Felsburg Castle

The Felsburg in Felsberg on the Eder in Hesse is the partial ruin of a hilltop castle, 199 m above sea level, on a basalt cone. It is maintained by an association.

The Felsburg and the (Vice-)Counts of Felsberg were first mentioned in 1060, and the town of Felsberg (Velisberc) was first documented in 1090.

The Romanesque substructure of the castle from the 11th century is located on a columnar basalt cone above the town of Felsberg on the old Salt Road, which led from Bad Sooden-Allendorf on the Werra to the Ruhr area. The Eder ford near Felsberg was strategically important. The castle was the seat of the Velisberc family of counts, who demonstrably lived in the castle from 1090 to 1286, but then withdrew to their possessions in the Hessisch Lichtenau area and soon died out.

In 1238, the castle and town of Felsberg initially came under the Landgraviate of Thuringia, but soon after, as a result of the separation of Hesse from Thuringia after the death of Heinrich Raspe, they passed to the Landgraviate of Hesse. The castle then became the seat of a number of landgravial bailiffs. In 1367, landgravial knights led by Knight Konrad Spiegel zum Desenberg defeated a force of Abbot Berthold of Hersfeld in the Eder lowlands near the nearby Altenburg. In 1375, the landgravial ministerialis and Vogt of Lower Hesse, Friedrich von Felsberg, inhabited the castle; two years earlier, the Landgrave had pledged him the tax revenues of the town of Felsberg. From 1333 onwards, Landgrave Heinrich II, "the Iron", expanded the Felsburg, and the fortifications were further extended in 1387, 1388, and 1392. In the Mainz-Hessian War of 1427, Landgrave Ludwig I of Hesse led his levy from Felsberg against the Mainz commander Gottfried von Leiningen, who, starting from Fritzlar with 600 horsemen, devastated the area of Gudensberg, Felsberg, and Melsungen. Ludwig decisively defeated him on the Großenengliser Platte between Fritzlar and Großenenglis and again near Fulda, even though the Archbishop of Mainz, Konrad III von Dhaun, had by then taken command of his army himself, thus forcing Electoral Mainz to the Peace of Frankfurt.

From 1455 to 1458, the alchemist Klaus von Urbach lived at Felsburg; Landgrave Ludwig I had brought him to produce gold. From 1511, Landgravine Anna, the mother of Philip the Magnanimous, inhabited the castle. Landgrave Moritz of Hesse-Kassel held his last Landtag before his abdication at the castle in 1626. The Felsburg survived the Thirty Years' War almost unscathed but then slowly fell into disrepair. In 1762, the Felsburg was conquered by Hessian hunters under Major von Linsingen in the Seven Years' War and shortly thereafter destroyed by French troops.