Germany · 13th century
Grubenhagen Castle (German: Burg Grubenhagen) is a ruined medieval castle in North Germany dating to the 13th century. It is not far from the town of Einbeck in southern Lower Saxony.
The ruins are located in the district of Northeim on a 298-metre-high (978 ft) hill summit on the Ahlsburg ridge, south-southwest of Einbeck and east of the Solling hills, between the basin of the River Ilme and the valley of the Leine. The castle may be reached via a narrow forest path from Rotenkirchen, a village south of Einbeck, which is on the northern edge of the ridge and below the castle ruins and not far to the northeast.
The hill castle of Grubenhagen was built in the 13th century. Only the round, 18-metre-high (59 ft) bergfried remains today. Attached to its southeastern side is a building from the 19th/20th century. The raised plateau of the inner ward, with its relatively small area, is oval and slightly kidney-shaped. It is about 63 metres long and 32 metres wide. Below it is the outer ward. The site is surrounded on three sides by a double ditch. On the fourth side the terrain drops away steeply, rendering a ditch unnecessary. To the northeast and southwest the remains of the ringwall and revetments have been preserved. A Merian engraving around 1650 shows the castle still with a round keep and a roofless building in front of it with a gable.
On the outer ramparts of the main ditch was a defensive wall with a chemin de ronde behind the battlements to the northwest. To the north and northwest the engraving depicts the remains of another defensive walkway with embrasures.
The lords of Grubenhagen were the counts of Dassel and the Welfs. It is not clear exactly when the castle was built, but it probably appeared during the reign of Henry the Lion (1129 to 1195). The castle was first mentioned in the records in 1263. At that time the castellans (Burgmannen) in possession of the castle were the ministerialis family of Grubo or Grube, later Grubenhagen. At the end of the 13th century the castle went back to the dukes of Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg.
The castle gave its name to the Welf Principality of Grubenhagen founded in 1291 by Henry the Admirable. It was however never really the residence of the principality. It first appears as a "house" of the dukes in the early 15th century.
Text adapted from “Grubenhagen Castle (Einbeck)” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Grubenhagen Castle ranks #7,665 of 9,079 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #680 of the 711 mapped in Germany. Founded c. 1250, it is older than 67% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 1080 atlas entries founded in the 13th century. 2 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. See how Germany compares in the castle statistics.
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