Greinburg Castle
Greinburg Castle is located directly on the Danube in Strudengau / Upper Austria . It belongs to the town of Grein in the Lower Mühlviertel . The castle is the city's landmark and the oldest residential castle in Austria. Its current appearance is determined by the late medieval castle complex from the years 1488 to 1493 and the renovations from the 16th and 17th centuries.
The castle is still privately owned and belongs to the family foundation of the ducal house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha . Its historical representative rooms, such as the large and small knight's hall , the diamond vault , the Sala terrena and the arcade courtyard , as well as the Upper Austrian Maritime Museum can be visited every day from May to October except Monday. As part of a guided tour of the castle, you can also access the lavishly furnished Coburg festival rooms.
Greinburg Castle is one of the tourist attractions on the Danube Cycle Path and the Donausteig .
history
Documents about the castle have been found since 1488. In that year, Emperor Friedrich III. the brothers Heinrich and Siegmund Prüschenk , Freiherr von Stettenberg , to build a castle on the Hohenstein granite rock, which slopes steeply on all sides . Around 1495, the Prüschenk brothers also acquired the county of Hardegg and named themselves after them Count zu Hardegg and in Machland . The castle in Grein should serve to secure the Machland against Bohemian, Hungarian and Turkish invasions. The first name was Stettenfels , from 1504 Heinrichsburg , only since 1533 the name Greinburg has been handed down.
From 1485/91 the seat of the Machland district court came from Mitterberg Castle to Grein. In 1572 the nursing court was also moved from Struden to Grein, making Grein the administrative center of the lower Machland and the Strudengau.
In 1534 the castle came into the possession of the imperial pfennig master Johann Loeble († May 21, 1560). His daughter married Rudolf von Sprinzenstein , who in 1621 sold the castle to Count Leonhard Helfried von Meggau . Under Count Meggau, the castle was expanded in the Renaissance style. Via Count Meggau's daughter Anna, married to Sigmund Ludwig von Dietrichstein, Greinburg Castle came into the possession of the Dietrichstein family . In 1709, Count Franz Ferdinand von Salburg acquired the castle. By inheritance, the castle came to Josef Karl Fürst von Dietrichstein in 1810, who sold it to the army supplier Michael Fink in 1817.
From 1817 the originally Maria-Theresia niche privilege of flood failure on the Naarn belonged to the Greinburg rule .
In 1823 Duke Ernst I of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha acquired the Greinburg castle and rule. He was inherited by his sons Ernst II and Albert , Prince Consort of the British Queen Victoria , so that after the early death of her husband, Queen Victoria also became a co-owner of Greinburg Castle. Because of the rule of Greinburg (as well as Walterskirchen Castle in Lower Austria from 1826 ), the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha held a hereditary seat in the manor house of the Austrian Empire until 1918 - as one of three sovereignly ruling houses . Today the estate is owned by the descendants of Victoria and Albert's fourth son - Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany . The preservation is financed by the foundation of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and the Gotha family. The current head of the house is Andreas Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha .
After the Second World War the castle was occupied by the Soviet army; In 1958 it was returned to the Sachsen-Coburg and Gotha family foundation. In 1970 the foundation set up the Upper Austrian Maritime Museum with loans from the Upper Austrian State Museums. 1976–1987 a comprehensive renovation of the palace and the adjacent farm building took place. Since then, the important state rooms of the palace have been open to the public with a guided tour from May to October.
description
The castle stands on the granite rock Hohenstein above the town of Grein on the Danube. Greinburg Castle is considered the oldest residential castle in Austria and is a milestone in the development from castle to palace construction. It is the first castle complex north of the Alps that was built completely uniformly over a regularly planned floor plan. The castle was a four towers complex with an additional gate tower , palace and chapel built. The historical representative rooms are worth seeing: the atmospheric arcade courtyard, the late Gothic diamond vault , the impressive Great Knight's Hall (30 m long, 16 m wide, 14 m high), the castle chapel with the early baroque Christmas altar and the mysterious Sala terrena, a completely pebble mosaic decorated party room.
The so-called Coburg festival rooms on the second floor can be visited with a guided tour. They are richly furnished with antique furniture and the portrait gallery owned by the ducal family of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
Upper Austrian Maritime Museum
In 1969 the castle was renovated and the Upper Austrian Maritime Museum established, which opened on June 13, 1970. It is the only shipping museum in Upper Austria. Detailed models represent the history of the traffic-related use of inland shipping on the Danube and its tributaries Inn , Salzach , Enns and Traun . A 15 meter long model of a so-called ship train can be seen in the Danube Hall (Little Knight's Hall). Furthermore, rafts are exhibited, which testify to the busy traffic artery in the region, as well as the model of the first Danube steamship Maria Anna . The numerous objects are on loan from the Upper Austrian regional museums .
In addition to the shipping, models of old towns in Upper Austria are also on display.
literature
- Oskar Hille: Castles and palaces of Upper Austria. 2nd Edition. Wilhelm Ennsthaler, Steyr 1992, ISBN 3850683230 .
- Josef Reitinger: Upper Austrian Maritime Museum. Greinburg Castle. 3. Edition. Grein on the Danube 1985.
- Georg Dehio : Dehio Handbook - The Art Monuments of Austria, Upper Austria Volume 1, Mühlviertel. Horn / Vienna 2003, ISBN 3-85028-362-3 , pp. 219-226.
Web links
- Entry on Greinburg in the scientific database " EBIDAT " of the European Castle Institute
- Official website of Greinburg Castle
- Greinburg Castle at burgenkunde.at
- Entry via Grein - Greinburg to Burgen-Austria
Individual evidence
- ↑ Wolfgang Schachenhofer: Local history of Sankt Nikola on the Danube. In: Upper Austrian homeland sheets . Year 35, Linz 1981, issue 3/4, p. 291, entire article 286–305, online (PDF) in the forum OoeGeschichte.at
- ↑ Additional board in the passage under the tower of the parish church Grein
- ^ Friedrich Schober : Greinburg. Castle and rule. In: Mühlviertler Heimatblätter . Year 6, Linz 1966, Issue 3/4, p. 57, entire article p. 57–59, online (PDF) in the forum OoeGeschichte.at (the periods of the owners of the castle on page 59 partly differ from the other sources) .
Coordinates: 48 ° 13 ′ 35 ″ N , 14 ° 51 ′ 11 ″ E