Sulzburg, part I

Emboldened by driving Elias to five days of soccer camp in Opfingen, I decided yesterday to brave a longer roadtrip. I picked out a hike from our little Badische Zeitung pocket guide--a hike with ruins, of course--and my boy and I headed south to Sulzburg, nestled in the next valley past Staufen.

We hiked up, up, up into the wooded hills with our pocket guide, GPS watch, and topo-map in hand. Much of the way, we found an abundance of trail signs guiding us toward the Ruinen Neuenfels--though equally often, we arrived at intersections where not one trail was marked. After three hours, we found a handpainted metal sign at the top of the ridge--"Ruinen Neuenfels, 10 Min. -->" --and shortly thereafter, the ruins loomed before us.

These particular ruins come with a gruesome tale. The Lords of Neuenfels, first documented in written records in 1307, held various titles and official positions in the region until the 1500s. The last Lord, Christoph von Neuenfels, fell into financial ruin and in 1538 sold all of his property except the Burg to the nearby town of Britzingen for 420 gold Gulden. Two years later, Lord Neuenfels, his wife, his daughter, two maids, and three servants were murdered in the middle of the night; their bodies were discovered three days later. Following the murders--never solved--the Burg remained unoccupied and began its collapse not long afterward.

Update 5 June 2024: I've been hiking near enough to Neuenfels to see it listed on trail signs, so I googled it this evening. Turns out the murder story is from a 1540 ballad and invented for melodramatic entertainment. In reality, Christoph moved to Freiburg, got married in 1547, and died in 1550; his widow survived him by 53 (!) years.