Eppo the Knight

Eppo the Knight is Eppstein's legendary founder. The way I first heard the story was that Eppo the Knight was wandering through the Taunus hills when he heard the calls for help of a lovely young maiden named Bertha. He rescued Bertha von Bremthal from a cave and vowed he'd capture the giant who had captured her. He did so with a giant net and rolled the monster off a cliff to his death. Sir Eppo then built Eppstein Castle on the site where he'd done away with the giant, and he and Bertha lived happily ever after. One of the giant's ribs still hangs over the castle entrance.

John Murray's account in Hand-Book for Travellers on the Continent (1836) is somewhat more gruesome and fanciful--the maiden is chained to the cave by a giant who has slain her kindred; the net Eppo retrieves is magical, having been brought back by the maiden's father as booty from Palestine.

In Eneas Sweetland Dallas's Once a Week, Volume 7 (1862), the giant is overcome by "Rhine-wine," so after Eppo envelopes him in the "hunting-net," the struggling monster breaks his neck in his struggle to get free.

The blushing damsel herself captures the giant in Lewis Spence's Hero Tales and Legends from the Rhine (1915). Sir Eppo then rolls the "howling monster" over the precipice.

Eppstein elementary school students still write down their versions of the Eppo the Knight saga, and his image is everywhere, from the wall of a local restaurant above to the logo of the local Burg-Schule (castle school).

A real knight named Eberhard (nickname: Eppo) from the noble Frankish Konradiner family most likely laid the first stone of the castle. This small stone tower was probably built already 200 years before the castle's existence was documented in 1122.