Artelshofen Castle

The Artelshofen manor house was probably built at the latest in the early 14th century in the form of a residential tower standing in a moat. It was first documented in 1361 with Heinrich von Sittenbach, residing in Artelshofen [cf. Kirchensittenbach I, Hohenstein]. The descendant of a presumably once important Sulzbach ministerial family sealed and vouched at that time for the Schenken von Reicheneck, who enjoyed feudal and tithe rights in Artelshofen. His descendant Conrad von Sittenbach also resided in Artelshofen in 1408. In 1434, Margaretha, widow of Dietrich von Rüssenbach, possibly a born Sittenbach, with the consent of her sons, sold the seat with the manor house, the moat, and the farmyard to Erhart Holdolt and his wife Clara. Holdolt, who came from a Reicheneck ministerial family first documented in Offenhausen, apparently soon sold the tower castle further: in 1452 it was owned by the Lords of Freudenberg, who mortgaged it. To pay off debts, Albrecht von Freudenberg gave up his rights to the Egloffsteiner in 1453. In doing so, he allegedly bypassed those of his brother Christoph, which led to a legal dispute over the extent of the appurtenances. In 1457, Wolfram von Egloffstein sealed in Artelshofen. In 1476, the seat was in the hands of his son Hans, who sold it in 1508 to his cousin Jobst von Egloffstein of the Bärnfels line.

By an unknown inheritance, the maiden Amaley Groß finally acquired the seat, but bequeathed it to her guardian Leonhard von Ploben, who in 1522 sold the property to the Nuremberg patrician Anton Tucher for a capital acquisition. The Ploben family retained the right of ownership, which was then sold in 1535 by Margaretha, daughter married to Jörg Holzschuher, to Hans Ebner [cf. Eschenbach]. He had already acquired the Tucher's proprietary rights in 1531. Under Hans Ebner, the now again free-owned moated house is said to have been rebuilt around 1550, extended to the south and provided with a third, projecting upper floor. However, the possibly not inconsiderable construction expenses of the Ebner family will have been in vain given the events of the Second Margrave War: On May 27, 1552, the seat was burned down by the margravial troops.

When Georg Ebner died in 1570, his widow Barbara sold the by then rebuilt seat two years later to Lazarus Harsdorfer (1511–1598). For the first time, in addition to the moat, towers and gates are now documented. Already during his father's lifetime (1590), the elder son Wolf Harsdorfer managed Artelshofen, and in 1623 he handed over half to his younger brother Hans Christoph. The heirs sold the seat as early as 1626 to Hans Jakob Tetzel [cf. Kirchensittenbach]. He bequeathed the Artelshofen estate in 1646 to his son Philipp Jakob, who leased it before 1660 to the widow of Engelthal's administrator Wolf Albrecht Pömer. In 1665, debts forced the owner to sell the seat to his brother Gustav Philipp Tetzel, who, however, returned it to his brother's descendants in 1691. In 1722, the castle became part of a family foundation, which since 1728 – even before the death of the last Artelshofen Tetzel – was managed by Hieronymus Wilhelm Ebner [cf. Erlenstegen II, Grünreuth, Guttenberg, Hirschbach]. After a lengthy process, he acquired ownership of Artelshofen in 1748, dissolved the Tetzel fideicommiss, and instead established his own two years later, into which Artelshofen was also incorporated. After the extinction of the Artelshofen-Hirschbach line of the Ebner family in 1793, it was managed by the Haller von Hallerstein until its dissolution (soon after 1810). In 1816, the Haller/Kreß community of heirs then sold the two knightly estates of Artelshofen and Hirschbach to the Nuremberg entrepreneur Karl Benedikt Schwarz [cf. Henfenfeld, Hirschbach], who, in order to exercise manorial rights over his estates, was ennobled by the Bavarian king in the same year. Artelshofen was shortly thereafter transferred to the Schwarz family foundation, whose ownership rights expired only with the legal abolition of fideicommisses in 1919. The former foundation property was then divided within the family: Paul August Benedikt von Schwarz received Artelshofen, while his brother Benedikt Gottlieb took over Henfenfeld. Paul August Benedikt finally sold the castle in 1932 to the Barons von Holzschuher. They remained owners until the sale to the Bischof family in the early 21st century.

The Artelshofen manor house essentially consists of a medieval moated house, probably founded on a pile grating. The current appearance of the residential tower is likely to have been shaped by the extension around 1550 and the restoration after the fire of 1552. However, the interior of the residential tower underwent extensive changes during the modernization after 1931. Several stucco ceilings from a renovation in the first half of the 18th century have been preserved. In this century, the original ground-floor hall was also reduced in size by the installation of utility rooms. The double curtain wall, reinforced with rondels as flanking defenses, is said by Wilhelm Schwemmer to date back to the 15th century. In 1818, the Schwarz family demolished the inner curtain wall, drained and filled the moat. A few years later, the southern fortifications and part of the castle's economy were demolished for the construction of the Fichtelgebirgsbahn.