremacy in Lower and Upper Hesse for the Landgraviate, the Malsburg also fell to the Landgraves of Hesse.