Helfenstein

Helfenstein Castle crowns a spur above Geislingen, on the edge of the Swabian Jura. Built in the early twelfth century, it was the ancestral seat of the counts of Helfenstein, whose lands by the mid-fourteenth century stretched around Geislingen, Heidenheim, Blaubeuren and Wiesensteig. The imperial city of Ulm took the castle as a pledge in 1382 and bought it outright in 1396, strengthening its defences for the age of artillery.

In 1552, during the Second Margrave War, Margrave Albert Alcibiades of Brandenburg-Kulmbach seized the fortress without a siege. Ulm's forces bombarded the occupying garrison with heavy stone cannon shot for several days and recovered it that August. Rather than leave the stronghold to be taken again, the city then demolished its own fortress.