Brennhausen Castle

Brennhausen (German: Burg Brennhausen) is a castle in the municipality of Sulzdorf a.d.Lederhecke in the district of Rhön-Grabfeld in Bavaria in Germany. It is located the Haßberge Nature Park.

Josef Braun explains the name Brennhausen in his place-names book as "the houses by a water source", meaning, in this case, a spring. Braun bases his statement on the fact that immediately next to the settlement, a stream springs forth which flows into the river Saale. Braun discovered that the form Brenn- is a written form, changed from the spoken dialect, which is based on the old form Brünn.

Dr. Heinrich Wagner presents a very different view in his Historischen Atlas von Neustadt/Saale (Historical Atlas of Neustadt/Saale). Wagner believes that the origination of the name had nothing to do with the houses by a water source, but rather that the name of the estate is derived from the old German given name, Brunicho. Under this scenario, the founder of Brennhausen used his own name, as was the custom of that time, for the naming of Brunechenhusen.

The first known mention of Brennhausen in an official document was in the year 1182. In this document, Graf Poppo von Henneberg, (VI?) leased to his faithful Wolfram, among others, a tenth of Brunechenhusen. On 29 August 1237, Graf Poppo von Henneberg VII declared that his vassals "Deynodapifer and Theodericus, so-called von Blanckenberg," must repair the damage done to the Brunechenhusen property when it was unjustly withheld from the abbot and the Bildhausen convent.

The Truchseß von Brennhausen is a genealogical branch of the Truchessen von Wetzhausen which descends from a Hans Truchseß (1260–1330). He had holdings in Wetzhausen, Brennhausen, Sternberg and Essfeld. In the official property record book of the Bishop of Würzburg, Gottfried III von Hohenlohe, with records from 1317 to 1322, it was written that one Truchseß von Blankenberg, and possibly the so-called Hans Truchseß, had holdings in Brennhausen.

In another record book of the Prince-Bishop Albrecht von Hohenlohe, used from 1345 to 1372, it was written in 1345: “Johannes Truchseß von Alsleben owns also a tenth of Gabolshausen, a tenth of Poppenhausen, a half-tenth of Ermershausen, a tenth of Brennhausen, and a half-tenth of Maroldsweisach.”

In 1343, Hans Truchseß was mentioned in a directory of Wetzhausen.

Text adapted from “Brennhausen” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Brennhausen Castle ranks #6,794 of 8,764 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #577 of the 618 mapped in Germany. 2 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. See how Germany compares in the castle statistics.

View on the interactive castle map →

Read the full history on Wikipedia ↗