Rebuilt at the behest of Kaiser Wilhelm II

The Château du Haut-Koenigsbourg, perched on a rocky spur over the Upper Rhine Plain, is no stranger to destruction. The Buntsandstein cliff was first mentioned as Stofenberk (Staufenberg) in a 774 deed. It was then a possession of the French Basilica of St Denis and the site of a monastery. In 1147, a castle named Burg Staufen (Castrum Estufin) was documented, and by 1192, the castle was called Kinzburg.

In the early 13th century, the fortification passed from the Hohenstaufen family to the dukes of Lorraine. In 1454, it was occupied by Elector Palatine Frederick I and in 1462 was set ablaze by the unified forces of the cities of Colmar, Strasbourg and Basel. In 1479, the Habsburg emperor Frederick III granted the ruins to the Counts of Thierstein, who rebuilt them with a defensive system suited to new artillery. When the last Thierstein died in 1517, the castle became a reverted fief and came into the possession of the Habsburg emperor Maximilian I.

In 1633, during the Thirty Years' War, the castle was besieged by Protestant Swedish forces. After a 52-day siege, it was burned and looted, leaving it unused and overgrown by the forest for several hundred years. In 1900 to 1908, the ruins were rebuilt at the behest of the German kaiser Wilhelm II, who wished to create a castle lauding the qualities of Alsace in the Middle Ages and German civilization. The restoration was managed by the architect Bodo Ebhardt and was inaugurated on May 13, 1908.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons