Kammerburg Castle (Ruin) (Lorch)

Kammerburg is a castle ruin northeast of the town of Lorch in the Middle Rhine Valley in the Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis in Hesse.

The ruin of the hilltop castle is located in the easternmost tip of the Lorch district between the Wisper Valley and the Werkerbach Valley on a ridge in a south-easterly spur position above the Wisperstraße. Only 500 meters away in a north-westerly direction and 75 meters higher lies Rheinberg Castle. Directly below the northeast side of Kammerburg, in the valley, are the Gasthaus zur Kammerburg and the junction of the K 625 district road coming from Wollmerschied with the Wisperstraße.

The castle was first mentioned in a document in 1304 and was probably built around 1295 by the Archbishopric of Mainz as a siege castle against Rheinberg Castle.

From 1304, the knight Johann von Rheinberg served as castellan at the castle for eight years on behalf of the Archbishop of Trier. In the Late Middle Ages, the castle frequently served as a pledge object for the Archbishopric of Mainz and protected the Rheingauer Gebück, a landwehr (defensive barrier) that crossed the Wisper Valley here.

In the 15th century, the castle lost its strategic importance, was occupied by only one servant in 1483, and was abandoned as a defensive structure before 1500, when it was probably already uninhabitable.

In the 16th century, the ruinous castle complex came into the possession of the lower noble families of Rüdesheim, Blankenheim, and the Palatine Counts. From the beginning of the 19th century, it was owned by the von Zwierlein family from Geisenheim and later passed to the Haniel family.