Henfenfeld Castle (Pfinzing Castle): A Medieval Hill Castle in Germany
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.5
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page7 sections
History
Henfenfeld Castle, also known as Pfinzing Castle, is a medieval hill castle in Germany, built around 1200 by the Henfenfeld ministerial dynasty. In the Late Middle Ages, it became the seat of several imperial ministerials, high-status officials and service nobles who held offices and estates for the emperor or other territorial rulers.
Medieval Lords and the Pfinzing Family
Ownership changed repeatedly during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. From 1405 to 1530, the castle belonged to the Lords of Egloffstein. Martin I Pfinzing acquired it in 1530, bringing the estate into the possession of an old Nuremberg patrician family. These elite urban families combined commercial wealth with political and administrative influence in the imperial city of Nuremberg, and the castle consequently became known as Pfinzing Castle.
In 1553, margravial troops invaded and burned the castle during the Second Margrave War, a sixteenth-century conflict associated with widespread destruction in Middle Franconia. Hans von Egloffstein, who supported the margravial side, regarded himself as dispossessed by the Pfinzings. Paul Pfinzing, who lived from 1554 to 1599 and was also known as a cartographer, later became the best-known representative of the family and lord of the castle.
Family Foundation and Later Ownership
The Pfinzings of Henfenfeld placed the castle in a family foundation known in the Nuremberg patriciate as a Vorschickung, an arrangement administered by the family elder. The family remained lords of Henfenfeld until its main branch died out in 1764. Administration then passed to the brothers of the widow, who came from the Haller von Hallerstein family.
The Nuremberg merchant Karl Benedikt Schwarz acquired the lordship in 1817. The Bavarian king subsequently ennobled him so that he could exercise the lordship. Schwarz managed his estates through a newly established family trust, while the property rights of such hereditary family arrangements, known as fideicommissa, ended when they were legally abolished in Germany in 1919.
Schwarz family ownership lasted 135 years. The estate was divided between the brothers Paul August Benedikt von Schwarz, who received Artelshofen, and Benedikt Gottlieb, who took over Henfenfeld. Numerous renovations and alterations took place, particularly between 1826 and 1838, when the former Baroque garden was transformed into a contemporary landscaped garden.
Institutional and Commercial Uses
During the 1920s, the von Schwarz family operated a catering business on the upper floor. From 1929, rooms were provided to the National Socialist Teachers’ League, a professional organization aligned with the Nazi regime, for training purposes. In 1939, the castle housed a camp for the female Reich Labour Service, a state labor organization that also operated camps for young women.
Deutsche Bundesbahn purchased the castle in 1952, ending the Schwarz family’s ownership. Until its re-privatization in 1983, the buildings accommodated classes for a federal railway school. They were then used mainly as business premises. Between 1989 and 1995, the complex served the public sector as a temporary camp for ethnic German immigrants.
Since the twenty-first century, Pfinzing Castle has remained in continuous private commercial use. Its current owner, Denette Whitter, operates an opera academy there and uses the premises for cultural events, while a catering business occupies the ground floor. The castle is an architectural heritage monument in Bavaria and forms part of the listed cultural-heritage complex D-5-6534-0148 in Henfenfeld.
Remains
The preserved hill castle is built with bossed ashlar masonry, using dressed stone blocks whose projecting faces create a rough, relief-like exterior. The buildings have largely retained their sixteenth-century appearance, despite the later renovations and changes associated especially with the nineteenth-century Schwarz ownership.
Castle Buildings
The surviving buildings form the architectural core of the estate. Their largely sixteenth-century appearance reflects the period after the castle entered Pfinzing ownership in 1530 and after the damage caused by the 1553 attack. Bossed ashlar masonry gives the preserved structure a distinctive rough-faced stone exterior, while later alterations remain part of the building’s present form.
Landscaped Garden
Between 1826 and 1838, the former Baroque garden was redesigned as a contemporary landscaped garden. The early nineteenth-century castle park is regarded as an example of horticultural art of supra-regional importance. It remains part of the estate alongside the castle buildings and has both garden-conservation and cultural significance.
