Wirtemberg Castle

The castle went up in 1080 on a 411-metre rise in the Stuttgart district of Rotenberg, a spur of the Schurwald between Cannstatt and Esslingen am Neckar, after the ancestors of the Württemberger dynasty had probably given up their first seat at Beutelsbach, also called Kappelberg. It became the chief seat of the dynasty that was named after it, and the land of Württemberg took its name from the castle in turn. The new castle was described as a stronghold with three ring walls, extensive stables and several outbuildings, a fine inner courtyard and a stately manor house. Its chapel was consecrated on 7 February 1083 by Bishop Adalbert II of Worms in honour of Saint Nicholas; the consecration stone, which survives in the Russian Orthodox burial church now standing on the castle's ground, is the earliest documentary witness to the House of Württemberg, and because it records the chapel's consecration the castle was probably largely finished by then.

The castle's name changed repeatedly over the centuries, written Wirdeberch, Werdenberc and Wirtinsberk, and its origin was puzzling people as early as the Middle Ages. Conrad of Wirtinsberk appears as a witness in a charter of 2 May 1092, the oldest documentary mention of the name Württemberg.

From 1092 to 1495 the castle repeatedly served as the seat of the counts of Württemberg, though the counts' ministerials lived there too - one, Swenegar von Wirtenberg, is known by name. In 1311 the neighbouring free imperial cities, acting under Emperor Henry VII, destroyed Wirtemberg Castle for the first time.

Rebuilding began after 1311, on smaller dimensions than before. That second castle went up in flames in 1519, when the Swabian League under the command of Duke William of Bavaria occupied almost the whole of Württemberg. Militarily the burning was pointless: by the start of the sixteenth century the castle counted for nothing and was occupied at most by a steward, so the destruction of the old ancestral seat is taken to have been purely symbolic.

Duke Ulrich of Württemberg was married to Sabina of Bavaria, William's sister, and the marriage had broken down over Ulrich's affairs and acts of violence. When Ulrich murdered Hans von Hutten, the husband of his mistress, with his own hand, the rupture was complete and Sabina fled to her brother in Munich. The marital quarrel weighed so heavily on the relationship between the two men that during the intervention William had "das schloß wierttenberg (…) in der nacht anzünden und verprennen" - set alight and burned by night. Ulrich had to leave the country.

Ulrich returned to Württemberg in 1534 with the help of the Landgrave of Hesse and had the castle at least partly restored, stationing a small permanent garrison of up to three men. The rebuilt ancestral seat was a prestige project without any function, and after Ulrich's death Duke Christoph withdrew the castle guards in 1554.

The buildings were still kept in repair and housed court servants and forestry officials, and for a time the site was used as a prison. Because of the good view it served in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as an observation post for the fire watch, and the ruling princes came only rarely. King Friedrich I, who reigned from 1797 to 1816, was the first to take an interest in the old seat again and had it partly restored.

When his wife died in the winter of 1819, King Wilhelm I ordered the castle taken down so that a burial chapel for Queen Katharina could be raised on the spot. How much there was left to demolish is told two ways: as a ruin fallen in after several hundred years of neglect, or as a building still comparatively well preserved in 1819. Wilhelm had drawings and plans of the surviving fabric made first. The castle had become a favourite excursion for Stuttgart's citizens in the Romantic period and there were protests against the demolition, which achieved nothing; by 1 April 1820 the old castle was completely gone.

From 1820 to 1824 Giovanni Salucci built the mausoleum on the site in neoclassical form, and it has been open to the public since 1907. In that same year King Wilhelm II officially renamed the Rotenberg "Württemberg".