Chojnik Castle: A Medieval Mountain Fortress in Poland
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- High
- Country
- Poland
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page15 sections
History
Chojnik Castle is a medieval mountain fortress near Jelenia Góra in Poland, developed by the dukes of Schweidnitz-Jauer as a border stronghold facing Bohemia. A hunting lodge that was not permanently inhabited stood on the site before 1292, when Duke Bolko I the Warlike converted it into a fortified position. Duke Bolko II expanded the defenses into a stone castle during the 1350s, placing Chojnik within the political and military history of medieval Silesia.
Foundation and the Schaffgotsch lordship
The castle first appeared in written records as “Kinast” in 1364. The name has been connected with a pine branch or with the conifer-covered mountain, while another tradition gives an earlier name as “Neuhaus.” The fortress was briefly held in pledge by Thimo III of Colditz before returning to Bolko II.
After Bolko II died in 1368, the Duchy of Schweidnitz passed by inheritance to the Bohemian Crown. His widow, Agnes of Habsburg, retained the right to use the duchy’s possessions for life and probably granted Chojnik as a fief to the knight Gotsche Schoff around 1381. The castle subsequently became associated with the Schaffgotsch family.
In 1399, Benesch of Choustnik, governor of the Duchy of Schweidnitz-Jauer, pledged Chojnik to Gotsche II Schoff with a right of redemption authorized by King Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia. Gotsche paid the pledge sum in 1400. In 1418, the Bohemian king transferred his holdings to Gotsche’s sons, and the arrangement was confirmed the following year. Chojnik then remained in Schaffgotsch hands.
The Schaffgotschs became one of the most powerful noble families in Silesia and Bohemia. Their later Lordship of Kynast included 16 estates, including Hermsdorf, Herischdorf, Petersdorf, Schreiberhau, and Warmbrunn. In 1511, Ulrich von Schaffgotsch united the lordships of Kynast and Greiffenstein, further extending the family’s territorial position.
Religious foundations and medieval warfare
Gotsche II Schoff founded an altar dedicated to Saint Hedwig in 1393 and reserved its patronage for himself and his legitimate successors. A chapel dedicated to Saints George and Catherine probably began at about the same time and was probably finished by 1405. Additional fortification work followed as the castle developed from a border stronghold into a larger noble residence.
In 1426, invading Hussite forces attacked in the region. The Hussites were followers of the religious reformer Jan Hus and had become a major political and military movement in fifteenth-century Bohemia. Their attacks were effectively repelled from Chojnik, although the castle itself was not drawn into the fighting. Soon afterward, the fortress acquired a darker reputation as a base of robber knights, who plundered nearby inhabitants and merchants travelling through the area.
Major enlargement took place during the fifteenth century. The castle was modernized again in the first half of the sixteenth century, probably because of fears of a Turkish attack. Hans Ulrich von Schaffgotsch directed further enlargement and strengthening during this period. These works added defensive capacity while also improving the buildings used by the garrison and the resident household.
War, confiscation, and destruction
During the Thirty Years’ War, the major European conflict of 1618 to 1648 involving dynastic, political, and religious struggles, Hans Ulrich von Schaffgotsch served as a general in the Imperial army under Albrecht von Wallenstein and supported Emperor Ferdinand II. When the emperor withdrew his trust from Wallenstein, Hans Ulrich was arrested in 1634 and beheaded for treason in 1635. The Schaffgotsch estates, including Chojnik, were confiscated.
Imperial forces under Rudolf Hieronymus Eusebius von Colloredo-Waldsee occupied the castle during the 1640s and defended it against Swedish attacks. After the war, Hans Ulrich’s son Christoph Leopold von Schaffgotsch recovered most of the confiscated family possessions, including Chojnik. His return to Catholicism was a condition of the restoration.
On 31 August 1675, lightning struck the castle during a storm and caused a fire. The upper castle and the top of the tower were damaged or destroyed. Chojnik was never rebuilt and became a ruin. After the First Silesian War, Chojnik and most of Silesia passed to Prussia.
Ruins, preservation, and modern memory
The ruins became a tourist attraction in the early nineteenth century. Members of the Prussian royal family, Heinrich von Kleist, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Theodor Körner visited the castle. In 1822, the Schaffgotsch family established an inn and a base for guides and porters. Stairs to the tower were built in 1823, and the northern bastion was adapted as a tourist shelter in 1860.
After the Second World War, Chojnik passed to Poland in 1945 and the Schaffgotsch family was dispossessed. Access reopened that year, the shelter reopened in 1947, and repairs began in 1949. A small museum was established in the shelter’s Gothic room in the same year. The castle is a protected cultural heritage monument in Poland under register number 85, dated 25 November 1949.
The shelter was closed by sanitary authorities in November 1973 and reopened after repairs in June 1975. Chojnik itself was closed in January 1963 because of the danger of collapse. A major repair campaign began that autumn and formally ended about ten years later. Tower masonry was strengthened during the 1970s, while the kitchen, courtyard, and cisterns were restored or cleared of rubble in the 1980s. Metal stairs to the tower and a reconstructed guard gallery were installed in 1993 and 1994.
Since 1991, the castle has hosted the annual crossbow tournament “For the Golden Bolt of Chojnik Castle.” The Chojnik Castle Knights’ Brotherhood assumed responsibility for organizing the tournament in 1993 and has used the castle as its seat since then. A granite monument installed in 2007 commemorates Karol Wojtyła’s visit in 1956 with a group of students. Wojtyła, a Polish Catholic cleric, later became Pope John Paul II.
Legends and literary memory
The best-known legend concerns Kunigunde, said to have been the daughter of a wealthy lord of the castle. She supposedly required her suitors to ride on horseback around the castle’s outer wall, a feat presented as deadly. In one version, the successful rider was the already married Landgrave Adalbert II of Thuringia. After completing the ride, he humiliated Kunigunde, who then threw herself into the ravine. Other versions say that she entered a convent and died of a broken heart, or married Hugo of Erbach after having the dangerous wall demolished.
The Kunigunde story was collected by Johann Gustav Büsching, Ludwig Bechstein, and Johann Georg Theodor Grässe. It inspired works by Bechstein, Theodor Körner, Friedrich Rückert, Friedrich Schiller, Adam Mickiewicz, Louise Otto-Peters, Józef Sykulski, and others. Adam Chodyński also wrote about the ruins in his 1872 poem “In the Ruins.”
Another tradition tells of a cruel lord who imprisoned an enemy in a high tower room. The prisoner escaped after his wife concealed a file and a rope inside a large loaf of bread. A breached section of the tower grille consequently became associated in local tradition with faithful love and female ingenuity.
Remains
Chojnik is a mountain-top fortress ruin on the summit of 627-metre-high granite Chojnik Mountain in the Karkonosze. A 150-metre precipice descends from the southeastern side toward Hell Valley. The castle lies within a strict nature reserve that forms part of Karkonosze National Park. Its surviving fabric is arranged as lower, middle, and upper castle sections enclosed by successive fortifications.
Early fortress and castle layout
The first defensive complex occupied a rectangular area about 20 metres long and 10 metres wide. A residential building filled the northwest side, while a walled courtyard extended eastward. The eastern side was closed by a round defensive tower, and the northern side contained the gate entrance.
The lower castle includes a cylindrical tower on the north and a shell-like defensive tower at the northeastern corner. Residential and service buildings stood along the connecting curtain walls, which are defensive walls linking towers or other fortified points. A gate leads from the lower castle into the middle castle, and a second gate links the middle and upper sections.
Middle and upper castle buildings
Middle castle
The middle castle contains remains of the guards’ residential building, an earlier kitchen, water cisterns, and the so-called court room. A cistern is a tank used to collect and store water. Because the mountain provided no suitable place for a well, deep rock-cut cisterns were made in both the lower and upper courtyards. Three deep cisterns supplied the complex, and their accumulated rubble was cleared during twentieth-century restoration.
Upper castle
The upper castle preserves parts of a late Gothic chapel and palace, together with the entrance to the tower. The chapel of Saints George and Catherine was built as a red-sandstone oriel projecting above the gate entrance. An oriel is a projecting enclosed window or chamber supported beyond the main wall. The courtyard also contains a masonry pillory dating to about 1410. This public punishment device, about 3.9 metres high, remains preserved.
Sixteenth-century modernization
Kitchen and service buildings
A kitchen with a large chimney, buildings near the lower gate, a commandant’s quarters, and stables probably originated during the sixteenth-century modernization. The garrison quarters and kitchen adjoined the eastern wall, while a debating or court room occupied the northern corner. During the 1640s, a commander’s quarter was added beside the main gate. The kitchen was rebuilt during restoration work in the 1980s.
Gates and bastions
The long northern bastion, a low projecting defensive structure, was built around 1560 and later adapted as a tourist shelter. A northwest bastion and a western gate bastion were added during the 1640s, creating another defensive line. Around 1560, the main gate received a drawbridge, with a stable immediately beside it.
The gate masonry was embellished with a Renaissance attic, a raised ornamental band or parapet above a facade. The facades also received sgraffito rustication, a decoration made by scratching through contrasting surface layers, along with semicircular attics and Renaissance stonework. These features survive within the castle’s fragmentary architectural fabric.
Main tower and surviving fabric
In 1588 and 1589, the carpenter Jakob Liewig of Szklarska Poręba raised the main tower with an octagonal half-timbered upper structure and a brick onion-shaped roof. The work was commissioned by Johann Ulrich Schaffgotsch. A half-timbered structure uses a visible timber frame with infill, while an onion-shaped roof has a bulbous, tapering profile. The tower top was damaged in the fire of 1675, and its masonry was strengthened during repairs in the 1970s.
The surviving ruin therefore combines fortification walls, tower elements, two linked gates, courtyard remains, cisterns, and fragments of residential, service, palace, and chapel buildings. The reconstructed guard gallery and the metal tower stairs, installed in 1993 and 1994, form part of the castle’s present preserved arrangement.
