Burg Ließem

Burg Ließem stands in the village of Ließem in Germany; it was established in the medieval period by local German nobility.

A settlement grew up around the castle and the place is first recorded in the early twelfth century. The family later known as the Lords of Ließem appears in documents of 1204 under the forms Lyheim and Liessheim, showing the local lineage already linked with the site by name.

In the early fourteenth century Hartrad von Schönecken held the castle as a fief of the Count of Luxembourg. On 25 October 1316 Hartrad’s guardians pledged the castle and other possessions for 3,000 Trier pounds to Bonifacius, a Trier jurist and mayor. The property passed into the hands of Archbishop Baldwin of Luxembourg in 1332, and in 1343 Baldwin returned it to the von Schönecken family as a fief and as an open house under his authority.

Hartrad died in 1351 and his nephew Gerhard inherited. After Gerhard entered into conflict with the archbishop the castle was captured and deliberately demolished in 1353. The von Schönecken family rebuilt during the second half of the fourteenth century, fashioning the strong core as a square residential tower.

In 1525 ownership changed when Johann von Enschringen, an imperial councillor to Luxembourg and chancellor to the Elector of Trier, acquired the estate. He reinforced the defences, incorporated the existing Gothic tower into a larger residential structure, and shifted the main access into a newly built stair tower. During the first quarter of the seventeenth century Wilhelm von Enschringen and his wife Elisabeth von Piesport added a gatehouse to the northwest of the residence; their joint coat of arms was placed above the gateway.

Veronika von Enschringen and Friedrich-Heinrich von Heisgen sold the castle and its lordship to the Herren von Hout in 1729. Eighteenth-century roof work introduced the knee wall with round windows that still characterizes the roofline. Around 1825 the site remained set within a surrounding moat; later in the nineteenth century that moat was filled, several buildings north of the gatehouse were removed, and the gate passage itself was walled up and converted for storage during a broader transformation for agricultural use. Façade and roof changes, including new window openings, also date to the nineteenth century.

By 1848 the property belonged to the Brandenburg family. Since the mid-twentieth century the Lichter family has owned the manor and operates pig husbandry there. The site remains in private hands and is protected as a cultural monument.