Trifels
Trifels, one of the most important castles of the Middle Ages, is mentioned for the first time in a legal document in 1081 when Diemar of Trifels gave the castle to the Roman-German king. The document probably refers to the anti-king Hermann of Salm. Due to discoveries from the celtic and roman epochs, it is imaginable that there were older fortifications on the foremost summit of the mountain above Annweiler. In the 1930s archeological discoveries of stone work, stairways and balcony holes which were chiseled into the cliff, make it evident that a castle was constructed during the epoch of the Salien emperors and kings.
In 1112 the archbishop of Mainz gave Trifels to the Emperor Heinrich V. who used it one year later as a prison. Soon afterwards the important time of Trifels started, as from 1125 the imperial insignia were kept there. They remained at the castle with some interruptions until the 13 th century. In 1192/94 Trifels served as a prison for the English King Richard I. the Lionheart and soon afterwards for high-ranking Sicilian prisoners following their unsuccessful revolt against the Emperor Heinrich VI. From 1195 the treasures of the Normans, which had fallen into the hands of the Staufer when they conquered the kingdom Sicily, were kept at the castle.
A percentage of the income of a nearby mint financially supported the extension of Trifels. The mint was founded by King Friedrich II. latest in 1219, when Annweiler was nominally elevated to a town.
The decline of the Staufer was also the end of the glorious times for the castle. In 1273 King Rudolf of Habsburg had already transferred the imperial insignia to the Kyburg Castle, which is geographically now part of Switzerland, and they did not return to Trifels apart from a short interlude under Adolf of Nassa between 1292 and 1298. During the reign of Ludwig the Bavarian the Castle was mortgaged to the count palatines Rudolf II. and Ruprecht I. in 1330. From them it went to the dukes of Pfalz-Zweibrücken and stayed with them until the end of the Old Empire.
In 1309/10 and 1359 Trifels was extended and in 1525 the dukes of Pfalz-Zweibrücken repaired damages made during the Peasants’ War. Further renovations in 1568 consisted only in necessary conservation work, as the files of the Duke’s archive were kept at Trifels. A winery bill from 1595 documents the miserable inventory of the former imperial castle at that time. The residencal building suffered from irrepairable damages due to a lightning strike, nevertheless the ruin served as a safe house during the 30 Year War.
Important construction elements such as walls, sandstone columns and floor slabs underwent serious deterioration which continued in the 17 th and 18 th century. In the middle of the 19 th century and particularly after the foundation of the Trifels Association in 1866 this deterioration was halted. After archeological excavations in 1937/38 the Bavarian Ministerpräsident Siebert initiated the reconstruction of Trifels with the aim of creating a “national consecration site”. After the Second World War the construction work, which did not sufficiently refer to the historical guidelines, came to an end.
