The commune of Orschwiller in the Bas-Rhin département of Alsace, France, is home to the medieval castle known as Château du Haut-Koenigsbourg, or occasionally just Haut-Koenigsbourg. Situated in a strategically important location on a rocky spur overlooking the Upper Rhine Plain, in the Vosges mountains to the west of Sélestat, it was utilized by several nations from the Middle Ages until the Thirty Years War, when it was abandoned. Under orders of Wilhelm II, it was renovated between 1900 and 1908. It is now a popular tourist destination, drawing in over 500,000 tourists annually. The Frankish ruler Charlemagne first named the Buntsandstein cliff as Stofenberk in a deed dated to 774. It was then in ownership of the French Basilica of St. Denis and the location of a monastery, having been recertified in 854. When the original castle was constructed is unknown. But in 1147, the monks protested to King Louis VII of France against the illegal construction of a Burg Staufen by the Hohenstaufen Duke Frederick II of Swabia. In 1138, younger brother Conrad III of Frederick was crowned King of the Romans. Frederick Barbarossa, son of Frederick, succeeded him in 1152, and by 1192, the castle was known as Kinzburg. Frederick III, the Habsburg emperor, gave the Counts of Thierstein the castle ruins in fief in 1479, and they rebuilt it with a defense system appropriate for the new cannon available at the time. Following the death of the last Thierstein in 1517, the castle was transferred to the property of Maximilian I, the Habsburg emperor at the time. The Protestant Swedish armies besieged the Imperial stronghold in 1633, during the Thirty Years War, in which Catholic forces faced Protestant forces. The Swedish soldiers burnt and pillaged the castle after a 52-day siege. It was abandoned for several hundred years, during which time the ruins were overtaken by the woodland. The castle served as an inspiration to many romantic poets and artists throughout this period. The commune of Sélestat acquired the ruins three years after they were included on the monument historique of the Second French Empire list in 1862. The area became part of the German Imperial Territory of Alsace-Lorraine following the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, and the people of that region gave Wilhelm II, the German emperor, what was left of the castle in 1899. Wilhelm wanted to build a castle that extolled the virtues of medieval Alsace. The period of work was 1900–1908. The renovated Hohkönigsburg was opened in front of the Emperor on May 13, 1908. A historic cortege entered the castle in an intricate re-enactment ceremony, all while it poured with rain [Information and Image Credit : Château_du_Haut-Koenigsbourg, Wikipedia] [Wikipedia-Link : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2teau_du_Haut-Koenigsbourg ] [Image : A view of the Black Forest and the Alsatian plain from the castle Wikipedia-Image Author : Drew de F Fawkes] [Image Availed Under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License; (Please Relate to Individual Image URLs for More Usage Property and Sharing, Remixing or Attributing the Work)] [License-Link : https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en ] [Wikipedia-Image-Source-Link : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ch%C3%A2teau_du_Haut-K%C5%93nigsbourg,_Alsace.jpg ] #Castles#History
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Monuments and Architecture
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