To be privately owned
CastleKleblach-Lind
Oberlind Castle
The castle ruins of Lind – a distinction must be made between the two dilapidated complexes of Oberlind and Unterlind – are located on the right bank of the Drau river above the village of Lind in the municipality of Kleblach-Lind in Carinthia.
The first mention of a property in Lind (curtiferum in loco Linta) can be found in a Brixen donation document from 1065/77. The Lords of Lind are documented as vassals of Ortenburg, holding fiefs from 1141 to 1452. However, an explicit mention of the (upper) castle is only documented at the end of 1252, when Count Albert III pledged the castrum Lint to Elector Philipp, son of Duke Bernhard of Spanheim of Carinthia. From 1304, Lind was in the possession of the County of Görz. In 1348, Lind was explicitly referred to as a "fortress", and a document from March 15, 1429, records the enfeoffment of the "vest Lind".
The Lords of Lind resided at Oberlind, while Unterlind was the seat of the judges of the Lind dominion. For example, a Perchtold von Lind is mentioned in 1324, who is called "the old judge of Lint" in 1330.
When exactly the upper castle was abandoned is not known, but by the time of Valvasor, both complexes were already in ruins. When Hans Jakob von Lind sold his share of the Lind dominion to Christof von Leobenegg in 1642, he was already residing in the valley at Raggnitz.
The family finally died out in the male line in 1843. The tombstone of Knight Bernhard von Lind and his son Niklas in the choir of the parish church of Lind in the Drau valley commemorates the noble family that resided at Lind Castle.
Architectural Description+
Unterlind
The remains of Unterlind are now integrated into the Calvary complex on a hill above the village. From the parish church, a gently ascending Way of the Cross, consisting of block-like wayside shrines probably erected in the first half of the 19th century, leads up to the Maria Hilf chapel. This church, founded as a castle chapel in 1347, is located in the immediate vicinity of the wall remains of the Unterlind complex, which probably originated in the 13th century. Of it, the approximately six-meter-high walls of a tower, which projects in five sides from an octagon, are preserved. These now serve as part of the Calvary complex as a retaining wall and, in the upper part, as the enclosure of the forecourt of the large crucifixion group. Approximately five meters behind it, at the drop into the ditch, the remains of a four-meter-high wall in Romanesque ashlar masonry are also preserved.
A depiction by Pernhart shows that the tower was still preserved almost at its full height in the mid-19th century. The upper floors had round-arched windows.
Oberlind
Oberlind Castle was located high above the Calvary on a rocky plateau of the Guggenbichl's backfall crest. It is separated from the lower complex by a gorge. Remains of the keep are still preserved from the complex, such as a wall remnant on the rocky spur, which is now only 14 meters long and five meters wide. The original area was larger but apparently collapsed with the rocky subsoil. On the south side, a wall tongue of a gate system can be seen, the other parts of which have also slipped away. On the east side stands a four-meter-high stretch of wall made of rubble blocks.
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Source: Wikipedia · Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Image: Worldfootage / CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
This description draws on the facts documented in the linked Wikipedia article; Wikipedia content is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Wording and editing: Mobile History.
Location: 46.7672, 13.3632