Schelmenburg: A Medieval Water Castle and Baroque Château in Germany
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.3
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Manor House
On this page12 sections
History
Schelmenburg is a medieval water castle and later Baroque water château in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in the district of Bergen-Enkheim. The complex emerged as the ancestral residence of the Schelme von Bergen, a ministerial noble family whose members first appeared as imperial vassals and later included imperial knights. It probably originated in the late twelfth century, perhaps during the reign of Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, and its development continued through Romanesque, Renaissance, and Baroque phases.
Origins and feudal connections
The exact foundation date remains uncertain, but the first documented appearance of a Schelm von Bergen dates to 1194, establishing an upper boundary for the castle’s emergence. An archaeological investigation in 2001 found evidence beneath two uncellared rooms of the main building for a wooden motte castle, a fortified residence raised on an artificial mound and protected by a ditch or moat. This early phase dates from the twelfth or thirteenth century.
Earlier interpretations proposed that a Roman fort or a Frankish fortification had occupied the site before the medieval castle. Later archaeological work found no evidence confirming either possibility. Roman legionary bricks discovered in the wider Bergen area are understood as reused material from nearby Roman rural estates, especially the excavated site known as Auf dem Keller.
Schelmenburg stood outside Bergen’s medieval defensive enclosure, although the castle’s history was closely tied to the settlement. In 1272, Werner Schelm von Bergen received part of Bergen’s tithe, a church-related revenue, as a fief from the lords of Eppstein. Two years later, another portion came from the Bartholomew collegiate foundation. As authority over Bergen and the Bornheimerberg district increasingly passed to the lords and counts of Hanau, the Schelme von Bergen entered the service of Ulrich III of Hanau as vassals in 1354 and received the castle as a fief. The residence was probably expanded in stone during this transition and was later described as a fortified house, meaning a fortified noble residence smaller than a major castle.
Bergen became a Hanau imperial pledge in 1357. During the family’s later decline, members of the Schelme von Bergen carried out raids, often against merchants travelling on the nearby route to or from Frankfurt. Frankfurt occupied the castle in the winter of 1381 to 1382, reportedly meeting little resistance because the moat had frozen. The city took possession again in 1389 at the instigation of the Rhenish League of Cities.
Sibold and Gerlach Schelm were then required to renounce private feuding, serve Frankfurt for two months each year, and accept the city’s right of access to the castle. Ulrich IV of Hanau later released his vassals from these obligations during the Kronberg Feud of 1389, a conflict involving the city of Frankfurt and regional nobles.
Fortification and Baroque rebuilding
Between 1500 and 1520, Adam Schelm von Bergen created an outer moat that also protected the estate’s economic buildings. Their outer walls were strengthened and equipped with openings for firearms. The enlarged enclosure nevertheless had limited military value, since the owners could scarcely afford a garrison large enough for effective defence. The stone residential building within the main moat remained the safest refuge during warfare.
As the castle’s military function faded, Schelmenburg increasingly operated as an agricultural estate. Friedrich Adolph Schelm zu Bergen, who had served at the Heidelberg court of the Elector Palatine, began extensive rebuilding after 1672. That year Frederick William, the “Great Elector” of Brandenburg, requested quarters in Bergen during the Dutch War, a conflict in which Brandenburg joined wider European warfare against the Dutch Republic. The water castle Gruckau no longer met contemporary expectations, so the elector lodged elsewhere in Bergen. This episode may have encouraged Friedrich Adolph to replace the old main building.
The earlier structure was demolished down to its cellar, and a Baroque water château was erected over more than ten years. Completed in 1700, it retained the moat and bridge and followed the ground plan of the earlier core castle. At the entrance, Friedrich Adolph installed a sandstone relief of the double-headed imperial eagle with the inscription “SVB VMBRA ALARVM TVARVM,” meaning “under the shadow of your wings.” The relief probably expressed his refusal to enter Hanau service and his identification as a free imperial knight, a nobleman directly subject to the Holy Roman Emperor rather than to an intermediate territorial lord.
Estate, municipality, and modern use
After the Schelme von Bergen became extinct in the nineteenth century, the complex became a substantial farm, while the château served as a manor house. Johann Georg Kalbhenn acquired the entire estate in 1830. The outer moat had been filled in by 1840, and in 1850 Kalbhenn moved the farm gate from Siboldsgäßchen to its present position. Later owners gave the complex the additional names Schillingshof and Bickelhof.
Bergen-Enkheim municipality acquired the estate in 1942 for 100,000 Reichsmark. The building continued to be leased, and farming remained active until 1962. Following extensive renovation, the mayor’s office and parts of the municipal administration moved into the château in 1967. After 1977, the building housed a social station, followed later by the municipal library and club rooms. In 2002, Alfred Gangel, head of the municipal property office, designated it as a house of associations with the approval of Mayor Achim Vandreike.
The ground floor now houses a youth music school, while seventeen local associations use rooms in the basement, upper floor, and attic. Part of the building requires extensive renovation. Much of the surrounding land, including the former castle garden, was built over after the Second World War. New construction included housing for displaced persons in 1951, Bergen civic hall in 1978, and a savings bank. A repair project in 2000 addressed moisture entering the main castle and enabled archaeological work in the core area, producing further evidence for the building’s history. Schelmenburg is designated a cultural monument.
Remains
Schelmenburg now consists chiefly of the Baroque château built in 1700 on the foundations of the former core castle. The site lies on the southern slope below Berger Warte, near a junction on the Hohe Straße, a route that had existed since the Roman period. It originally stood at the northwestern edge of Bergen’s medieval settlement core and is now located centrally between Am Weißen Turm and Marktstraße, west of the civic hall built in 1978. About 80 metres above the Main River, the castle occupied ground without a natural defensive elevation and therefore relied on water-filled moats for protection.
Core castle and château
The surviving château
The surviving building has three storeys and measures approximately 16 by 18 metres. Its slate-covered half-hipped roof has centrally placed dormer gables on both the front and rear elevations. The present exterior belongs to the rebuilding around 1700, while the ground plan preserves the arrangement established when the fortified house was created.
The northern one-third of the building has no basement and probably corresponds to the earlier mound of the motte castle. Between the two cellar rooms, a Romanesque round arch survives. Beneath these rooms, the 2001 archaeological investigation identified evidence for the wooden medieval castle. Later phases included an at least partly two-storey half-timbered building, with a visible timber frame and infill panels, followed by the stone fortified house associated with the change of feudal lordship in 1354. Stove tiles indicate that its interior received a comparatively representative finish. Further alterations took place during the sixteenth century before the Baroque rebuilding created the present form.
Bridge and entrance portal
The core castle and its successor were entered from the courtyard by a bridge across the moat. In its original arrangement, the bridge crossed only half the water channel, while the section immediately beside the building used a wooden-plank construction that could be removed. The bridge now has two arches.
The principal architectural feature is a Renaissance portal of red sandstone, possibly reused from an earlier structure. Its upper part was opened into a Baroque broken pediment, a pediment interrupted at the centre, containing a cartouche and inscription. The Schelme von Bergen arms, with two ribs, appears on the left. On the right are the arms of the lords of Venningen, showing two crossed lilies. Near the entrance, the sandstone imperial-eagle relief carries the inscription “SVB VMBRA ALARVM TVARVM.”
Courtyard and agricultural buildings
Outer courtyard
The much larger castle courtyard lay southwest of the core castle. It contained stables, barns, gardens, and a brewhouse, which was demolished around 1820. Before the sixteenth-century outer moat was built, the courtyard was probably only weakly fortified. The core castle provided the substantial protection during warfare.
Brewing rights belonged to the estate, and later owners continued producing “Schelmenbräu” in Bergen until the First World War. The agricultural character of the complex therefore continued after its military role had declined, linking the surviving château to a wider estate of working buildings and cultivated land.
Moats, springs, and wells
Water system
Several strong springs north of the complex supplied the moats. Water flowed south through a covered underground channel to Marktstraße, where it re-emerged as Schelmenquelle before continuing through the Mühlbach gorge. The moat water became marshy and muddy under these conditions and was further contaminated by the projecting latrine structure connected to the castle.
Domestic water came from a well in the cellar of the core castle and from two additional wells in the outer bailey, the adjoining enclosure for service buildings and other functions. One stood near the brewhouse and the other near the stable. During renovation in the 1960s, the moat was dredged, partly filled with gravel, and faced with basalt stones. Work on the moat also produced a dagger, a crossbow bolt, and a rider’s spur, which were transferred to the local history museum.
