Schloss Wolfurt: A Medieval Castle in Austria
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Austria
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Habsburg, Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page6 sections
History
Schloss Wolfurt is a medieval castle in Austria, near Wolfurt in the Bregenz district of Vorarlberg. Built substantially before its first documentary references in 1217 and 1226, it defended the region and local authorities and served as the seat of the Lords of Wolfurt.
From noble seat to territorial possession
In 1402, Mehrerau Abbey acquired half of the castle from the Wolfurt family. An abbey was a Christian monastic institution governed by an abbot, and Wolfurt subsequently became a summer residence for the abbots. Before the middle of the fifteenth century, the castle became a princely territorial possession. In 1451, it passed to Austria and was granted as a fief to successive patrician families from Bregenz. The Kaisermann family initially held it, followed by the Leber von Wolfurt family from 1463.
The Reformation, a sixteenth-century movement that challenged established Western Christian institutions and reshaped religious and political life in central Europe, brought another phase in the castle’s history. In 1530, Kilian Germann, abbot of St. Gallen Abbey, bought Schloss Wolfurt and fled there from St. Gallen. Diethelm Blarer von Wartensee, who served as abbot from 1530 to 1564, later occupied the castle as his residence.
Fiefs, private ownership, and reconstruction
After the fief reverted to the sovereign, Johann Wilhelm Marius took it over in 1653. In 1696, Benedikt Reichart of Bregenz received Wolfurt as a fief and commissioned a Baroque remodeling of the interior around 1707. Baroque architecture is associated with elaborate forms of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Joseph Xaver Tröndlin von Greiffenegg acquired the castle in 1750. Two years later, it passed first into peasant ownership and then into bourgeois ownership. Tröndlin von Greiffenegg’s grandson, Hermann Gottlob von Greiffenegg, also adopted the name “von Wolffurt.” After 1856, a Bregenz merchant who owned the castle remodeled it in the Neo-Romanesque style, which revived forms associated with Romanesque architecture.
Fritz Schindler, the son of Friedrich Wilhelm Schindler, acquired Schloss Wolfurt in 1936. Alterations based on plans by the Swiss-Austrian architect Johann Anton Tscharner began in 1937. A fire destroyed the castle in 1939, and it was rebuilt in 1940 in Gothic forms according to Tscharner’s plans. Gothic architecture draws on medieval forms and is commonly associated with pointed arches and strong vertical emphasis. Fritz Schindler moved to the castle from Villa Grünau in Kennelbach in 1950.
Public ownership
From 1945 to 1953, Schloss Wolfurt temporarily served as the residence of the head of the French military government for Vorarlberg. It then returned to the Schindler family and remained in family ownership until 2017. In March of that year, the Wolfurt municipal council decided to purchase the castle from its private owners, bringing the medieval landmark into public ownership.
Remains
The surviving building embodies a sequence of architectural changes rather than a single period of design. Its origins lie in a medieval defensive castle, while the interior was remodeled in the Baroque style around 1707. Alterations after 1856 introduced a Neo-Romanesque treatment, and the rebuilding after the 1939 fire gave the castle Gothic forms under Johann Anton Tscharner’s plans.
Architectural sequence
The medieval fabric reflects the castle’s original defensive purpose and its role as the seat of the Lords of Wolfurt. The Baroque intervention transformed the interior in the early eighteenth century. The later Neo-Romanesque remodeling and the twentieth-century work created further layers, with the 1940 reconstruction following the fire forming the building’s principal modern architectural phase. Additional alterations continued from 1937 onward according to Tscharner’s designs.
