Burgstall Klingenberg

The Burgstall Klingenberg stands on a wooded ridge 150 metres north-west of the Wittelsbach family’s original castle near Aichach in Swabia. The site sits 550 metres above sea level and was mapped in the late 1970s by Eugen Ixmeier of the Bavarian State Office for Monument Conservation during excavations at the main Wittelsbach ruins. No written or oral records survive about the small motte, though similar earthwork towers were built across central Europe between the 11th and 13th centuries. Historians debate whether the mound served as an earlier Wittelsbach predecessor or as an outwork for the main fortress. Local researcher Helmut Rischert suggests it may have housed a pfalzgräflicher Dienstmann family called ‘von Wittelsbach,’ which moved to Unterwittelsbach in 1270 and later appeared in Landsberg records as ‘Wittelspeck.’ Popp’s 19th-century sketch is the earliest known depiction of the site. Visitors find a densely wooded spur separated from the main castle by a small valley. The turf-covered mound rises 12 to 15 metres and measures roughly 45 by 50 metres at its base, with a narrow plateau of only fifteen by twenty metres. Steep sides make the top hard to reach, while low earthen ramparts two to four metres high flank the south-west and north-east edges. The whole earthwork is registered by the Bavarian State Office for Monument Conservation as a medieval motte.