| Königsburg | |
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The keep of Königsburg Castle |
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Location within Germany
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| General information | |
| Type | hill castle |
| Classification | ruins |
| Location | Königshütte |
| Coordinates | |
| Completed | first mentioned 1312 |
| Height | 460 m above sea level |
Königsburg is a ruined medieval castle southeast of Königshütte, a village in the borough of Oberharz am Brocken, in Harz district in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt.
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The ruins are located above the confluence of the Warme Bode and Kalte Bode rivers in the Harz Mountains in central Germany. They lie at a height of 460 metres above sea level on the edge of a wooded plateau and offer a good view of the Wurmberg and the Brocken, the highest mountains in Lower Saxony and the Harz respectively.
In 1312 the site is first mentioned in the records as castrum Königshof when Bishop Albrecht von Halberstadt purchased the castle from Knappen Heinrich von Botvelde. In 1324 there is another mention of it as castrum Köningshof acqisivit, then all went quiet until it is described in 1709 for the first time as Königsburg. At that time it had already fallen into ruins.
When Paul Höfer carried out extensive excavations in the years from 1898 to 1901, he assumed he had discovered the long sought after palace (Pfalz) of Bodfeld and produced several publications about it, although this has been subsequently questioned by later researchers like Paul Grimm and Carl Erdmann. Even today it is advertised that the Königsburg is one of the most historic places in the Harz.
Of the original castle only the remains of the keep and several moats and ramparts remain today. It is checkpoint number 41 on the Harzer Wandernadel hiking trail network.