Burg Hoheneybach

Burg Hoheneybach once stood high on the Himmelsfelsen, a rocky outcrop 602 metres above sea level near Eybach, a district of Geislingen an der Steige. The first written mention of the castle appears in 1265 and 1281, linked to the Lords of Eybach, a family possibly connected to the Helfenstein ministerials. In 1291 the Count of Helfenstein sold the castle, then called castrum Iwach, to Ellwangen Abbey. The abbey granted the castle as a fief to lower nobles, including Konrad von Ahelfingen in 1317 and later his son Ulrich. Ulrich’s family took the name von Hoheneybach and kept the castle open for the abbey’s representatives. By 1412 the fief passed to the von Randeck family, and in 1412 Wolf von Zillenhart formally received the castle with its lands. From 1456 the Degenfeld family made the site their ancestral home and built a new residence, Schloss Eybach, below the rock. Eybach church became their burial place. During the Thirty Years’ War the castle was destroyed, though it may still have housed people in 1711 before becoming a ruin by 1724. Today only faint traces remain: low walls and a deep neck ditch thirteen metres below the Himmelsfelsen. The rocky crest offers sweeping views across the surrounding countryside. Visitors can walk the old paths and imagine the castle’s former towers and halls. The site is quiet, with no modern buildings nearby, so the ruins and the landscape speak for themselves.