Burg Schaumberg

Burg Schaumberg is located in Schalkau, Germany, and it was probably constructed by the burgraves of Meissen.

The hilltop site appears in records from 1147 and became the ancestral seat of the von Schaumberg family, who governed the surrounding lands from the twelfth through the fourteenth centuries. The castle likely passed into von Schaumberg hands around the turn of the thirteenth century, and members of that family are explicitly named at the site in a 1216 document.

Many of the castle’s mounted servants and armed retainers made their homes at the foot of the hill. Contemporary terminology for such horse- and war-servants is the probable source of the settlement name Schalkau, reflecting the close link between the garrison and the village below.

In the mid-fourteenth century the von Schaumberg line were forced out by the Henneberg family and withdrew to Rauenstein. On 6 December 1362 Margrave Friedrich III of Meissen, husband of Henneberg princess Katharina, granted Schalkau both town status and market rights, changing the site’s administrative standing.

Around 1500 Wilwolt von Schaumberg regained control of the castle. Between 1501 and 1503 he had the stronghold enlarged and refashioned into a modern fortress. That upgraded form endured through later conflicts until the mid-seventeenth century.

During the Thirty Years’ War the fortress suffered decisive destruction. In early July 1635 it was heavily plundered and set on fire. Five years later, in 1640, another assault left the surviving structures and the outer bailey to collapse into ruin. Only fragmentary remains have survived since then. In the early 1990s the town of Schalkau carried out extensive securing and partial dismantling measures to preserve the site as an archaeological monument.