To be privately owned
CastleScheuerfeld
Scheuerfeld Castle
The former Scheuerfeld Castle in the Coburg district of Scheuerfeld in Upper Franconia took on its current form in the 16th century and has housed the Protestant parish office since 1893. The origin of the complex dates back to the Thuringian-Franconian land acquisition of the 5th and 6th centuries. The building is a protected monument.
Scheuerfeld Castle is located in the center of Scheuerfeld, a western district of Coburg since 1872, at Nicolaus-Zech-Straße 20. A still recognizable moat surrounds the area, which is still referred to today as the "Alter Bau" (Old Building).
The historian Erich Meißner identified ten former hill farms from the 5th and 6th centuries in the Scheuerfeld area, to which the area around Scheuerfeld Castle also belonged.
It cannot be proven whether Scheuerfeld Castle was already a knightly seat at the turn of the 12th century, as was otherwise the case in the Coburg region. The abbot of Saalfeld, Siboto, who was in office at that time, founded the chapel, the predecessor of today's parish church in Scheuerfeld, but had his seat in the castle of Ahorn. In the following four centuries, there are no references to either Scheuerfeld Castle or Scheuerfeld Palace.
Around 1590, Nicolaus Zech, the rent master and chamberlain of Duke Johann Casimir of Coburg, bought Scheuerfeld and built the modest-sized castle and a number of surrounding buildings. In 1598, Duke Casimir gave him the nearby Eichhof Castle out of gratitude for the reorganization of his finances. In 1603, Zech fell into disgrace, was imprisoned in Veste Coburg, and died four years later.
Nicolaus Zech's still underage children Helena and Markus inherited both properties, Helena Scheuerfeld Castle and Markus Eichhof Castle. Helena married Dr. jur. Johann Christian von Merklin in 1615. She died in 1617, and Merklin bought Eichhof Castle in 1622. After Merklin's death, the entire inheritance was divided among his sons. The younger son received Eichhof and the elder Scheuerfeld Castle. His descendants lived in the castle until the 19th century, although it had temporarily reverted to princely ownership. In 1893, it was transferred to the community for the establishment of a parish, which it remains to this day. A memorial plaque on the front of the building commemorates the donor.
Complex+
The castle, once built as a manor house or knight's estate, features a cellar built from a large round-arched barrel vault, which indicates its origin around 1590. From it extends a 25-meter-long underground passage, which was only discovered in the 1970s. It is interpreted as a secret escape route for wartime, as the castle was not equipped for defense.
The cubic, two-story, six-axis building has a half-timbered upper floor clad with hand-cut slate tiles above a stone ground floor. The hip roof with a dormer gable on the front dates from the beginning of the 18th century. The thick-walled ground floor can be assigned to the earlier construction period around 1590.
Originally, a sprawling sandstone staircase led perpendicularly to the facade to the portal. It was replaced in the 20th century by a concrete staircase running alongside the house.
The stable building behind the castle and the small park-like garden still date from the time of the knight's estate created by Nicolaus Zech.
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Source: Wikipedia · Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0
This description draws on the facts documented in the linked Wikipedia article; Wikipedia content is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Wording and editing: Mobile History.
Location: 50.2550, 10.9270