Amtshaus

The Sparneck castle stood above the village of Sparneck in Upper Franconia. Its name comes from the old word for ‘sparrow-hill’, describing the rocky spur where the main stronghold once stood. The lords of Sparneck first appear in records in 1223 when Rüdiger of Sparneck is named as a witness in Eger. By 1298 the castle itself is mentioned when Babo of Sparneck pledges it to the Vogts of Plauen. The family later helped grant Münchberg its town charter in 1364. The castle met its end in July 1523 when a force of ten thousand foot soldiers and a thousand horsemen, armed with thirty-three cannons and nine hundred hundredweight of gunpowder, burned it to the ground. The attack followed raids by Hans Thomas of Absberg, whose victims implicated the Sparnecks. A contemporary woodcut by Hans Wandereisen shows the castle on its hill, the shattered bergfried leaning into the moat, the palas still standing, and the besiegers’ camp in the foreground. The village below is shown with its monastery founded by Friedrich of Sparneck. Today only parts of the cellars and former stables remain, still used by local people. Sections of the old moat and the castle mound can still be traced around the site. On the foundations the Hartung Amtshaus was built in 1730 and is preserved almost unchanged, while a second Amtshaus dates from 1763. Plans exist to turn the Hartung building into a local history museum.