300 Museum yard

In the museum courtyard on the outside wall of the main house, you can see some unique pieces from older and more recent times….

The original Grol-Kreuz (Grol cross) is mounted behind the small garden gate just on the right side of the house wall. In 1986, the entire group of figures was renewed by a French artist with duplicates.

Leaning against the house wall, we see the former gallows of the Herrschaft Staufenberg. It is said to have been built in 1693 on the so-called Galgenfeld (the area between the housing district Allmend and Hatsbach). Whether and to what extent the gallows were used is not known. The columns served as supports for the basement ceiling of the former mine house in the district Hilsbach for about two hundred years.

In a specially glazed part of the building we see the first electrically operated water pump of Staufenberg Castle. It replaced the old castle well (Kindlesbrunnen) in 1919 and enabled the water supply from several springs below the Klingelberg. It took considerable effort to restore the pump, which today represents a unique technical monument far and wide. It is a so-called double-acting plunger pump of the kind that can only be found in Germany in the Deutsches Museum in Munich. However, it is presumed to be the only pump of its kind in Germany that is still working. The manufacturer was the family Bopp & Reuter in Mannheim, which owned the patent of 1871 on it.

Next to the pump, we can still see original wooden dykes (water line pipes) and the associated dyke drills. From 1837 to around 1860, wooden dikes of this kind were used to channel water from the “Stahlquelle” (steel spring) in the Sendelbach tine over 900 metres to what was then known as “Bad Staufenberg”, today the town hall and “Gasthaus zum Bären” (inn). There, healing baths were administered in a total of eight bathhouses.

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