Schloss Emmenhausen

Schloss Emmenhausen was a small fortified residence in Emmenhausen, a village in Swabia near Waal. It stood on a low hill about 300 metres south-east of the parish church. The only surviving image dates from between 1600 and 1650 and shows a tall residential tower with a watch platform, farm buildings and a surrounding wall. The drawing may be idealised, for today only a grassy square rampart remains, roughly 70 metres on each side and about three metres high. A rectangular foundation of 24 by 11 metres, probably the Zehentstadel or tithe barn, is marked on the 1811 cadastral map inside what once was the garden. The Honold family began building the castle in 1474, spending large sums to erect it from the ground up. By 1609 the Honolds sold the estate to the Holy Cross Convent in Augsburg, which installed court officials there. By 1698 the complex was already described as an ‘ancient building’. After 1780 neglect set in, yet in July 1800 French troops still forced their way into the castle, smashing furniture and stealing bedding and a large pendulum clock. The last court official, Nikolaus Früholz, later a royal Bavarian gamekeeper, lost goods worth 482 gulden in the raid. The castle was finally pulled down in 1826. Visitors today find a quiet grassy mound where the ramparts once enclosed the site. A low rectangular rise marks the footprint of the tithe barn. The parish church nearby holds a plaque to Nikolaus Früholz, recalling the castle’s final years and the damage done by the French. No trace remains of the castle chapel dedicated to Our Lady of the Snows, where masses were celebrated in 1774, 1793 and 1801. The vanished chapel’s furnishings were dispersed after secularisation in 1803.