Former Lichtenstein Castle (Neidlingen)

Architecture, patrimoine et histoire · Allemagne entière

On the Butzenberg, a hill overlooking Neidlingen in the district of Esslingen at the foot of the Swabian Jura escarpment, many books and maps place a vanished castle called Lichtenstein. Some inventories describe it as a 14th-century stronghold abandoned around the middle of the 15th century, of which only the ditch remains visible. Yet the history of the site is more surprising. The name "Lichtenstein Castle" first appears only in 1833, in Riecker's history of Kirchheim, probably as the result of a misreading of field names linked to a knight of Lichtenberg. Recent research interprets the wall and ditch as a Middle Bronze Age fortification from around 1200 BC: no stove-tile sherds, roof tiles or mortar attest to any lasting medieval occupation. As for the dry-stone walls and terraces visible today, they were laid out from 1913 onwards by the Lichtenstein association, led by the Kirchheim pharmacist Albert Hölzle. A site where prehistory, castle legend and early 20th-century romanticism meet.