page_title: Ganerbenburg
section_title: Ganerbenburgen and Ganerbschaft
hierarchical_section_title: Ganerbenburg / Ganerbenburgen and Ganerbschaft
caption_attribution_description: English: Salzburg castle near Bad Neustadt (Landkreis Rhön-Grabfeld, Lower Franconia, Germany). Ground plan (Information board in front of the castle) Deutsch: Burg Salzburg bei Bad Neustadt (Landkreis Rhön-Grabfeld, Unterfranken). Grundriss auf einer Infotafel vor der Burg
context_page_description: A Ganerbenburg is a castle occupied and managed by several families or family lines at the same time. These families shared common areas of the castle including the courtyard, well and chapel whilst maintaining their own private living quarters. They occurred primarily in medieval Germany.
context_section_description: Ganerbenburgen often came about as a result of a type of inheritance known as a Ganerbschaft. Each branch of the family built, usually, one residential building within a common curtain wall. Sometimes these residences were expanded into independent castles in their own right within the common castle site. Ganerbenburgs also resulted from the sale of parts of a castle in times of financial hardship or through the pledging or enfeoffment of an element of the castle.
  The German word ganerbe appears in the Middle High German romance, Parzival, written by Wolfram von Eschenbach around 1200. The legal term Ganerbschaft appears from textual evidence to go back at least to the second half of the 9th century. In Old High German, gan meant "common", "joint" or "commoner". The first historically verifiable Ganerbschaft arrangement appears in the 13th century in Alsace at the castle of Haut-Kœnigsbourg.
  The castles of powerful feudal lords were often planned from the outset as Ganerbenburgs. Each castellan or Burgmann was responsible for the management and defence of a sector of the castle. This was not just for practical reasons; the higher nobility naturally wanted to limit the power of his liegemen (Dienstmannen). A good example of this is the Franconian castle of Salzburg near Bad Neustadt an der Saale, a castle enfeoffed (Lehensburg) by the Würzburg bishops.
  Ganerbenburgs that had evolved were sometimes forced to submit to the suzerainty of more powerful feudal lords. The Würzburg chronicler, Lorenz Fries, mentioned three such examples in his bishop's chronicle. In 1458, the joint lords of Steckelberg Castle near Schlüchtern refused access to the bishop and attempted to modernize the castle fortifications. Bishop John III of Grumbach eventually asserted his authority after a military conflict.
  In 1478, despite an imperial mandate, the mighty imperial city of Nuremberg had to acquiesce to Count Palatine Otto II of Mosbach selling Rothenberg Castle above Schnaittach to a community of 44 Franconian knights. This group of knights clearly wanted to build a strong bulwark against competition from the rich citizens, who were deeply mistrusted. Significantly, even the higher nobility were denied co-ownership; only the most important Franconian families from the lesser nobility were permitted to participate in joint ownership.
caption: Plan of Franconia's Salzburg Castle above Bad Neustadt
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