Bodenheim Castle

Already 32,000 years ago, the fields around were inhabited by prehistoric people of the Aurignac culture. During excavations starting in 1969, the first mainland dwelling places of this Ice Age man were found in West Germany. Around the turn of the century, Bodenheim seems to have developed into a permanent place of residence. The Roman road Cologne-Trier led through the town. A Roman settlement is through coin finds, a Frankish settlement mainly through large burial grounds from the 5th-8th. century. At the latest since the turn of the first millennium, Bodenheim has belonged to the Lommersum Court Association. A family of this name was first mentioned in a document in 1136 with a woman Seburg von Bodenheim, but it was only in a fiefdom of the Duke of Brabant from 1312 that Adolphus de Bodenem was listed as the fiefdom of the castrum Bodenem. With Johann von Bodenheim, the last male member of this family died in 1377. The castle falls to Johann von Vischenich.In the absence of male descendants, the castle passed to the Brent von Vernich family around 1400. However, after only two generations, the Brentsche epoch in the history of the castle came to an end around 1480.In 1446 the von Tomberg family, called Worms, first appeared in a document in the dominion of Bodenheim. They were linked to the Brents of Vernich by marriage and occupied the castle. Around 1520 Goswin, a Tomberg, appears in documents as a feudal proprietor of Bodenheim. His son Dietrich rebuilds the castle after it was plundered and burned down several times. Due to a lack of male descendants, the castle fell to Daniel von Hersel in 1629.Thanks to his high position as electoral treasurer in Cologne and the associated connections, Daniel von Hersel was able to get Bodenheim Castle through the Thirty Years' War without major damage - albeit only at great financial sacrifice. The Hersel family kept Bodenheim Castle in their possession for almost 200 years.
Bodenheim Castle around 1860, Alexander Duncker CollectionIn 1755 Clemens August von Hersel inherited the castle. After his death, it falls to his two daughters. The older married Karl Eugen Graf von Hatzfeld-Wildenburg in 1792, who died shortly after the birth of their son Edmund. After the death of his mother in 1833, Count Edmund inherited her share of the estate and organized extensive construction and repair measures, since the castle, which was uninhabited in French times, had been severely damaged by storms and rain. In 1845, Count Edmund and his aunt sold Bodenheim Castle to the Duke of Arenberg.The Arenberg family, one of the most successful and wealthiest dynasties in the Eifel, never lived in Bodenheim Castle, but leased it to the Thelen family for three generations. In 1930, Duke August sold Bodenheim Castle to the Kieselstein tenant family, who still own it today.