Weibertreu Castle

The castle ruin Weibertreu is the ruin of a hilltop castle probably built in the early 11th century in the German city of Weinsberg. The castle is known for the eponymous "Loyal Wives Incident" of December 21, 1140, when, after the besieged castle's surrender, the women (later called "Loyal Wives of Weinsberg") saved their husbands from execution by carrying them down the hill on their backs.

Due to its exposed location in the southwestern corner of the Weinsberg interchange of the federal motorways 6 and 81, the castle ruin is familiar to many motorists. It lies northwest and above the city center on the Burgberg (Castle Hill), which is now almost entirely used for viticulture. The owner of the complex, which can be visited for an entrance fee, is the Justinus-Kerner-Verein und Frauenverein Weinsberg.

Weinsberg Castle was probably built for military purposes in the early 11th century. It first appears in the founding history of the Öhringen collegiate church, founded in 1037 (recorded around 1430), which reports that the foundress, Countess Adelheid of Metz or of Egisheim, lived at Weinsberg Castle until the foundation. Countess Adelheid is – in her first marriage – the mother of Emperor Conrad II and is therefore referred to as the ancestress of the Salian dynasty. In her second marriage, she is the mother of Bishop Gebhard III of Regensburg.

Loyal Wives and Lords of Weinsberg

In 1140, the castle was owned by the Welfs, who were disputing power in the empire with the Staufer. King Conrad III, accompanied by his brother Frederick II of Swabia and several bishops and princes (including Margrave Hermann III of Baden), besieged the castle for several weeks and, on December 21, 1140, defeated Welf VI, who was rushing to relieve the siege, in an open field battle. Shortly thereafter, the castle surrendered. According to the Cologne Royal Chronicle, the king promised the women in Weinsberg Castle free passage and gave permission "that each might carry away what she could on her shoulders." Death awaited the men. The women took the king at his word and carried their husbands down on their backs, thus saving their lives, as the king kept his word. The women became known as the Loyal Wives of Weinsberg, and the castle acquired its name Weibertreu (probably in the course of the 18th century) due to this event.

With the surrender, the castle came into the possession of the Staufer, who installed a ministerial family, the Lords of Weinsberg, in the castle. Until 1450, they held the castle as an imperial fief and, at the end of the 14th century, provided the Archbishop and Elector of Mainz (Konrad II of Weinsberg) and, at the beginning of the 15th century, the Imperial Hereditary (Under) Chamberlain (Konrad IX of Weinsberg). They also claimed dominion over the city of Weinsberg; however, the city resisted and sought the status of an Imperial City, which it achieved in 1430. But already in 1440, the city became Palatine, and in 1450, the Lords of Weinsberg also sold Weinsberg Castle to the Electoral Palatinate due to lack of money.

Württemberg

In 1504, Duke Ulrich of Württemberg conquered Weinsberg Castle and city in the War of the Landshut Succession after a three-week siege. The castle suffered great damage to the keep and the northern curtain wall from cannon fire. In 1512, the transfer of the castle and city to Württemberg possession was also contractually recognized by the Electoral Palatinate. Duke Ulrich presumably subsequently had the so-called "Dicker Turm" (Fat Tower), a battery tower or gun tower, rebuilt in the northeast of the castle and connected it to the keep located to the west by a reinforced inner castle wall.

On Easter Sunday (April 16) 1525, the castle and city, like all of Württemberg at that time in Austrian possession, were conquered by the rebellious peasants during the Peasants' War. Since the destructions of 1504 had only been hastily repaired, they had an easy time. Margaretha von Helfenstein, the wife of the Weinsberg bailiff Ludwig Helferich von Helfenstein, and her young son fell into their hands. Both were sent to Heilbronn, allegedly on a dung cart. The castle was plundered and set on fire and has been a ruin ever since. Ludwig von Helfenstein and his companions were also captured and executed by the peasants outside the gates of Weinsberg. The act, which became known as the Weinsberg Bloody Easter, caused great fear among the nobility and led, on May 21 after the defeat of the peasants, to the burning down of the city of Weinsberg by the mercenary troops of the Swabian League under Georg Truchsess von Waldburg-Zeil and to the loss of city rights until 1553.

Duke Johann Friedrich of Württemberg tried to have the ruin fortified again before or at the beginning of the Thirty Years' War, but did not complete his efforts. Witness to the fortification efforts of that time is the reinforced northwestern curtain wall with a sally port. It is also possible that the Dicker Turm dates back to this period rather than the early 16th century.

Over the centuries, the castle fell into disrepair and was used by the people of Weinsberg as a cheap source of stone, usually without permission. After the Weinsberg city fire of 1707, the Württemberg ruling house, as owner, permitted the removal of rubble for the reconstruction of the city. The valuable ashlar stones were supposed to remain in the castle, but this did not prevent the citizens from removing them anyway. The current appearance of the castle is essentially due to this authorized and unauthorized removal of stones.

Justinus Kerner

Justinus Kerner, who came to Weinsberg as a senior district physician in 1819, prevented further decay. Together with six ladies from the Weinsberg gentry, he founded the Weinsberg Women's Association on December 8, 1823. The co-founders were Josephine Pfaff (wife of the city mayor Heinrich Pfaff), Friederike Walker (wife of the Latin school preceptor), Philippine Hildt (wife of the master builder Johann Georg Hildt), Katharine Endres (wife of the district and city clerk), Friederike Wolf (wife of the local senior district official Gottlieb Benjamin Wolf) and Kerner's wife Friederike. Queen Pauline of Württemberg took over the patronage of the association, which was able to acquire the vineyards laid out within the castle walls between 1712 and 1716 and was enfeoffed with the ruin by King Wilhelm I of Württemberg on August 30, 1824.

Kerner had the rubble removed from the ruin and the vineyards cleared. The current footpath to the castle was laid out, and an outer access to the basement (powder magazine) of the Dicker Turm was broken into the walls. The chapel was built from the rubble stones according to plans by the Württemberg court architect Nikolaus Friedrich von Thouret. The interior of the castle was designed like a park and has been open to the public ever since.

To finance the land acquisition and the extensive work, the association published an appeal for the rescue of the castle ruin, presumably written by Kerner, in the Morgenblatt für gebildete Stände on January 10, 1824, which asked for donations and promised every female donor (for the appeal was addressed to women) "a neatly crafted ring, in which a small stone from the castle ruin is set." Kerner thus revived a custom from 1789, from the early days of the French Revolution, when citizens in Paris wore rings with stones from the demolished Bastille as proof of their republican sentiment. The Weinsberg rings, made of 14-carat gold and costing 1 Gulden 30 Kreuzer to produce, were often used as engagement rings. The association received many donations, mostly in the amount of 4 to 5 Gulden. The nobility also donated generously: Queen Pauline gave 100 Gulden, and Grand Duchess Helene of Russia, a born Princess of Württemberg, gave 1000 Rubles (500 Gulden). For decades, the rings continued to bring money into the coffers for the preservation of the ruin, although not as much as in the first years from 1824.

In the spring of 1855, the architect Carl Alexander von Heideloff, according to whose plans Lichtenstein Castle was also built, conceived the plan during a visit to his friend Justinus Kerner to build a hall of fame for important German women on the Weibertreu, as a kind of counterpart to the Walhalla for important German men. The hall was to be built in Gothic style, integrating existing wall remains where possible. While Queen Pauline took over the patronage of the project, King Wilhelm I gave the project a rejection disguised as a principal promise, postponing the project to "quieter times." The "quieter times" never came, and Heideloff's "castle in the air," as Kerner called it in a letter, was never built – much to the relief of the poet, who compared the project to "a confectioner's marzipan pastry."

After Kerner's Death

After Justinus Kerner's death, his son Theobald took over the chairmanship of the Women's Association in 1868, which he held for decades until 1902. The "Steinerne Album" (Stone Album) goes back to him: verses by Justinus Kerner, Theobald Kerner, Karl Mayer, Eduard Mörike, Nikolaus Lenau, and others were carved into the castle walls. The mere names of prominent visitors were also immortalized in this way, especially on the so-called "Königsmauer" (King's Wall) southeast of the chapel, preferred by noble visitors such as Emperor Franz I of Austria, who visited the castle in 1813, or King Karl of Württemberg, who came to Weinsberg in 1857 as Crown Prince.

Decades later, the city of Weinsberg tried to compensate for the loss of significance suffered in 1926 due to the dissolution of the Oberamt Weinsberg by taking on new functions in the National Socialist state. In 1934, for example, the plan was pursued to have Weinsberg declared the "Capital of German Women's Loyalty." However, a corresponding initiative with Joseph Goebbels failed. Equally unsuccessful was the proposal made in 1936 by Mayor Weinbrenner to the Reich Women's Leader Gertrud Scholtz-Klink to establish a training center for the NS-Frauenschaft at the Weibertreu castle ruin and thus elevate the castle "as it were to the Walhalla of German women." For the 800th anniversary of the Loyal Wives Incident in 1940, large festivities were planned from 1938 onwards, on which occasion the castle was to be handed over to the Reich Women's Leader as the "Walhalla of German Women." The outbreak of the war on September 1, 1939, thwarted these plans.

From 1957, the Justinus-Kerner- und Frauenverein carried out extensive renovation work on the masonry, during which the current wooden gatehouse was also erected and the northern curtain wall was restored. Subsequently, extensive excavations took place from 1959 to 1961, to which much of the current knowledge about the castle complex is owed. Archaeological finds from these excavations have been on display in the so-called chapel at the castle since 2005. After the excavations had to be stopped due to lack of funds, further restoration work took place from 1962 to 1963, during which the paths were restored and bushes and trees were planted. To this day (as of August 2006), restoration and renovation work is still necessary.

In May 2007, the Weibertreu castle ruin was the Monument of the Month of the Denkmalstiftung Baden-Württemberg. On September 19, 2009, a Stauferstele was inaugurated at the ascent to the castle ruin.