En un regard
Le château en bref
The ruins of Hohenkrähen Castle crown the summit of the Hohenkrähen, a phonolite volcanic cone of about 643 m that overlooks the Hegau, west of Lake Constance, between Duchtlingen, Schlatt unter Krähen and Mühlhausen. The castle was probably built in the late 12th century; a knightly family bearing the name of the site is attested there from 1191, before the lords of Friedingen held it until the mid-16th century. A notorious lair of marauding knights, it was besieged in November 1512 by an army of the Swabian League of around 8,000 men with heavy artillery, under Georg von Frundsberg, and then set on fire. Rebuilt, it passed around 1560 to the Fugger family, who built a new residence to the east, and then to various lords, including the Bodman and the Rechberg. In 1634, during the Thirty Years' War, Konrad Widerholt, commander of the nearby Hohentwiel fortress, set it alight for good. In the 18th century the ruin fell to the Reischach family, then to the Douglas family, and it served as an anti-aircraft position during the Second World War. Today one can distinguish an upper castle on an walled plateau, an intermediate enclosure dominated by the ‘Austrian bastion’, and a lower bailey where a scouting movement maintains rebuilt buildings. The wooded site, planted with lime trees, is associated with the legend of the ghost ‘Poppele’.
