Waxenberg castle ruins

Waxenberg castle ruins
	Waxenberg castle ruins
Creation time :	before 1300
Castle type :	Hilltop castle
Conservation status:	ruin
Standing position :	county
Place:	Oberneukirchen
Geographical location	48 ° 28 '32 " N , 14 ° 11' 19" E Coordinates: 48 ° 28 '32 " N , 14 ° 11' 19" E
Height:	802 m above sea level A.

The Waxenberg castle ruins are the ruins of a hilltop castle above the center of Waxenberg in the municipality of Oberneukirchen in the Mühlviertel in Upper Austria . The current ruin was built before 1300 and burned down in 1756 after a lightning strike. The ruin is owned by the Starhemberg family and has been renovated by the Waxenberg cultural association since the 1950s.

Surname

The added name can be traced back to mhd. Was or wahs (= sharp, cutting ), which reflects the nature of the terrain of the castle location: The name Waxenberg describes a pointed / steep mountain cone in this sense.

Documented names were around 1146 and around 1170 Wassenberc, 1216 Wassenberch, 1359 Waezsenberg, 1416 Wächsenberch, 1426 Wässenwerkch, 1499 Wechsenburg, 1544 Wächsenburg, 1569 Wäxennberg.

history

The first Waxenberg castle was built in 1140 by Ulrich and Cholo von Wilhering . It is located around 3.5 kilometers further south in the municipality of Herzogsdorf and is now known as Rotenfels or Alt-Waxenberg . The owners of this castle soon referred to themselves as Lords of Wilhering-Waxenberg and then only as Lords of Waxenberg .

Today's ruin in the local area of Waxenberg was built shortly before 1300, after Rotenfels was abandoned around 1291. The castle belonged to the Habsburgs and was a sovereign fiefdom . As early as 1306, the district court of Waxenberg was raised to a county. The district court was one of the most important and oldest in the middle Mühlviertel.

Waxenberg Castle around 1674, engraving by GM Vischer

Heinrich I von Wallsee appears to be the first owner of the fief around 1300. In 1435 the brothers Kaspar and Balthasar Schallenberg acquired the castle, and in 1463 Heinrich von Liechtenstein was mentioned as the owner. The Lichtenstein family was followed by Michael von Traun in 1492 , Wolfgang Jörger zu Tollet in 1504 and Nikolaus Rabenhaupt von Suche in 1523. The next pledge went to Erasmus and Wilhelm von Gera in 1533. Around 1594, Waxenberg was a refuge during the Turkish threat and was well armed. In 1614 Christoph von Gera acquired the rule as a free property for 330,000 guilders . In the Upper Austrian Peasants' War of 1626, the castle was captured, plundered and badly damaged by farmers. As a punishment after their defeat, the farmers had to renovate the castle.

In 1644 Konrad Balthasar von Starhemberg bought the castle and the manor, and the castle is still owned by the family today. Around 1750 there were 745 subjects in the rule. In 1756, the castle was almost completely destroyed by a lightning strike, then left to decay and so turned into ruins. In 1756, the Starhemberg family moved to Waxenberg Castle , around 200 meters away , which was probably built in the 17th century. In the period that followed, the castle fell into disrepair, and the Waxenberg cultural association has only been taking care of the preservation and renovation of the castle since the 1950s. This year, the 30-meter-high tower was expanded into a lookout point. After various renovations, these came to a conclusion in 2013.

description

The main castle had an area of 885 square meters, the outer castle covered 1260 square meters. Essentially only the 30-meter-high, round donjon has been preserved and can be climbed. The keep dates from the 15th century and has a diameter of ten meters with a wall thickness of three meters. The tower was spared the lightning strike of 1756, but the outer bailey has almost completely disappeared. From Palas only remnants of walls can be seen.

A battery tower from the 16th century still stands in the direction of the castle . It had wide windows for defense and was below the outer bailey. The square tower is now open at the top and used to be covered by a tent roof.

Waxenberg castle ruins
Observation tower
Battery tower

literature

Leopold Josef Mayböck : The castles Waxenberg and Rotenfels. A settlement-historical treatise on the area between the Große Mühl and the Haselgraben from the high and late Middle Ages to modern times. Schwertberg 2018, pp. 1–89 ( PDF in the forum OoeGeschichte.at).
Otto Guem : Lordship of Waxenberg. Origin and history. In: Mühlviertler Heimatblätter . Volume 6, Linz 1966, issue 5/6, pp. 81–83 ( online (PDF) in the forum OoeGeschichte.at).
Herbert E. Baumert, Georg Grüll : Castles and palaces in Upper Austria. Volume 1: Mühlviertel and Linz. Vienna 1988, pp. 72-75.
Oskar Hille: Castles and palaces of Upper Austria. Wilhelm Ennsthaler, 2nd edition, Steyr 1992, ISBN 3850683230 .
Konrad Schiffmann : Historical place name lexicon of the state of Upper Austria. Linz 1935 (supplementary volume published by Verlag Oldenbourg, Munich 1940).