Leimburg Castle Ruins (Ruine Leimburg)

Architecture, patrimoine et histoire · Landkreis Göppingen

The ruins of the Leimburg, also called Leimberg, crown the Unterer Leimberg, a wooded height of the Swabian Jura rising to about 704 metres above the village of Auendorf, a district of Bad Ditzenbach in the district of Göppingen. This hilltop castle was built in the 12th century by the knights of Leimberg, a family of lesser nobility probably originating from Gosbach, and first appears in written records in 1180. It later passed to Ursberg Abbey and was destroyed in 1533. Modest in size, it is typical of the small fortresses of ministeriales in the region: its defensive core combined a residential tower and a shield wall, a thick wall facing the most exposed side of the site. Today only a few sections of wall survive in the middle of the forest. The site is of interest above all to hikers and castle enthusiasts, and it is listed in the reference works devoted to the castles of the Swabian Jura, notably those by Günter Schmitt.