Wasserburg Tagmersheim

The water castle at Tagmersheim once stood in the centre of the village in the Donau-Ries district of Swabia. Built on a small island surrounded by a moat, it formed part of the Hofmark estate controlled by the noble Otting family from the early 14th century. After the family fell into debt, the castle passed to the widow of Karl von Thüngen and was burned to the ground on 22 July 1523 by troops of the Swabian League. The League’s campaign was launched against thirty-six castles used by the robber-knight Hans Thomas von Absberg. With ten thousand foot soldiers, a thousand horsemen and a hundred cannon, the force carried 900 hundredweight of gunpowder. Tagmersheim was one of twenty-three strongholds destroyed that day to end the von Thüngens’ raids. The Otting line died out in 1578, and their memorial slab now lies in the village church. A surviving woodcut by Hans Wandereisen shows the castle encircled by a wattle fence, moat and curtain wall. A drawbridge of swinging rods crossed the ditch, leading to a courtyard where the main building already lay in ruins. Two corner towers flanked the entrance, and the League’s captain can be seen speaking with an officer beside the moat. Today the site is marked only by earthworks, yet the outline of the old island and traces of the moat remain visible in the village centre.