Einsiedel Castle

In 1482, Count Eberhard the Bearded had a three-story hunting lodge built on Einsiedel. For the Brothers of the Common Life, he founded the St. Peter's Abbey, where he was buried after his death in 1496. Both buildings burned down: the abbey in 1550, the hunting lodge with the famous hawthorn, which Count Eberhard is said to have brought back from his trip to Palestine, in 1619. Duke Johann Friedrich had the castle partially restored, so that today only a small remnant of Count Eberhard's little castle remains.

Until 1795, the domain, including the Einsiedel stud farm, was managed by the state itself. In that year, the ducal government leased it for the first time. From 1802, the tenant Johann Heinrich Kling operated the estate. Initially, he made profits, as prices for agricultural products and a reduction in rent made the domain profitable. In the years of high prices 1816/17, Kling was able to achieve extraordinarily high prices for his products. The stud farm provided him with free fertilizer, and administrative regulations allowed favorable payment terms for the rent. In December 1822, the Hofdomänenkammer, as the private asset management of the royal family, acquired the Einsiedel estate from the Oberfinanzkammer and took over the domain the following spring.

To this day, the domain remains the property of the Hofkammer Württemberg; it is currently leased to Südzucker AG, which primarily cultivates sugar beets there.

On September 22, 2011, the automotive group Daimler AG informed the press that the Hofkammer had offered them Einsiedel for purchase. The plateau in the Kirchentellinsfurt district was, according to initial considerations, one of four previously examined possible locations for a planned test and technology center with a several-kilometer-long test track.

Local resistance to these plans quickly emerged. Problematic for a possible construction of the test track was, on the one hand, the required approval by the Tübingen regional council for changes to the land use plan for the area located within the Schönbuch Nature Park. On the other hand, shortly after the announcement of the plans, resistance formed in individual factions of the Kirchentellinsfurt municipal council and among large parts of the population, especially in the directly adjacent Pfrondorf, where over 700 signatures were collected against these plans. In particular, the resistance of the FWV faction in the municipal council was able to persuade the project manager of Daimler AG in early October 2011 to abandon the plans.