Welcome in this castle, located at 757 metres up!
In the 12th century, Frederic de Hohenstaufen raised a former fortress: knights, who terrorized the area and robbed the travelers, lived there in the 15th century: the bishop of Strasbourg sent an army to the castle, which was demolished in 1462.
In 1479, ruins were given to count Oswald de Thierstein, who immediately rebuilt the fortress. Thierstein successors (Hapsburg family, the De Sickingen then the Bollwiller) extended and embellished their castle since 1519, until the 17th century.
But the Swedish besieged the place in 1683, during the Thirty Years war and demolished it...
In the 19th century, city of Sélestat owned the ruins, which became German after the 1870 war.
The city gave them to the emperor William of Germany! A very nice gift!
William was immediately seduced, and decided to rebuild the castle (it cost 2 millions of marks, paid out by people from Alsace!)
Building work was finished in 1908, supervised by the architect Bobo Ebhardt, a kind of German Viollet-le-Duc who gave rise to polemics.
At that time, people found the castle excessively restored... a Gothic pastiche! Anyway, France get back the Koenigsbourg when Germany lost World War I...