Hertenberg Castle

The Hertenberg ruin is the ruin of a spur castle on a 383 m above sea level high terrain spur (Schlosskopf) near Markhof west of the village center of the Herten district of the city of Rheinfelden in the Lörrach district in Baden-Württemberg. Of the former castle complex, a double castle, remains of walls are still preserved.

In 1999, among the finds from the medieval castle, part of a Roman soldier's belt was discovered, such as those also worn by Germanic auxiliary troops and found in a number of Alemannic hilltop settlements. Ceramic shards from the Migration Period subsequently supported the hypothesis of an early Alemannic hilltop settlement on the Hertenberg.

The castle was built by the Counts of Habsburg, destroyed in 1268 during the conflicts between Rudolf von Habsburg and Bishop Heinrich von Neuenburg (see also Psitticher und Sterner) (according to Tschudi 1272) and finally fell victim to the Basel earthquake in 1356. Since about 1300, the castle belonged to Konrad Ludwig from a Basel ministerial family, who presumably had received the castle as a fief from the Bishop of Basel and called himself von Hertenberg after his knighting around 1300. The family originally had its seat on Basel's Nadelberg in a property called zum Schönen Huse, which still exists today. After the castle had to be abandoned due to the earthquake in 1356, the family settled in Rheinfelden. In the Battle of Sempach in 1386, the Rheinfelden Schultheiss Berchtold von Hertenberg also died.