Burgstall Poppenhausen

The Burgstall Poppenhausen stands on the edge of Poppenhausen village in the Fulda district of Hesse. It was once a large water fortress built where the Lütter and Haardt streams meet near the Vey-Mill. The site covered more than ten thousand square metres, making it bigger than most nearby castles. In 1365 a quarter of the castle was valued at 4,400 pounds Heller, a sum that exceeded the worth of other Grabfeldgau strongholds. The fortress changed hands several times, passing from the Ebersberg family to the Archbishop of Mainz in 1387. Repeated sieges in the late 14th century failed to break its defences, and it only fell in 1459 after a long blockade by Fulda’s abbot and the Counts of Henneberg. The remains lie beneath the modern village. A vaulted cellar under the inn Zum Stern once served as the Amtswirtschaft of the Berlepsch family. Another medieval cellar survives under the Zum Hirsch inn, while stone gateways mark the old entrance. A late-medieval stone-throwing engine once hurled balls up to sixty-six centimetres across, and fragments of these missiles still lie scattered around the streets. Street names such as Burgstraße, Torweg and Wallweg recall the fortress, and a late 18th-century timber-framed building with a mansard roof now crowns one of the old cellars. Visitors can walk the quiet lanes where the castle once stood. The Gewölbekeller beneath the Rathaus was rediscovered in 1991 and is now open to view. Nearby, the Zum Stern inn occupies the site of the Amtswirtschaft, and the Zum Hirsch inn preserves parts of the curtain wall. A modern parish centre hides another vaulted chamber, and the old Ziehbrunnen of the Ganerbenburg can still be seen. On stormy nights some say a child’s wailing rises from the cellars, a memory of the builder’s pact with the devil.