The nice thing about the “Erdmannliloch” is that there are countless stories, legends and conjectures around this Nagelfluh cave near Bachs - and none of them are certain. So you can picture a lot yourself. In the book “Zurich Building Stories”, a chapter is dedicated to the enigmatic cave. But even after reading this article, some big question marks remain. Today it is very likely that the “Erdmannliloch” was a grotto castle - the only one in the Swiss Plateau, by the way. In the Middle Ages, a wall had made the cave a dwelling place; However, there are no written sources about the residents. And you don't know what the building looked like in detail either. In 1878 an excavation took place, during which stove tile fragments were found, writes Renata Windler in her article. But nothing more is known about it.

It is possible that the cave was then used as a hermitage - and of course by the "Erdmannli", of whom there are again several legends. One says that the good-natured dwarfs were born to a couple as a punishment because the man - knight Adalbert von Waldhausen - had locked a boy from the area in a tower for too long because of a minor offense. Another legend tells of the disappearance of the "Erdmannli". This was due to the stingy owner of the neighboring valley mill, who withheld the wages of the brownies for their work, but instead sprinkled flour around his mill to track down the Mannli. They didn't find it funny at all and disappeared forever.

Translated by Google •

Kermit

October 5, 2023

The Grottenburg Hohfluh, also Balmburg Hohfluh, on the map of Switzerland as Erdmännliloch, also Erdmannliloch, is the ruin of a medieval cave castle near Bachs in the canton of Zurich. It is the only known cave castle in the canton of Zurich (Wikipedia),

Translated by Google •

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Elevation 480 m

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Take Me There

Location: Bachs, Dielsdorf, Zurich, Switzerland

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