The remains of the Castle can be visited
RuinKirchberg-Henau
Koppenstein Castle
Koppenstein Castle is a castle ruin near Henau in the Rhein-Hunsrück district in Rhineland-Palatinate. The ruin of the hilltop castle is located at 555 m above sea level on the Koppensteiner Höhe above the Kellenbach valley in the western Soonwald in the Hunsrück. It is about two kilometers as the crow flies south of the municipality of Gemünden and twelve kilometers south of the district town of Simmern.
The Koppenstein mountain is already mentioned in the 12th century. There are indications that suggest an even older settlement (ditches and stone walls). The ruins visible today were built by the Counts of Sponheim after 1325. In 1330, the settlement at the foot of the castle received town rights. At the latest during the Thirty Years' War, the castle and the village were abandoned and fell into disrepair.
Today, the pentagonal and well over 16-meter-high keep is best preserved. It is accessible and offers a wide view.
Of the other buildings of the castle and the settlement, only sparse remains or foundations are present. The moat is up to 10 meters deep and in places up to 20 meters wide.
At Koppenstein Castle, in the early 1800s, the loot from the robbery of Otzweiler and another robbery by Schinderhannes was divided.
Family of Koppenstein+
The low noble family of Koppenstein named themselves after the castle. They descended from an illegitimate son of Count Johann II of Sponheim-Kreuznach († 1340) (cf. LHAK Best. 700,219 No. 1) and were endowed by the County of Sponheim with significant castle and other fiefs. In their blue and gold checkered coat of arms, they bore a (standing) raven in red in the upper right. The last male namesake of the Koppensteins, Jakob Adolf von Koppenstein († 1768), appointed his closest relative, Damian Freiherr Schenk von Schmidtburg, as his heir, to whom the largest part of the Koppenstein property then fell. Jakob Adolf von Koppenstein returned the Sponheim fiefs of the family to the County of Sponheim in 1759. They were further enfeoffed to his cousin Franz Karl Freiherr von Hacke. The ruin and castle district today belong, along with Gemünden Castle, to the descendants of the Schmidtburgers, the Barons von Salis.
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Source: Wikipedia · Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Image: http://www.wehrbauten.de/thread.php?threadid=1455
This description draws on the facts documented in the linked Wikipedia article; Wikipedia content is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Wording and editing: Mobile History.
Location: 49.8768, 7.4893