The hillside castle Sichelnstein is located in the western foothills of the Kaufunger Forest in the Münden Nature Park. Within Sichelnstein, the hillside castle lies north above the valley of the Ingelheimbach, a northeastern tributary of the Nieste, at around 325 m above sea level. NN.
Another castle in the Nieste catchment area was Sensenstein Castle, 4.6 km to the south in the municipality of Nieste, which is still preserved as an archaeological monument.
Envy and jokes gave the two castles on both sides of the former Brunswick-Hessian border their names in connection with sickle and scythe, similar to the well-known example of the Rhenish castles cat and mouse. According to legend, the Duke of Brunswick, Otto der Quade, built a castle at the foot of the Staufenberg just to be able to rob the Hessians of the grain more easily. In allusion to this, he is said to have baptized the castle Sichelnstein, while Landgrave Hermann the scholar placed the castle Sensenstein opposite him and with the larger name also indicated broader intentions.
However, neither the reason for the naming nor the time when Sichelnstein Castle was built are documented. A document from the year 811 only confirms that two Saxon nobles named Amelung and Hiddi had to leave their country because of their devotion to Charlemagne and settled in the area of ??Vuivisanger, today's Wolfsanger. Hiddi's son Esiko founded the settlement of Esikerode, now Escherode, while Amelung's son Bennit established the village of Benniterode, now Benterode. Like Sichelstein, both places now belong to the larger community of Staufenberg.
It is obvious that Amelung's next descendants built Sichelnstein Castle in the 9th century to protect their fields, because at the end of a battle near Merseburg in 933, Amelung's great-grandson, who already called himself Wittilo von Sichelnstein, was knighted and received from King Henry l. permission to adorn his white shield with a yellow border, two silver sickles and a marble column in the center, symbols still featured in the arms of Sichelstein and Staufenberg today.
With the outbreak of the Star War in 1372, in which the knights rose up against the Hessian landgrave, Duke Otto the Quade of Brunswick had the castle fortified from scratch and invaded Hesse with his knights from here, ultimately without success. The skirmishes, sieges and looting ended in 1373 in favor of the Hessians, so that Otto had to cede the Sichelstein and the associated office a year later.
Castle and office Sichelnstein later changed hands several times through pledging. However, the castle must have belonged to Brunswick again as early as 1379, because in that year it was given to the second wife of Otto the Quaden together with the castle and the city of Münden as a bounty and dowry and later served the duchess as a widow's seat. Around 1500, the Hessian landgrave again managed the castle and appointed his vassal Friedrich Trott there as bailiff. The supreme court was subordinate to him. This was used to describe the villages on the plateau above Münden, a term that is still common today for all villages between Nieste and Werra. Large estates, including the Kaufunger Forest, belonged to Sichelstein Castle. As late as 1557, the farmers from the villages of Nienhagen, Sichelstein, Benterode, Wahnhausen, Lutterberg, Escherode, Landwehrhagen, Laubach, Spiekershausen, Speele, Hedemünden, Oberode and Bonaforth had to deliver their share of the interest.
There is no evidence of the later fate of Sichelstein Castle, including its destruction, but it can be assumed that it shared the fate of many castles in the Thirty Years' War. After the castle fell into disrepair, the stone material was used to build houses in Sichelnstein and Benteröd. When the old village church in Benterode threatened to collapse in 1787, it was felt necessary to construct a new building, using the remains of Sichelstein Castle as a quarry. The drawbridge and the castle gate entrance also disappeared more than 100 years ago.
The layout of the complex has a peculiar horseshoe shape, with the arch facing west and the straight side facing east. A seven to ten meter high enclosing wall forms the remains of the former fortress, from which all inner walls have disappeared. The castle must have been higher in the past, because there is no larger window opening in the walls that have been preserved, and only at a height of ten meters can you see the lowest window sills and openings in the front. The castle is irregularly built, the angle of one corner does not equal the acute angle of the other.
The medieval residential building can still be recognized by the slit-like windows with and without niches, the beginning of a continuous chimney, inner corbels for the ceiling beams and outer consoles with the bay walls of the secret room, as the privy was called.
Deep ditches, of which the western ditch still exists, once protected the castle from invaders. The only access was from the east via a gateway secured with a drawbridge over the moat, which led to a castle gate in the Gothic pointed arch shape, through which one can still enter the interior of the ruins today.
After 1973 to 1979, with the financial support of the federal government and the district of Göttingen, the then newly founded Staufenberg saved the ruins from further decay through thorough restoration, this only cultural-historical monument in the municipal area quickly developed into a meeting place and a meeting place for citizens and associations and for holding cultural events. In the castle complex there is now an open-air stage, which is used for concerts in the summer months. The entire courtyard is to be covered with an extendable tent roof construction. But the facility can also be rented for weddings, weddings and other celebrations.
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