Ehrenfels Castle (Bad St. Leonhard)

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Ehrenfels Castle (2008)

Ehrenfels Castle in Bad St. Leonhard is a castle in Bad St. Leonhard im Lavanttal , a municipality in the Wolfsberg district in Carinthia , Austria .

history

While the old Gomarn Castle , also known as the Veste St. Leonhard, has always been the property of the Bamberg Monastery and the seat of the caretaker, Ehrenfels Castle was privately owned until 1635. It takes its name from the Lords of Ehrenfels who immigrated to Carinthia from Switzerland. Their ancestral seat was Ehrenfels Castle near Sils in Graubünden . According to a coat of arms from the 14th century, the Ehrenfelser had three fish in their coat of arms.

Friedrich von Ehrenfels (around 1200) was the first to be mentioned in Carinthia . 1356-1362 was a Wulfing von Ehrenfels Bamberg nurse and vice dom . The von Ehrenfels owned properties in Styria , such as Kammern and St. Radegund. Wulfing bought a house in St. Leonhard that his four sons fortified. This seemed questionable to the Bishop of Bamberg as the owner of St. Leonhard and he therefore tried to secure himself from harm and disadvantage through an amicable agreement with them. The four brothers issued him a lapel in 1373, stating that the bishopric should have the open entrance to their house at all times and that they should have all their support at the time of war and that they would be willing to grant those who break through the curtain wall at the tower wall up. Two of these brothers were notorious highwaymen and robber barons . For example, they captured Bishop Albert von Passau, whom Duke Albrecht III had invited to his wedding in Vienna, on the way and held him prisoner at Kammer Castle in Upper Styria for almost a year . Finally, Duke Albrecht freed the bishop and put an end to the doings of the brothers.

At the beginning of the 15th century the dynasty was at the height of its splendor, as one of the two brothers was governor of Carinthia and the other was bishop of Lavant. With Otto's son Johann II, the von Ehrenfels men died out in the male line. In 1591 Ehrenfels Castle was purchased by Count Georg Nogarol, who had a mighty bastion built around the same in 1593 with the approval of the bishopric . His coat of arms can still be seen several times in the stone bulge of the high wall. Count Nogarol came from the old Tuscan aristocracy and served as chamberlain to Emperor Ferdinand I and the dukes Karl and Ferdinand for over 50 years . After the death of Hans von Salamanka, Count of Ortenburg, he was appointed governor of Carinthia in 1602. He died on December 18, 1619 and was buried in Judenburg. Then Ehrenfels Castle passed into the possession of his cousin Count von Balmeran , whose wife was a née Porcia. After a few years it came to Johann Maximilian von Herberstein , who sold it to Franz, Bishop of Bamberg and Würzburg in 1635. In the same year, this bishop granted the city of St. Leonhard a fair before and after St. Leonhard's Day.

In 1759, Ehrenfels passed into imperial possession with the rule of St. Leonhard. In 1826 the Rosthorn brothers acquired the property, a family of industrialists with smelting and mining operations. In 1846, Count Henckel von Donnersmark took over the Lavanttaler company shares from the Rosthorn brothers and with it Ehrenfels Castle in Bad St. Leonhard. In 1933, when the Wiesenau rulership was taken over, the castle was bought by the Swiss forestry company Hespa -domain (Hespa = wood purchasing center for Swiss paper and paper stock manufacturers ), who in turn sold it to his chief forester Franz Eberhard .

After several fires (1762 and 1808), the castle repeatedly experienced structural changes. In an earthquake at Obdacher Sattel on October 3, 1936, the south wing collapsed from the ground floor to the second floor. The palace was last badly damaged by aerial bombs in World War II and repaired again in 1949. The arcade-decorated inner courtyard from the 16th or 17th century and the Gothic entrance gate are well worth seeing .

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Christa Hammerl , Wolfgang Lenhardt: Earthquake in Austria. Leykam, Graz 1997, ISBN 3-7011-7334-6 , p. 137.

Coordinates: 46 ° 57 ′ 54.4 "  N , 14 ° 47 ′ 23.7"  E