Schaumburg Castle

Schaumberg Castle, also known as Schaumburg, is the ruin of a hilltop castle at 492 m above sea level, west of Schalkau in Thuringia. It was the ancestral seat of the noble family of Schaumberg, who ruled the surrounding lands from the 12th to the 14th century.

The history of the castle can be traced back to the year 1147. It was presumably built by the Burgraves of Meissen from the Sterker von Wohlsbach family and acquired by the Schaumbergers at the end of the 12th or beginning of the 13th century. With the documentary mention of the noble family of Schaumberg in 1216, at their now ancestral castle, the actual history of Schalkau also begins: the servants and squires of the castle were largely settled at the foot of the Schaumberg. At that time, horsemen and warriors were referred to as "Schalken," so it can rightly be assumed that this gave the settlement its name, especially since the town of Schalken is still spoken of in the land before the forest today.

As was common in late feudalism and the Middle Ages, power and property relations in the Schalkau region also constantly changed: the Schaumbergers were displaced by the Hennebergers in the mid-14th century and retreated to Rauenstein. The husband of the Hennebergian princess Katharina, Margrave Friedrich III of Meissen, who had received the Coburg district as a dowry, granted the small town of Schalkau city and market rights on December 6, 1362.

The castle was expanded into a modern fortress between 1501 and 1503 under Wilwolt von Schaumberg, who had reacquired the castle for Schaumberg around 1500, and survived economic crises and political and religious wars unscathed until the Thirty Years' War. In the first days of July 1635, the castle on the Schaumberg went up in flames after thorough looting. Five years later, it was attacked again, and this time the rest of the castle and outer bailey completely fell into ruins.