Auer Wasserburg

The Wasserburg Aue stands as the ruins of a medieval water castle near the village of Aue, a part of Wanfried in the Werra-Meißner district. It sits on low ground at the edge of the village, close to the border with Thüringen. The site once commanded a small island surrounded by a moat, now filled in by silt over centuries. The castle was begun around 1200 and first mentioned in 1272 when the noble family von Aue held it. By the 14th century the knight Albert von Aue served there as a Burgmann. The family died out in 1435, and in the late 16th century the lords of Eschwege built a manor house nearby. In 1637, during the Thirty Years’ War, Croatian troops looted and burned the castle, leaving only the stone ground floor standing. Archaeologists examined the ruins in 2004 and found that the castle had a U-shaped plan with a moat. The upper storeys, built in timber-frame with clay infill, have vanished, but their burnt remains lie on the surviving stone vaults. Excavators recovered metal fittings, parts of a knight’s armour, window glass and stove tiles from the 1500s, including so-called Reformation stoves decorated with biblical scenes. A small sandstone doorway still hints at the building’s former grandeur. In a tiny tower added in 1920, Hesse’s smallest walk-in museum displays these finds on four square metres. Outside, a slice of an oak trunk from the nearby Werratalsee shows the tree was nearly 400 years old and stood five thousand years ago when the Egyptian pyramids had not yet been built.