It stands on a basalt knoll on the north, left bank of the Eder, directly opposite the confluence of the Schwalm. The Altenburg is the older and smaller sister castle of the Felsburg about 2 km northeast on the old trade route Frankfurter Landstrasse.
The slim, high keep with parts of its crenellated crown, parts of the curtain wall and a remainder of the walls of the former residential wing in the upper courtyard as well as two cellar rooms with barrel vaults on the right side of the castle entrance are preserved today. The ruin is to be renovated.
The Altenburg was probably the first residence of the Counts of Felsberg (Velisberc), first mentioned in 1060, who lived in the nearby Felsburg from 1072/1090 and until 1286. Members of a previous dynasty or vice-count of an unknown name are assumed to be the alleged builders. The Landgraves of Thuringia held this important checkpoint at the crossing of Frankfurter Strasse over the Eder. The Altenburg was most important in the time after Archbishop Konrad I of Mainz built the Heiligenburg on the opposite bank of the Eder in 1185 as a base against the landgraves.
The castle was first mentioned in documents as Aldinburg in 1322, when the widow Katherina of the knight and ministerial Werner von Besse and her sons and other heirs gave the castle with the associated water mill and the fishing to Landgrave Otto I of Hesse against 4 Hufen in front of the town of Felsberg exchanged. Subsequently, the lords of Elben, von Holzheim and von Linne are named as landgrave castle men on the Altenburg.
Landgrave Heinrich II renewed the Altenburg in 1333 in order to strengthen his position in relation to Kurmainz. In 1352 he gave half of the castle to the brothers Hermann and Gottschalk von Holzheim as pawns, and soon afterwards most of it passed into their possession when they acquired the share of those from Elben as a hereditary castle loan. The brothers erected the mantle wall and between 1388 and 1392 built the keep, which is still preserved today. In the course of a serious feud, the mighty knight Konrad II von Spiegel zum Desenberg defeated a force of Abbot Berthold II von Hersfeld in a bloody battle near Altenburg on September 21, 1367. Landgrave Hermann II strengthened his position in Hesse by hitting Pope Urban VI. and in March 1388 gave the Altenburg and the goods belonging to it to the Roman-German King Wenzel. The Altenburg was then raised to an aristocratic village in 1390. In addition to the lords of Holzheim with five eighths, Thiele von Elben and Werner von Gilsa were also partners in the castle fief in the early 15th century. In 1428 the wooden nobility also acquired a share in the castle due to their hereditary brotherhood with those of Linne, and in 1489 Thiemo von Wildungen also received a castle seat.
During the Peasants' War in 1525, a Franconian peasant troop pushed forward to Altenburg, captured it and burned it down. In 1527, Landgrave Philip I of Hesse transferred the entitlement to the castle and the associated goods in Böddiger, Maden, Rhünda etc. to his former tutor and guardian ruler, as compensation for the insults, loss of assets and income caused by his mother Re-appointed court judge and governor on the Lahn, Ludwig I. von Boyneburg zu Lengsfeld (1466–1537), combined with the obligation to rebuild the castle. Thereupon the castle and its accessories came to the Boyneburg zu Lengsfeld in 1537 after the death of Heinrich von Holzheim, the last of his line on the Altenburg. Ludwig's son Ludwig (III.), Born in 1535 from his second marriage to Elisabeth von Meysenbug - an older half-brother of the same name had died in 1529 - inherited the Altenburg and the family property in and near Felsberg. His half-brother and initial guardian Georg von Boyneburg-Lengsfeld (1504–1564), landgrave privy councilor, rebuilt the two-storey east wing of the Palas (the Georgenbau) for 800 guilders in 1540; the western residential wing remained in ruins.
Ludwig III. never lived on the Altenburg, became landgrave bailiff in Homberg an der Ohm and Borken and died in Homberg in 1568. His son Heidenreich (also Heiderich; † 1612) became the owner of the Altenburg. When the latter was exiled from Hesse in 1594 after having served two years in prison for stabbing his friend Friedrich von Baumbach in a dispute on August 20, 1592, he sold the Altenburg to his younger brother Urban I. von Boyneburg (1553– 1639), from 1585 under Landgrave Wilhelm IV of Hessen-Kassel landgrave court marshal and then under Landgrave Moritz Privy Council, 1608 chief bailiff in the Schmalkalden rule, 1623 war commissioner, 1626 governor of the Werra, 1626 war colonel, 1631–1634 governor of Fulda and most recently in command of the Ziegenhain Fortress. However, he never lived in the castle himself, as it was plundered by Tilly's troops during the Thirty Years' War in 1631 and devastated considerably; only his widow Anna Elisabeth, née von Beuren, moved into her widow's residence there in 1639. Both son, Johann Friedrich († 1647), married to Elisabeth von Geyso, did not live on the Altenburg either, but had the eastern residential wing built by Georg von Boyneburg demolished in 1640 and replaced by a two-story, mostly wooden hall.
His son Johann Urban was the first of his family to run the Altenburg lived in. In addition to various farm buildings, he had the so-called manor house, completed in 1721, built at the northern foot of the castle hill, made it his wife's widow's residence and died in 1721 on the Altenburg. The gradually decaying residential wing was at least partially inhabited until 1760, but the main residence was the manor house built below the castle. Johann Urban's son, the Oberstallmeister Carl von Boyneburg, died unmarried at the castle in 1764 and, after a long inheritance dispute with those of Butler zu Wildsprechtroda and a 1801 settlement with the Allodial heirs, she fell to the imperial baron Georg August Adelbert Wilhelm von Boyneburg-Lengsfeld, a descendant of Ludwig III, who died in 1568. from Boyneburg to Lengsfeld. The castle, which was no longer inhabited and neglected due to the long dispute, continued to fall into disrepair, and the residential buildings there were demolished in 1811 because they were in disrepair.
In 1816 new barns, stables, a brandy distillery and a tenant apartment were built on the grounds of the estate. The castle gate, which was still on the former castle building in 1833, was later moved to the manor, and the keep was provided with a wooden staircase and used as a lookout tower.
In 1911 the manor house was expanded by the imperial count and baronial von Boineburg-Lengsfeld’sche Rentamt; the coat of arms of the imperial counts of Boineburg and Lengsfeld was attached to the gable.
In 1943, after the destruction of the Edertalsperre (Operation Chastise) on the night of May 16-17, numerous Altenburg residents sought refuge from the floods in Altenburg. In 1945 the ruin suffered further damage from American tanks.
After the end of the Second World War, the former lieutenant general of the Wehrmacht, Hans Freiherr von Boineburg-Lengsfeld, lived on the estate, where he died in 1980 as the last male offspring of the Boyneburg-Lengsfeld tribe in Germany. Gut and castle ruins came to his two daughters.
The castle ruins are still privately owned by the von Boineburg family and are not open to visitors. It can only be viewed once a year at the open house.
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