Burg Rodenstein — the ghost army that announces war

OVERVIEW

Burg Rodenstein is the ruin of a hillside castle in the Odenwald, in the municipality of Fränkisch-Crumbach (Odenwaldkreis, southern Hesse), at 322 m in a side valley of the Gersprenz. It was built about 1240 by the lords of Crumbach and Rodenstein as a rival to Reichenberg Castle.

HISTORY

Parts passed to the Counts of Katzenelnbogen in 1346 and 1433, and in 1479 to Hesse. The castle was not ruined by war: a sketch of 1634 still shows intact buildings. After Adam von Rodenstein died of the plague with his whole family in 1635 it was no longer lived in and was quarried for building stone; the family died out in the male line in 1671. The ruin was secured in the 20th century; the Hofgut Rodenstein below, rebuilt after a fire in 1910, keeps a stone dated 1593 from the castle.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

The legend of the Rodensteiner, or Schnellertsgeist, is recorded from the first half of the 18th century: before a war, the 'lord of the Schnellerts' leads a ghost army noisily through the air from the ruin of Burg Schnellerts, through a particular farm, along the Gersprenz and through Fränkisch-Crumbach to Rodenstein, and returns quietly when the war ends. It is related to the Wild Hunt, and the German article suggests it may have arisen from an unexplained acoustic phenomenon. Many local farmers swore they had heard trumpets, creaking wagons and even single words; when more and more people claimed to have witnessed it and read it as a warning, the Count of Erbach had their statements entered in the official records (1742–1748), which spread the legend across Germany. Only at the end of the 18th century was the ghost identified with a Rodenstein — usually Hans III, cursed by his dying wife to rise from his grave whenever war threatened. The Brothers Grimm and Ludwig Bechstein recorded the tale; it was last reputedly heard in 1914.

VISITING

The ruin is reached from Fränkisch-Crumbach and from Reichelsheim; there is an inn in the Hofgut below. The Wildweibchenstein, a rock with its own legends, is about 750 m to the south-west.