Burgruine Klingenfels

Burgruine Klingenfels stands on a narrow ridge above where the Steinbach meets the Schmerach at 414 metres. The ruined spur castle was built late in the 12th or early in the 13th century by the lords of Klingenfels, who died out soon after 1250. A lower-ranking ministerial family then took the name and coat of arms, which matched that of the lords of Krautheim and Vellberg. The castle itself first appears in records in 1350, held in fief from the Hohenlohe family. Its end came in 1381 during the Swabian Town War, when Hall’s forces destroyed the ‘great robber’s den’ after raids launched from the site. The city bought the ruins and nearby woodland the next year for eighty gulden, though the claim was later disputed. After changing hands several times, the site returned to Hall in 1594 and remained in its possession until the town’s dissolution. Today the remains lie on a spur that drops steeply to the Schmerach on three sides. The eastern approach is guarded by a wide ditch cut into the limestone, crossed by a sunken lane. Beyond it lies the trapezoidal forecourt, about twenty-two metres wide and seventy-four metres long at its greatest. A second ditch separates the roughly triangular inner ward, fifty-two metres from east to west, where traces of the collapsed ring wall still rise. At the western tip a lower spur may once have held outbuildings, though quarrying has disturbed much of the site.