Schwarzenfels Castle (Ruin)

Schwarzenfels Castle is a castle ruin on a 427-meter-high hill in the Schwarzenfels district of the municipality of Sinntal in the Main-Kinzig district in Hesse. It is said to have taken its name from the black dolerite from which it was built.

The castle was first mentioned in a document in 1280. In 1333, it came to the County of Hanau through an inheritance from the House of Rieneck. It was an imperial fief and formed the administrative center of the Schwarzenfels office. Therefore, in the period after castle complexes were built, it was expanded into a residential palace, of which the richly decorated portal from 1621 with the fountain in front of it still bears witness today.

The lords and counts of Hanau repeatedly used the castle, as well as the castles in Steinau and Windecken, as an endowment for widows from the House of Hanau, who took up residence there. In the inheritance dispute between Count Philipp Ludwig II and his brother, Count Albrecht, the latter was finally awarded the offices of Schwarzenfels, Ortenberg, the Naumburg cellar, and the Hanau share of Assenheim. Albrecht took up residence in the castle, and his line named itself "Hanau-Münzenberg-Schwarzenfels" after it. However, this collateral line of the House of Hanau died out in the next generation with Johann Ernst von Hanau-Münzenberg-Schwarzenfels, who had previously inherited the entire County of Hanau-Münzenberg for a few months in 1641 and 1642. During the Thirty Years' War, the castle was destroyed and the core castle abandoned. In 1643, the office and castle of Schwarzenfels were given as collateral, along with other securities, to the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel. It was to guarantee unpaid costs incurred by the Landgraviate in connection with the liberation of the city of Hanau from the siege by imperial troops in 1636. The Counts of Hanau were no longer able to redeem this pledge from Hesse-Kassel. Thus, the castle was also administered as landgravial property, even after Hesse-Kassel inherited the County of Hanau-Münzenberg, including the castle, in 1736 after the death of the last Hanau count, Johann Reinhard III. It was not until 1786 that the castle was again assigned to the administration of the County of Hanau under Landgrave Wilhelm IX.

After the annexation of the Electorate of Hesse following the German War of 1866, the Prussian treasury took over the complex. Since it had no use for it, it allowed all unused parts to fall into disrepair or sold them, for example, the castle inn in 1877. It was not until the end of the 19th century that the decay was stopped. The state of Hesse, legal successor to the Prussian state as owner, temporarily housed a forest administration here.