Burgstall Kissing: A High-Medieval Motte and Castle Site in Germany
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Duchy of Bavaria, German, Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page12 sections
History
Burgstall Kissing is a high-medieval castle site in Kissing, Germany, probably built around AD 1000 for the noble lords of Kissing. The name Burgstall describes a castle site whose original superstructure has largely disappeared. The fortification was a motte-and-bailey castle, centered on a high artificial mound, and stood within the political world of the Welfs and the Bishops of Augsburg.
The Kissing Lords and the Welf Sphere
The castle was the seat of the lords of Kissing, whose family is first recorded in 1085 through Adalbero de Chissingin. The site lay in territory largely controlled by the Welfs, a powerful princely dynasty whose Bavarian line held the duchy from 1070 to 1180. Its position near Augsburg, the city of the bishops, gave the Kissing and Mering area potential military value during the rivalry between the Welfs and the Augsburg bishopric.
Welf IV captured Augsburg in 1084, 1088, and 1093. Burgstall Kissing occupied a relatively modest place within this Welf-controlled region. The competing spheres of influence around the site probably restricted the ability of the Kissing family to build a larger territorial power base.
Abandonment and Later Land Use
The castle was probably abandoned during the High Middle Ages. Material remains indicate that its original wooden or half-timbered superstructure was later developed with stone construction around 1200. The circumstances of the abandonment and the later history of the castle family remain unknown.
By 1498, written records referred to Kissing as a castle site, while the interior of the outer bailey was being used as farmland. This later use preserved the earthworks as a visible landmark even after the medieval buildings had disappeared.
The Pilgrimage Chapel
The site acquired a new religious function in the early modern period. From 1681, the Jesuits, a Catholic religious order also known as the Society of Jesus, commissioned a pilgrimage chapel dedicated to the Sorrowful Mother of God. The chapel replaced an older devotional column mentioned in 1641, and it was consecrated in 1685 as one of the earliest Baroque buildings in the surrounding area.
The chapel’s popularity led to several alterations, including the installation of galleries as the number of pilgrims increased. A lightning strike caused a fire in 1790, destroying the original devotional image. The image now associated with the chapel is a nineteenth-century copy made around 1860. The building also suffered repeated burglaries and thefts during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and a guard at one stage had to spend the night in the gallery.
Modern Commemoration and Preservation
In 1907, the local church community transformed the northern outer bailey into a Stations of the Cross and a Calvary hill, a devotional setting representing the hill of Jesus’s crucifixion. Cast-iron Stations of the Cross had already been installed by the end of the nineteenth century. A war memorial for those killed or missing in the First World War was erected at the center of the outer bailey in 1922, and from 1956 it also commemorated victims of the Second World War.
The chapel was in acute danger of collapse before extensive renovation carried out between 1982 and 1984. Local residents contributed 2,772 hours of unpaid labor to the work. The Bavarian State Office for Monument Protection records the medieval archaeological monument as Burgstall Kissing under monument number D 7-7731-0003.
Remains
Burgstall Kissing occupies a steep earthen mound on the Lechrain, the historical region along the eastern side of the Lech River. The site lies south of the parish church and above the surviving Burgmühle. Its main bailey rises on the mound, while a small northern outer bailey lies beyond a moderately deep section ditch. A larger southern outer bailey also appears to have formed part of the medieval layout.
Castle Earthworks
Main Bailey Mound
The motte has the form of a truncated pyramid and rises approximately eight metres above its immediate surroundings. Its summit plateau measures about 12 by 18 metres and stands nearly 30 metres above the floor of the Lechfeld, the broad plain around the lower Lech south of Augsburg. The formerly level summit has been altered by earth movement and now slopes downward toward the west.
A ditch in front of the mound separates it from the higher ground, while the steep western slope supplied natural protection. The mound’s position provides extensive views. In clear conditions, the Alps can be seen to the south from Kufstein to Vorarlberg, with Augsburg to the northwest, the Augsburg Western Woods Nature Park to the west, and old Bavarian villages among gently rolling hills to the east.
Bailey Ditches and Enclosure
The outer ditches are now filled, while the ditches around the northern outer bailey remain approximately 1.5 to 3 metres deep. During the High Middle Ages, a wall probably encircled the main bailey halfway up the mound. The enclosure appears to have included four bastions, projecting defensive structures. Aerial photographs taken in 1981 revealed the wall remains clearly, and the foundation robber trenches of the two southern bastions remain distinctly visible.
The surviving banks, mound, ditches, and altered ground form well-preserved earthworks. Their unrestricted accessibility makes Burgstall Kissing an especially clear example of a high motte in southern Germany. A tower-like chapel now occupies the position of the former main tower and conveys an impression of the visual effect that an early noble castle may have produced.
Baroque Chapel and Devotional Features
Chapel Building
The Burgstall Chapel is a cross-shaped Baroque building with a dome, constructed on the plateau of the main bailey. Baroque architecture uses dramatic spatial effects, rich ornament, curved forms, and illusionistic decoration. The chapel’s original Wessobrunn stucco, ornamental plasterwork associated with a southern German tradition, was supplemented with bandwork around 1731. Its frescoes, painted around 1735, include the Annunciation and the Flight into Egypt.
A richly wrought-iron grille dated 1751 separates the chapel altar from the area used by lay worshippers. The building’s tower-like form occupies the location of the earlier main tower, linking the later pilgrimage structure physically with the medieval castle mound.
Altar, Images, and Staircase
The Baroque altar is a double-columned structure created around 1762 by the Augsburg court sculptor Ignatius Verhelst. It carries the devotional image of the Sorrowful Mother of God, a representation of Mary mourning the suffering and death of Jesus. The present image is the copy made around 1860 after the original was destroyed in the 1790 fire.
Two statues of Saints Stephen and Lawrence, dated around 1658–1659, stand at the altar. They came from the nearby parish church and are attributed to David Degler of Weilheim in Upper Bavaria, although a 2007 church guide places them in the early sixteenth century. The approach to the chapel consists of a three-arched brick staircase. Beneath its first arch is an older crypt chapel containing a Baroque statue of Christ at the Column of Flagellation, made by Johann Caspar Öberle in 1743. Part of the masonry wayside shrine associated with the earlier devotional column was incorporated into the chapel altar.
