Burgstall Liebenau

The Burgstall Liebenau stands in Oberfranken near Stolzenroth, a village in the Pommersfelden municipality. It is the faint remains of a medieval motte castle, a small earthwork mound topped by a wooden tower. The site lies about 400 metres south-east of Stolzenroth’s centre, close to another vanished castle called Burgstall Stolzenroth. The Lords of Liebenau once owned the original stone keep, but by the 14th century the Burgraves of Nuremberg held parts of it. The castle was ruined by 1535 and its last stones were cleared away in 1790. What survives is a low, rectangular mound measuring roughly 46 by 40 metres and only a quarter of a metre high. A shallow ditch once ringed the base, now barely visible and between nine and eleven metres wide. Archaeologists recognise the site as a late medieval fortification and protect it as a scheduled monument. The Bavarian State Office for Monument Conservation lists it under the code D-4-6230-0010. Visitors walk across open meadows called In den Schlössleinswiesen to see the grassy hump. There are no walls or towers left, just the flat-topped mound and the ghost of the surrounding ditch. The field is quiet, framed by farmland and distant woods. From the mound the village of Stolzenroth and the site of Burgstall Stolzenroth can be seen. The place offers a quiet reminder of a once important local stronghold.