The Harliburg (also Harlyburg or Herlingsberg ) is a former imperial castle ( Reichsburg ) in the Harly Forest , in southeast Lower Saxony , Germany .
9-404: The location of the former hillside castle ( 193 m above sea level (NN) ) is about 1 km ( as the crow flies ) north-northeast of the town of Vienenburg (141 m above NN ), in the county of Goslar and around 10 km (as the crow flies) northeast of the town of Goslar . The River Oker flows below the castle site to the south and east, around the southeastern end of
18-516: A result of being dominated by higher ground on the uphill side. Whereas hilltop castles tend to have good inter-visibility with other castle sites, the restricted view of hillside castles such as Ewloe Castle means they were used to monitor movement along particular transport routes. Examples of hillside castles include Katz Castle in Sankt Goarshausen , Ehrenfels Castle in Rüdesheim and
27-555: The B ;241 federal road . The Harliburg was built in 1203 by King Otto IV as an imperial stronghold. Like the Liebenburg , that stood around 10 km to the northwest, it was intended to threaten the access roads to Goslar, which were held by the Hohenstaufen lord, Philip of Swabia . In 1218, Otto himself stayed at the castle shortly before his death. In the late 13th century,
36-557: The circular ramparts and moats remaining. The contemporary poet, Heinrich Rosla , from Nienburg published the Latin epic poem, Herlingsberga about the Harliburg. Hillside castle A hillside castle is a castle built on the side of a hill above much of the surrounding terrain but below the summit itself. It is thus a type of hill castle and emerged in Europe in the second half of
45-402: The 11th century. As a result of the particular danger to the site from attacks on the castle from the rising ground above it, this weak point is usually strongly protected by a shield wall or a Bergfried . Often a combination of these two passive defensive works were used. The advantage of a hillside castle was that its well was much less deep than that of a hilltop castle . The boring of
54-462: The Bishop of Hildesheim captured the Harliburg after a four-month siege, and had it slighted . Its stone was used inter alia to build the water castle of Wiedelah between 1292 and 1297, some 2 km southeast. The stone was also used in the construction of the nearby castle of Vienenburg in the town of the same name in 1300. Today the site of the former Harliburg is covered by dense forest, only
63-552: The Harly Forest. A few hundred metres southwest of the Harliburg, in the Oker valley, lies Lake Vienenburg ( Vienenburger See ). Almost exactly 2 km west-northwest is the hill of Harlyberg (255.9 m above NN), the highest point of the Harly Forest. A section of the A ;395 motorway runs past the Harly Forest, a few hundred metres east of the old Harliburg, where it is crossed by
72-703: The castle was transferred to the House of Welf . At the Diet of Erfurt in 1290, the Bishop of Hildesheim accused Henry the Admirable of Brunswick-Grubenhagen of breaking the Landfriede or "imperial peace" that had been in force since 12834, by tolerating highway robbery by the soldiers garrisoning the castle. As a result, the Herlingsberg War was precipitated, during which, in 1291,
81-760: The well was often the most expensive and time-consuming element in the overall construction of a castle. Often, however, its water supply was ensured with the additional help of donkeys as pack animals , entailing the construction of special donkey tracks. There are numerous hillside castles in the German Central Uplands , especially in stream and river valleys, for example on the Middle Rhine . They were often built as customs posts ( Zollburgen ) and lay close to trading routes. In all they make up less than 1% of all medieval castles as categorised by topographic location, because they had enormous strategic disadvantages as
#229770