Burg Blankenwald

Burg Blankenwald stands on the 356-metre Hainberg above the village of Blankenau in Hosenfeld. It was built by the Lords of Blankenwald, a branch of the Lords of Schlitz, around 1242. The site once held a prehistoric ring-wall guarding an ancient trade route from the Wetterau to Fulda. After the Lords of Blankenwald became notorious raiders, Fulda’s Prince-Abbot Bertho II of Leibolz attacked and destroyed the castle in 1264. Today only a small plateau and faint southern ramparts remain on the wooded hilltop. The ruin is small but its story is dramatic. The Lords of Blankenwald terrorised the region until their stronghold was stormed and levelled. Other castles in the Buchonia district suffered the same fate. What survives is a modest 0.11-hectare clearing surrounded by beech trees, with traces of the old wall still visible at the southern edge. Visitors walk up through beech woods to the flat summit where the castle once stood. The view stretches across the Vogelsberg and towards Fulda. The quiet hilltop holds little more than grass and a few stones, yet the sense of the past is strong. The path follows the line of the old trade route that once passed below.