page_title: Großer Kornberg
section_title: Ruins of Hirschstein
hierarchical_section_title: Großer Kornberg / Ruins of Hirschstein
caption_attribution_description: Description: Ruine Hirschstein am Großen Kornberg Source: selbst fotografiert Date: 7. Oktober 2005 Author: Schubbay
context_page_description: With its 827-metre-high peak the Große Kornberg is the northeast cornerstone of the Fichtel Mountains in south Germany. It forms a wooded ridge, which is recognisable from a long distance by its former military surveillance tower It is also the local 'house' mountain of Schönwald and Schwarzenbach an der Saale.
  Geologically, granite is the underlying rock. Its lower strata are grainy, but the upper layers contain fine-grained granite. Abandoned quarries are evidence of the ancient craft of stonemasons.
  The oldest known document dates to 1317 and refers to the mountain as the Kurnberg. According to Professor Dr. Adolf Gütter, in Middle High German Kurn means 'mill', so it meant 'mill mountain'. On its northwest slopes there was once a village called Mühlhausen but it had been abandoned by the end of the 14th century.
  The Kornberg itself lacks the imposing rock towers and felsenmeer terrain typical of other mountain peaks in the Fichtelgebirge. However, its secondary summit, the Hirschstein, has many steep, sometimes vertical, rock towers which made the location attractive to the medieval castle of the same name, of which now only a few remnants are left.
context_section_description: On the northern path between the station of Kirchenlamitz-Ost and the Kornberg summit lies the rock castle (Felsburg) of Hirschstein (744 m above NN). It is the site of a former castle of which only a few remains are still visible.
  The castle is one of the oldest in the Fichtelgebirge, is believed to have belonged in 1206 to Rüdiger and Utzo von Hirzberg zen Herschenstein (of the family of Hirschberg). However it does not appear in the records until 1317. At that time Count Berthold of Henneberg enfeoffed the hus on the Kurnberg to the five brothers, the Hirzbergers, Herr Heinrich, Fridrich, Arnolt, Eberhart and Heymann and others. Around the middle of the 14th century the castle was destroyed, because in 1361 Burgrave Frederick of Nuremberg allowed the Hirschbergs to rebuild the castle. However, it was never rebuilt. During the Thirty Years' War the ruins and vaults of the old castle were used by the local countryfolk as a refuge. By margravial order the vaults were filled with rubble in the 18th century because gypsies and other shady characters had squatted there.
caption: Ruins of Hirschstein
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