Burgruine Burgörner

Hettstedt, Germany, Germany

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Burgruine Burgörner near Hettstedt, Germany, is the ruin of a medieval hilltop castle on a spur above the Wippertal valley in Saxony-Anhalt's Mansfeld-Südharz district, with fortifications dating back to the Neolithic era through the Bronze and Iron Ages.

First mentioned in 1159 alongside a lord of Örner, the roughly square 60-meter-sided enclosure featured a 12-meter bergfried tower in its southwest corner and outer defensive walls and ditches; from the 14th century, the Counts of Mansfeld held it as a fief.

Sold to the Counts of Schulenburg in 1560 and repurchased by Mansfeld in 1668, it passed to the Counts of Posadowsky in 1713 and later the von Humboldt family under Prussian rule, gradually falling into disuse, quarried for stone by locals from the 19th century, and now overlaid by Altdorf's cemetery.