History of Reichenstein Castle

Once upon a time, a young knight lived at Reichenstein Castle. He was madly in love with a young lady at the neighboring Rheinstein Castle. It was a love that the damsel returned with all her heart. On one of his journeys, the knight even brought his beloved a magnificent white horse as a gift. Together, the two young people rode through the surrounding forests. Their love for one another grew ever stronger, and they decided to marry.

Since it was customary at the time for a suitor to ask the bride’s father for her hand in marriage, the young knight chose his uncle to do so. The uncle immediately set off for Rheinstein Castle to secure the bride’s consent on his nephew’s behalf. But as fate would have it, the uncle was smitten the moment he laid eyes on the damsel. His original mission was quickly forgotten. Now it was the uncle himself who desired the damsel as his wife. The bride’s father did not hesitate either—after all, the uncle seemed to him a far better match for his daughter. All her lamentations and pleas were to no avail. The damsel was promised in marriage to the uncle.

On the day of the wedding, the wedding party set off for the Clemens Chapel, where the ceremony was to take place. Once again, fate intervened. On the way, the uncle and groom’s horse was stung by a hornet. The horse reared up wildly, throwing the entire wedding procession into disarray and causing utter chaos.

It was the perfect opportunity the bride had been waiting for. She quickly made her escape toward Reichenstein Castle—a route her white horse knew all too well. Before the bride’s father and the groom could catch up to her, the horse and its rider reached Reichenstein Castle at the very last second. No sooner had the mighty gate closed behind them than the furious pursuers were already standing before the locked castle gate. While attempting to scale the fortified walls of Reichenstein Castle, the treacherous uncle fell so badly that he died shortly thereafter.

So the remorseful father of the bride had no choice but to accept that he could no longer stand in the way of the love between his daughter and the young Knight of Reichenstein. Soon afterward, the wedding was celebrated once more, and the young couple lived happily ever after for many years at Reichenstein Castle.

It is a historically documented fact that Rudolf of Habsburg and his men captured Reichenstein Castle in 1282. During the siege, the robber barons of Reichenstein were overpowered and hanged from the nearest trees. Only the leader of the robber barons, Dietrich von Hohenfels, managed to escape. So much for the historical facts. But an old legend tells this story a little differently. Namely, like this:

Dietrich von Hohenfels, the last surviving robber baron at Reichenstein Castle, does not flee. Instead, he begs King Rudolf to spare his nine sons and let them live. Rudolf rejects this plea and instead proposes that a “trial by ordeal” decide the matter. The site where the Clemens Chapel stands today served as the place of execution. To hear the verdict, all the sons had to line up side by side in a row. King Rudolf then spoke:

“Look, you murderer, there stand your sons. Soon your head will roll in the sand, but if you manage to run past your brood, I will spare the lives of all those you have passed.”

Dietrich von Hohenfels listened intently to the king’s words and silently glanced at the path he would soon have to run down—headlong—in order to save the lives of as many of his sons as possible.

And so it came to pass. In the very next moment, Dietrich’s head rolled across the sand. Then came moments of horror and dread that sent icy shivers down the spines of everyone present. Dietrich’s bleeding corpse did not fall to the ground. It merely staggered briefly. Then the headless man began to walk unsteadily along the line of his sons. Only when he staggered past the last of his nine sons did the headless body of the once most feared robber knight of the Middle Rhine Valley collapse to the ground. As this happened, a high fountain of blood is said to have spurted from the stump of his neck and poured down on the bystanders. Rudolf von Habsburg, so the legend goes, pale as a sheet and trembling all over, spared the nine sons and made his escape as quickly as he could.

As part of the 19th-century “Romance of the Rhine” movement, the French writer Victor Hugo also visited Reichenstein Castle, which was still in ruins at the time of his visit. Hugo recorded the following discovery in writing:

“As I walked along, my eye fell upon the corner of a tombstone peeking out from the rubble. Eagerly, I bent down. Using my hands and feet, I cleared away the debris, and within moments I had uncovered a very beautiful fourteenth-century tombstone made of red Heilbronn sandstone. On this slab lay, almost half-raised, a fully armored knight, though his head was missing. Beneath the feet of this stone man stood the following couplet, still clearly legible in large Roman capital letters:

“VOX TACUIT. PERIIT LUX. NOX RUIT ET RUIT UMBRAVIR CARET IN TUBA QUO CARET EFFIGIES”

Of whom did these verses—sad in content, barbaric in form—speak? If one were to believe the second verse on the stone, the skeleton below was as headless as the portrait above. What do the three X’s mean, which stood out so strikingly from the rest of the inscription due to their unusual size? As I examined the slab closely and cleaned it thoroughly with a handful of grass, I noticed other strange symbols around the image. They were the three X’s in three different, fantastical, and intricate forms. I learned nothing more about the beheaded, mysterious knight. A sad fate! What crime could this unfortunate man have committed? People have condemned him to death; Providence to oblivion. Darkness upon darkness. The portrait lacks a head; the inscription lacks his name; his story is absent from people’s memories. His gravestone will no doubt soon disappear. One fine day, a winegrower from Soneck or Rupertsberg will take the ashes of the mutilated skeleton—which presumably still lie beneath it—scatter them with his feet, chop up the stone, and turn the tombstone into a lintel for an inn door. And the farmers will sit around drinking, and the old women will spin, and the children will laugh at the statue of the nameless man, who was once beheaded by the executioner and is now being sawed apart by a wall.”

The tombstone described by Hugo was never actually found. Perhaps a winemaker from Trechtingshausen smashed it to use the fragments for other purposes? Or was the slab destroyed or walled over during the reconstruction of Reichenstein Castle? After all, no one knows exactly where Victor Hugo found the tombstone. Nor does anyone know to date whether Reichenstein Castle harbors any other secrets besides this one.

Various legends also surround the Clemen Chapel, located about 200 meters below Reichenstein Castle. One of them claims that the chapel was built by the relatives of those robber barons who were executed by Rudolf of Habsburg—at the very spot where Rudolf once pronounced his “trial by ordeal” and the “headless man” saved the lives of his nine sons.

Another legend tells of a wood-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river-river The raftsman prayed to God to save him and his raft. At the same time, he promised that, in gratitude for the raft’s rescue, he would build a church at the spot where he found it. Indeed, after the storm, he found it on a sandbar below Reichenstein Castle. As promised, he built what is now known as the Clemens Chapel on the bank of the Rhine where he was saved.