Burg Raabs an der Thaya: A Medieval Hilltop Castle in Austria
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.5
- 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 page18 sections
History
Burg Raabs an der Thaya is a medieval hilltop castle in Austria whose documented history begins in 1100, when the Bohemian chronicler Cosmas of Prague mentioned Gotfried as being admitted to the castle of Racouz. The complex grew during the medieval period as the seat of the Counts of Raabs, and its surviving fabric combines Romanesque, late-medieval, Renaissance, seventeenth-century, and later alterations.
Early settlement and the Counts of Raabs
The wider region was already connected with the Babenbergs, the dynasty that ruled Austria as margraves and later dukes during the early and high Middle Ages. Royal grants of 1074 and 1076 referred to the forest region called silva Rogacz. Around two kilometres west of the present castle, a fortified settlement at Sand was built between 926 and 929. Its Slavic inhabitants occupied the plateau during the period of Hungarian supremacy in the former Bavarian eastern region. After several decades, the settlement was abandoned, probably following a destructive Hungarian raid, and Hungarian arrowheads were found there.
Neighbouring Bohemian and Moravian populations called the county “Rakoza.” This name is traditionally regarded as the source of the Czech and Slovak names for Austria, Rakousy and Rakúsko, interpreted as “the land beyond Raabs.” In 1082, during conflicts in the Bohemian-Moravian border region, the son of Margrave Adalbert captured a fortified settlement that may have been Raabs, although its identification remains uncertain.
Gottfried II of Raabs later received the Moravian Přemyslid Lutold, a member of the ruling dynasty of Bohemia and Moravia, after Lutold’s conflict with his relatives. Lutold used the castle as a base for night raids into Moravia. Duke Bratislaus of Bohemia responded by marching against him, and after a six-week siege in 1100, Lutold surrendered. Gottfried then regained control of the castle.
In 1105, Emperor Henry IV appointed Gottfried II and his brother Konrad I to take responsibility for Nuremberg Castle. They became the de facto first burgraves of Nuremberg, a position combining the military, judicial, and administrative government of a castle territory, although the title “burgravius de Norinberg” was first recorded for Gottfried III, Gottfried II’s son. Konrad I later appears in the circle of Margrave Henry I, while Konrad II was known as Count of Raabs from about 1180.
Partition and Habsburg control
The male line of the Counts of Raabs ended around 1191–1192. The county was then divided through the marriages of two heiresses. Sophie, the elder daughter, married Friedrich III of Zollern and became an ancestor of the Hohenzollern dynasty. Through Agnes’s marriage to Gebhard III of Dollnstein-Hirschberg, the western territory, including Raabs Castle, Heidenreichstein, and Litschau, passed into another family. The territory containing the market town of Raabs went to Duke Leopold VI around 1200.
In 1252, Ottokar, son of King Wenceslaus I of Bohemia and later King Ottokar II, transferred the former Raabs lordship to the Counts of Plain-Hardegg. Wok of Rosenberg held the castle in 1260. In 1282, Heinrich of Rosenberg ceded it to the Habsburg ruler Albrecht after King Rudolf had confiscated much of the county. The Habsburgs were the dynasty that incorporated Raabs into the Austrian territorial principality.
Also in 1282, Leutold and Heinrich of Kuenring and their wives received Litschau, Heidenreichstein with its castle, and the “front house” at Raabs as a fief. The Habsburg portion was pledged to Stephan of Maissau in 1283. In 1297, Duke Albrecht I forced Gebhard of Hirschberg to sell his remaining possessions in the former Raabs lordship. The county and castle thereafter again formed a territorial-princely fief, while the eastern territory, castle, and market town were held in pledge by the Maissau family.
Puchheim ownership and the castle-palace
Raabs passed to the Lords of Puchheim in 1385. From the beginning of the sixteenth century, they converted the lordship from a territorial fief into freehold property. Under their rule, much of the medieval castle was transformed into the present castle-palace. They also secured several market rights for Raabs and initially supported Protestantism during the Reformation.
On 15 May 1591, Niklas von Puchheim, then lord of Raabs, was murdered in the castle forecourt. Hans Adam von Hofkirchen organized the attack after two of his subjects had been imprisoned at Raabs following a dispute with a citizen. A commemorative plaque in the forecourt preserves the memory of the killing.
Later owners and twentieth-century changes
After becoming Bishop of Wiener Neustadt, Franz Anton von Puchheim sold the castle and its appurtenances in 1702 to Franz Anton von Quarient and Raall. Under Quarient, the Kollmitz lordship was purchased in 1708. Johann Christoph von Bartenstein acquired the lordship and castle in 1760. Ownership later passed through marriage to the Kaiserstein family and then to Baron Ludwig von Villa-Secca.
Wilhelm Ritter von Lindheim acquired the castle in 1878, followed by Reich Count Philipp Boos of Waldeck and Montfort in 1888. Visits by Archduke Rainer of Austria in 1898 and by Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, in 1910 are associated with this period. Baron Hugo Klinger of Klingerstorff became owner in 1912.
The First World War brought the economic collapse of the Raabs lordship. During Klinger’s ownership, a violent family tragedy took place in 1926. Cyrill von Orlow seriously wounded Baron Klinger in an attack or duel near the castle, later dying of his injuries. After the incident became known, Klinger’s wife Sybille, born Countess Spiegelfeld, died by suicide in the castle. Klinger subsequently built a mausoleum for his wife, himself, and their family, and the structure still survives.
The estate and castle were auctioned in 1932. More than 1,000 objects, including paintings, furniture, and other furnishings, were catalogued and sold, leaving the castle largely empty. The Savings and Advance Consortium of Retz and Surroundings acquired the property in 1934. During the 1930s, rooms housed the Raabs local-history museum, which left the castle after the Second World War.
Following Austria’s annexation to Nazi Germany in March 1938, a department of the Sudeten German Freikorps occupied the castle that autumn. From 1940, it accommodated a camp for ethnic Germans displaced during a resettlement operation, and in 1942–1943 it contained a Hitler Youth military-training camp. From 1942, the castle belonged to the Viennese businesswoman Berta Laupal, born Ligg. After her death in 1964, it passed to her underage daughter.
Willy Enk became owner in 1970 and carried out extensive renovations. Richard Pils acquired the castle after a foreclosure sale in 1996 and, together with the association Our Castle, Friends and Supporters of Raabs Castle, undertook careful rehabilitation of its divided buildings. Archaeological excavations beneath the Great Knights’ Hall took place in 1995, 1999, and 2001 under Sabine Felgenhauer-Schmiedt. Later building investigations by Robert Kuttig contributed to reconstructing a thirteenth-century building complex in the area above the Umkehr. The castle is protected as a monument under Austrian heritage law.
Remains
Hilltop layout and building phases
Burg Raabs occupies a rocky spur high above Raabs an der Thaya, on the southern bank of the German Thaya opposite the confluence with the north-to-south-flowing Moravian Thaya. The spur falls steeply and is accessible from the west, from Oberndorf. Including its outer works, the complex extends for about 200 metres and reaches up to 40 metres in width. The high castle occupies the eastern end, measuring 107 metres in length and up to 37 metres in width, while the western approach contains the principal outer bailey and defensive installations.
The present castle-palace consists of multi-storey peripheral wings arranged around two courtyards. Centuries of construction created an unusually articulated complex closely adapted to the rocky terrain. Archaeological evidence places settlement on the castle hill in the eleventh century. Excavation beneath the Great Knights’ Hall uncovered a cellar measuring about 6 by 12 metres, with a 1.12-metre-thick west-to-east wall of mortared rubble stone, a dry-laid internal wall, a probable continuation toward the southwest, and an eastern corner within the cellar. Interior walking surfaces included screed and wooden-plank layers.
Romanesque and medieval core
Early stone building
The excavated masonry belongs to an early stone building dated stratigraphically to around 1050. Other remains show that eleventh-century structures were incorporated into a more articulated castle enclosed by a continuous wall circuit during the first half of the twelfth century. Twelfth-century masonry survives in parts of the southern enceinte, or main enclosing wall, in a cellar east of the bergfried, and in the chapel’s base. The masonry uses small, regularly coursed, hammer-dressed rubble stones, with occasional large inserted blocks. Parts of the base contain herringbone work, in which stones are laid diagonally in alternating directions.
Bergfried
The pentagonal bergfried, the principal defensive tower of a medieval castle, stands on the access side. Its lower sections contain regularly coursed rubble masonry, partly made from unworked stones, with traces of rendered or struck joints. This lower fabric dates to around the middle of the twelfth century. At approximately 10 metres above ground, the wall steps back and the tower changes into a heptagonal upper structure with a wedge-shaped base, assigned to the second half of the thirteenth century.
The remains also indicate that a projecting, wedge-shaped tower resembling a bergfried existed in the twelfth century. Its early presence and substantial construction accord with the castle’s role as a local seat of the Counts of Raabs.
Chapel of Saint Clement
The Romanesque Chapel of Saint Clement probably originally had two storeys. Its lower level was later used as a wine cellar and retains a substantially altered original round-arched window. A Romanesque splayed window was uncovered in the south wall at the level of the present western gallery. The window masonry and the original round-arched apse window preserve joint markings characteristic of twelfth-century construction.
High-castle gateway
The Renaissance gateway to the high castle occupies the position of an earlier Romanesque gate building, probably a deeply recessed gate flanked near the tower. The original twelfth-century corner arrangement remains visible in the gate wall. Exposed masonry with joint markings resembles the base of the bergfried and other twelfth-century fabric, while some corners use carefully placed upright stones, known as orthostats.
Outer works and courtyards
Southern enceinte and Ochsenturm
The southern enceinte contains the late-Gothic Ochsenturm, a projecting semicircular artillery tower measuring 17 metres in diameter. Its position forms part of the defensive edge of the high castle.
Western outer bailey
The western outer works contain the late-medieval core known as the Hungerturm and another round tower in the outer bailey. Both were heavily altered during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Hungerturm and a further round tower, demolished in the eighteenth century, formed a gate installation in front of the high-castle gate.
Umkehr forecourt
Below the Turniergarten lies the first forecourt, known as the Umkehr. Its side facing the valley has open Renaissance arcades, a series of arches supported by piers or columns. A post-medieval stone bridge crosses the neck ditch between the outer bailey and the high castle.
Zwinger wall and shell turrets
A sixteenth-century zwinger wall, an outer defensive zone between walls or before a main wall, follows the steep slope around the flanks of the neck ditch and parts of the high castle. The wall contains semicircular shell turrets, hollow wall towers open toward the interior.
Bastei and the outer fortified complex
The area called the Bastei is a rock-cut platform separated from the hinterland by a neck ditch. An aqueduct-like arcade connects it with the area of the former castle nursery. Building evidence indicates that a thirteenth-century fortified complex stood here, probably a burgrave’s castle erected in front of the main castle after the territorial prince took possession of the lordship. A sixteenth-century outwork was later built on these foundations, and Georg Matthäus Vischer’s 1672 engraving depicts it.
