Burg Berstadt

Burg Berstadt stands in the Wetterau region of Hesse, near the village of Berstadt. It was a water and tower castle built beside the Zingelbach stream, which once supplied water to the moat and a 17th-century mill. The site lies on low ground where the stream bends around the former village defences. A rectangular core measuring about fifty-five by forty-seven metres held a stone tower twenty metres square. A five-metre-wide moat surrounded the whole complex, and a western gatehouse gave entry over a drawbridge. The castle first appears in records from the 11th century, when German kings Heinrich III and Heinrich IV stayed there three times. By the 13th century a local noble family, the von Berstadt, managed the Fulda abbey’s interests and collected tolls at the stream crossing. In 1439 the Fulda prince-abbot enfeoffed Henne von Bellersheim with the ‘stone house’ at Berstadt, together with land and farm buildings. The estate passed through several families until the mid-16th century, when it was sold for demolition in 1864. The last owner, Carl Cramer, gave his name to the place in the 19th century. Today only traces remain. The Burggasse still marks the old approach, and the Burggärten occupy part of the moat area. The house at Untergasse 21, once the upper bailey, keeps a pair of medieval doorposts and a 1793 gateway. A low garden wall hints at the filled moat, and the cellar under the former garden collapsed in 1877. The site now holds a children’s playground beside the stream, where water still flows through the old channels.