Burgstall Sachsenkam

The remains of Sachsenkam Castle stand beside the Egelsee in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps, a low earth mound surrounded by the reedy edges of a once larger lake. The site was raised or heightened by the Lords of Sachsenkam in the 11th century, when the first written record appears as ‘Adalpero de Sachsinheim’. After the family died out in 1102, ministerials and later noble houses such as the Winzers, Pienzenaus and Preysings held the place until the Thirty Years War. Michael Wening’s 17th-century engraving calls the upper works timber framed, and notes the castle was burned in wartime and never rebuilt. The castle’s water defences once linked directly to the Egelsee, but today only a marshy hollow and a single well remain. The mound itself was levelled in the 19th century for farm buildings, though the local name ‘beim Burggraber’ and the surviving well still mark its outline. Archaeologists classify the site as a high-medieval motte and classify it in the Bavarian monument register as D-1-8135-0010. The surrounding meadows and reed beds give little hint of the former island fortress. Visitors walk a quiet lane from Sachsenkam village to the Egelsee shore, where the low rise is marked by a wooden post. From the path the water gleams through the reeds and the faint earthworks can be traced around the mound. The site is silent except for birds and the occasional splash of a fish, yet the well’s stone rim and the local name keep the memory of the castle’s turbulent past.