Ganerbenburg

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.

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.

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