Gleichen
groups of castles in Germany
Gleichen (German pronunciation: [ˈɡlaɪçn̩] ) is the name of two groups of castles in Germany, thus named from their resemblance to each other (German: gleich = like, or resembling).
Castles in Thuringia between Gotha and Erfurt
The first is a group of three (hence called "die drei [three] Gleichen"), each situated on a hill in Thuringia between Gotha and Erfurt.
One of these called Gleichen, the Wanderslebener Gleiche (1221 ft. above the sea), was besieged unsuccessfully by the emperor Henry IV in 1088. It was the seat of a line of counts, one of whom, Ernest III, a crusader, is the subject of a romantic legend. Having been captured, he was released from his imprisonment by a Turkish woman, who returned with him to Germany and became his wife, a papal dispensation allowing him to live with two wives at the same time (see Reineck, Die Sage von der Doppelehe eines Grafen von Gleichen, 1891). After belonging to the elector of Mainz the castle became the property of Prussia in 1803. The second castle is called Mühlburg (1309 ft. above the sea). This existed as early as 704 and was besieged by Henry IV in 1087.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Gleichen” is groups of castles in Germany. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Gleichen, groups and castles, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gleichen” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.