Wolfstein castle ruins (Lower Austria)

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Remnants of the wall of the keep of Wolfstein Castle

The Wolfstein castle ruins are located in the area of ​​the village of the same name Wolfstein, which belongs to the Lower Austrian market town of Schönbühel-Aggsbach in the Wachau . The ruins of the Höhenburg in Spornlage are listed and stand on a hill above the village about nine kilometers northeast of Melk . Their name is related to a local legend according to which St. Wolfgang stopped on a stone in the valley under the castle on one of his journeys .

The history of the complex can only be reliably traced back to the beginning of the 13th century. It was the center of the Wolfstein reign and the seat of a regional court until the 15th century. In the course of its history, the castle saw different owners before it came to Göttweig Abbey in 1620 . This remained the owner until the 1990s before it sold the dilapidated castle to a couple who have been taking care of security and maintenance ever since.

history

Residents and owners

Nothing is known about the construction and first owner of the castle. The plant was probably founded in the 12th century. However, it is not certain that the mention of Ulrich von Wolfstein in 1135/1136 and the mention of Rudolf von Wolfstein in 1188 are related to this complex. At the beginning of the 13th century, Wolfstein Castle and Lordship were owned by the Dürnstein line of the Kuenringers as a fief of the Bavarian dukes . They set up a caretaker to manage the property for them. In 1217, Perchtold von Wolfstein, a follower of the Kuenringer was listed in a document.

As with Leutold III. von Kuenring-Dürnstein the last male representative of his line died in 1355, his sister Anna became sole heir of the Dürnstein estates. She brought the castle into her marriage to Heidenreich von Maissau , who later became the supreme inn and land marshal of the Duchy of Austria . His family remained mistress of the castle until 1430, when the complex was transferred to the Tursen von Tiernstein that year.

Towards the end of the 15th century, the property came to the Mühlwanger family, who also owned Grabenhof Castle, just four kilometers away . They were followed in 1542 by the Geyer von Osterburg. The enfeoffment of Johann Hektor Geyer von Osterburg with Wolfstein has been handed down for the year 1599. In 1605 he received the castle together with his brother Otto Friedrich as a fief. In 1615 Ludwig von Starhemberg , who resided at Schönbühel Palace , came into the possession of Wolfstein. The nearby Gurhof Castle also belonged to him . After the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, the possessions of the Protestant Ludwig were confiscated by Emperor Ferdinand II and subsequently given to the Göttweig Abbey as a pledge. After the Bavarian Elector Maximilian I renounced his feudal sovereignty in 1629 in favor of the monastery , he was finally able to buy Wolfstein Castle as his own free property in 1630. The monastery moved the administrative seat of the rule to the more conveniently located Gurhof Castle, which now also belonged to him. Presumably the castle was already in ruins at that time.

1993 Göttweig sold the ruins of the castle enthusiastic couple Andrea and Helmut Mayer, which is the securing of the surviving masonry care and part of the bailey made habitable again. The repair and maintenance work of the two continues to this day. As the facility is privately owned, it can only be viewed upon prior request.

Building history

Six main phases of construction can be identified on the existing structure, ranging from the High Middle Ages to the early modern period . Initially, the complex consisted of a small, core castle , which was subsequently significantly expanded. The castle was protected by a first curtain wall , which was quite low and had a crenellated parapet and a wooden battlement . From this first phase at the end of the 12th / beginning of the 13th century, however, only a few components have survived, for example in the keep . The year of construction 1286, which is often quoted in the literature, is an incorrect dating, which may be based on the wrong interpretation of a corresponding source.

During the first half of the 13th century, a gate was added to the castle , which was attached to the southeast side of the keep . On the first floor of this gate there was a castle chapel , which had existed for a long time when it was first mentioned in a document in 1392. Around 1300 a residential building was built, a part of which is still preserved in the western corner of the main castle. Spolias of window and door frames from the second quarter and the second half of the 13th century testify to the representative furnishings of the complex at that time.

The Wolfstein castle ruins at the beginning of the 20th century.

During the 14th century, the castle was significantly expanded in a fourth construction phase with kennels and an outer bailey to the northeast, including a strong gate. In addition, parts of the old residential building were probably integrated into a new, larger residential building in the first half of the 14th century.

In the late Middle Ages , peripheral buildings in the outer bailey were added in the late 15th century. In addition, the outer curtain wall was raised and reinforced with shell towers . Two of the towers still recognizable today on the west and north sides, on the other hand, come from a sixth phase in the 16th century. In the course of this, larger sections of the outer ring wall were rebuilt. In that century, the north wing was also rebuilt in the main castle and a staircase was built in the south corner of the courtyard.

The only noteworthy changes that were made to the castle from the 17th century onwards are the establishment of a new chapel in the former gate hall of the core castle gate house by the Göttweig monastery and the partial reconstruction of the then dilapidated outer castle gate building by the Mayr couple.

description

The castle area is located at the western end of a densely wooded rock spur north of the village of Wolfstein and around 2.5 kilometers southeast of Aggsbach Dorf. The hill towers over the Wolfsteinbach and drops steeply in the north, south and west. The walk from the village in the valley up to the castle ruins takes about ten minutes.

Outer bailey and curtain wall

Gate construction and bridge

The complex, consisting of a polygonal core castle and a bailey to the northeast of it, occupies an area of ​​around 110 × 50 meters. The outer ring wall shows some key notches and functioned as a kennel in the northwest, south and west, while it is expanded in the northeast so that buildings for economic purposes could be leaned on the inside. Of these, with the exception of the mighty gate building, there is only a small amount of building fabric left. The gate construction was also in ruins at the beginning of the 20th century, of which only three walls remained. However, the current owners rebuilt it, making it habitable. Coming from the east, a modern wooden bridge over the seven-meter-deep neck ditch leads to its two-winged main gate and the slip gate next to it . It replaced the drawbridges that existed at the time , of which the stone support has still been preserved. Above the main gate there is a weir bay with corner blocks resting on console stones , which is flanked on both sides by an arrow slit.

Core castle

The core castle, the obtained masonry majority of gneiss - rubble is, occupied an approximately pentagonal area of about 45 × 25 meters and was formerly around enclosed by an (inner) annular wall which was 1.90 meters thick in some places. The individual castle buildings leaned against the inside, thus enclosing an inner courtyard. The four-storey keep stands at the northern tip of the area and has a trapezoidal floor plan measuring around 8 × 12.5 meters. The remains of its western walls are still up to a height of 20 to 30 meters and show a high entrance on the first floor. The east side of the tower, however, collapsed completely. The entire west side of the core castle was built by a Gothic palace occupied, which was heated. Its remaining walls on the north side are up to ten meters high. Of the northern curtain wall and the northeast wing leaning on the inside, walls around the level of the ground floor are also preserved. They date from the 16th century, as indicated by the preserved oriel consoles and the quarry stone masonry heavily interspersed with bricks . The former south wing of the main castle has largely fallen into disrepair, and there are hardly any remains of it. Those of the former staircase in the south corner of the courtyard still show traces of red and white plaster . In the upper floor of the gateway to the main castle there was a first chapel dedicated to St. James the Elder , a semicircular apse niche in the east wall still testifies to this today . In the 17th century, the Göttweig monastery set up the baroque chapel still preserved today on the ground floor of the gate building. A segment arch portal leads into its interior with groined vaults . A chalice from around 1240, which probably comes from the Romanesque predecessor chapel, serves as the holy water font . A statue of St. James from around 1515/1520 that was formerly erected there is now - just like the high baroque high altar  - in the Göttweig Abbey.

literature

  • Bundesdenkmalamt (Ed.): Dehio manual. Lower Austria south of the Danube . Part 2: M to Z. Berger, Horn / Vienna 2003, ISBN 3-85028-365-8 , p. 2734.
  • Rudolf Büttner: Castles and palaces Dunkelsteinerwald (= Lower Austria's castles and palaces. Volume II / 2). Birken, Vienna 1973, pp. 171–173.
  • Marina Kaltenegger, Gerhard Reichhalter: Wolfstein I. In: Marina Kaltenegger, Thomas Kühtreiber , Patrickschicht , Gerhard Reichhalter, Herwig Weigl: Mostviertel castles. Freytag & Berndt, Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-7079-1041-4 , pp. 269-272 ( online) .
  • Ilse Schöndorfer: stones and legends. Castle ruins in Lower Austria. NP Buchverlag, St. Pölten / Vienna 1999, ISBN 3-85326-114-0 , p. 140 ff.
  • Hans Tietze : The monuments of the political district Melk (= Austrian art topography. Volume 3). Schroll, Vienna 1909, pp. 13-14 ( PDF ; 961 kB).

Web links

Commons : Burgruine Wolfstein  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

References and comments

  1. ↑ Bundesdenkmalamt (Ed.): Lower Austria - immovable and archaeological monuments under monument protection. January 23, 2019, p. 58 ( PDF ; 1.3 MB).
  2. ↑ a b Information on the castle ruins on a website of the municipality of Schönbühel-Aggsbach , accessed on September 25, 2019.
  3. ↑ a b c d e Marina Kaltenegger, Gerhard Reichhalter: Wolfstein I. 2007, p. 270.
  4. ↑ a b c Entry about the Wolfstein castle ruins in Burgen-Austria , accessed on September 25, 2019.
  5. ↑ a b c Federal Monuments Office (ed.): Dehio manual. Lower Austria south of the Danube. 2003, p. 2734.
  6. ↑ a b c Hans Tietze: The monuments of the political district of Melk. 1909, p. 13.
  7. ^ Marina Kaltenegger, Gerhard Reichhalter: Wolfstein I. 2007, p. 272.
  8. ^ Gerhard Stenzel: From castle to castle in Austria. 2nd Edition. Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 1973, p. 241.
  9. ↑ a b c d e f Marina Kaltenegger, Gerhard Reichhalter: Wolfstein I. 2007, p. 271.
  10. ↑ Information from Marina Kaltenegger, Gerhard Reichhalter: Wolfstein I. 2007, p. 270. Friedrich-Wilhelm Krahe gives a wall thickness of 1.30 and 1.70 meters in his publication. Compare Friedrich-Wilhelm Krahe: Castles of the German Middle Ages. Floor plan lexicon. Flechsig, Würzburg 2000, ISBN 3-88189-360-1 , p. 678.
  11. ^ Friedrich-Wilhelm Krahe: Castles of the German Middle Ages. Floor plan lexicon. Flechsig, Würzburg 2000, ISBN 3-88189-360-1 , p. 678.

Coordinates: 48 ° 16 '24.1 "  N , 15 ° 26' 4.8"  E