Details
Founded: 1346Category: Castles and fortifications in Germany
Historical period: Habsburg Dynasty (Germany)
User Reviews
Güssenburg Castle was built around 1346 to the site of earlier castle. It was the ancestral seat of the House of Güssenberg. The family was quite large and eventually ruled over many castles and communities in the region.
The count's vogt or bailiff was located at the Güssenburg until 1448. The central location of the castle made it an ideal location to administer the grafschaft or fief of the Count. In 1448 the fief fell to the House of Württemberg. However, the castle was destroyed in 1449 during the Städtekreig by troops from Ulm, Giengen and Lauingen, and never rebuilt.
In 1709 the community of Hermaringen inherited the ruins and the associated farms below the hill. In 1970/71 the ruins were repaired and cleaned. A further renovation occurred from 1981 until 1998 through the local Castle Society.
The keep and curtain wall form an irregular rectangle of about 45m x 70m. On the south side, a wide dry moat separates the castle area from the flat hill top. Near the moat a massive curtain wall rises up, the Ashlar wall is up to 3.4m thick. A post, found in the wall, has been dendrochronology dated to 1350. About 25m behind the curtain wall, currently nearly flat, runs the old inner ditch. Behind the inner ditch, portions of the inner castle still remain. These include debris, barriers and the ruins of the keep.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.