Güssenburg Castle, Castle ruin in Hermaringen, Germany

Güssenburg Castle is a ruined spur castle on the Schloßberg, about 50 m above the Brenz valley. Its irregular rectangle of about 45 × 70 m is cut off on the south by a wide neck ditch. Behind it stands a 47 m long curtain wall of up to 3.4 m thick rubble masonry, with a square keep about 6 m high behind an inner ditch.

The fortress was founded in the mid-14th century and served the Güssenberg family as an administrative center for their lands. In 1449 it was destroyed by soldiers from multiple allied cities and never rebuilt afterward.

The castle gave its name to the Güssen family, ministeriales who served the Diepoldinger and later the Hohenstaufen and held Brenz, Haunsheim and Leipheim. The line died out in the 14th century, and the Haunsheim branch sold the fief to the Counts of Helfenstein in 1372. Since 1997 the ruin has been a station on the Straße der Staufer, and the local Burgverein restored it from 1981 to 1998.

The ruin stands on the Schloßberg, about 50 metres above the Brenz valley; the slopes fall away steeply on the north, west and east, so approach from the south across the neck ditch. The site was conserved in 1970/71 and again from 1981 to 1998 by the local castle society. The curtain wall is 47 metres long and its western part has partly collapsed.

A timber post built into the 3.4-metre-thick curtain wall was dated by dendrochronology to about 1350, which fixes the wall's construction to the mid-14th century. The keep's inner face, roughly 2 by 2 metres, is still faced with 26 courses of small ashlar blocks.