Hohenerpfingen

Burg Hohenerpfingen stands in the municipality of Erpfingen, Germany, and was built by local high-medieval German nobility during the later twelfth century. Pottery recovered from the site indicates its foundation dates to that period.

The earliest phase links the local von Erpfingen family to an older manor called Stollenhof and later to Hohenerpfingen itself. Members of the family appear in records across the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, and Christine von Erpfingen is recorded as a nun in Kloster Stetten in 1304. In 1314 Werner II, known as Schenk von Andeck, Erpfingen and Stauffenberg, married a daughter of Johann von Salmendingen. By about 1340 individuals styling themselves as Schenken von Erpfingen are documented, and nephews of Werner II received a castle at Aufhofen.

During the mid-fourteenth century the Herren von Salmendingen are recorded as owners and occupants of Stollenhof, Niederhofen and Hohenerpfingen. In 1350 and again in 1358 men named Hanß and Haintz von Salbadingen are specifically listed as residing at Hohenerpfingen. Around 1350 Agate von Salmendingen married Burkhard von Mansberg, a union that transferred the Salmendingen seat into the Mansberg family. In the castle’s period of greatest activity the stream Erpf was dammed to form a sizeable fishpond, and remnants of that embankment survive.

In 1358 Heinz von Salmendingen sold nearly all his Erpfingen holdings and rights to Friz Remp von Pfullingen, while keeping possession of the castle, here called Schnatren. By 1385 Hohenerpfingen is described as a ruin and in that year was sold to the Pfullingen family. The settlement of Salmendingen suffered destruction and abandonment in the fourteenth century and lay to decay after 1386.

During the Städtekrieg of 1387 to 1389 the Mansberg family opposed Württemberg. In 1388 Burkart von Mansberg served as captain of Esslingen forces and captured 56 prisoners when he attacked Grötzingen. After the conflict the former Salmendingen territory was assigned to the Fürstenberg house and placed under the administration of the Werdenberg ministerial Jehle to Trochtelfingen. The Mansberger family and related households subsequently entered the service of the counts of Württemberg. In 1394 the children of Agate von Salmendingen and Burkhard von Mansberg formally renounced claims to the castle and the village of Salmendingen.

By 1487 the ruined site was acquired by the house of Württemberg from Caspar Remp von Pfullingen. A sixteenth-century map records the place-name Schnatren and labels the location as an old ruin, while indicating that the fishpond continued to exist at that time. Around 1800 the municipality of Erpfingen, then owner of the ruin, sold the old tower together with one to two Morgen of surrounding forest land to Count Wilhelm of Württemberg. The municipality sought to repurchase the ruin in 1868 but did not succeed. Local tradition preserves a not-refuted theory that connects the modern Willmandingen family bearing the name Heinz to the medieval Heinz von Salmendingen. In 1985 conservation work was carried out at the ruin under architect Rudolf Brändle.