Painhof Castle

The Painhof, commonly also referred to as Painburg, was built around 1420 by the Lords of Pain as a moated castle. The actual Painburg was a predecessor building, of which only barely recognizable traces remain today. The Lords of Pain served the Bishops of Bamberg. They inhabited the Painhof until 1544.

Towards the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries, they undertook significant expansions and developments of the fortifications. These fortifications proved extremely effective, because when Turkish raiding parties devastated the villages of the upper Lavanttal at the end of the 15th century, they left the Painhof, into which parts of the civilian population had fled, unharmed.

Around 1544, Siegmund von Pain had the spacious Lichtengraben Castle built not far from the castle. The Painburg was abandoned and its masonry used as building material for the expansion of the new residence. The ruin has remained connected to Lichtengraben Castle in terms of ownership to this day. Seyfried von Pain had to declare bankruptcy in 1615. Although his main creditors were his two sisters and his mother, the lordship had to be ceded to Melchior Putz von Kirchheimegg. With Hans Christoph von Pain, the family died out in 1652. The estate then had several owners, who mostly inherited the lordship from each other. Finally, Franz Josef Freiherr von Teuffenbach acquired ownership of the estate by purchase in 1711.

Lichtengraben remained with the Teuffenbach family until 1839. Afterwards it passed to Eugen Ritter von Dickmann. After 1870, Lichtengraben fell to the Hüttenberger Eisenwerksgesellschaft, which was finally replaced by the Alpine Montangesellschaft. From this, the Royal Norwegian Consul Dr. Karl Neufeld acquired the estate in 1886. Since then, the estate has been family-owned. Namely the Baumann, von Bitzy families and finally the Rittler family, who still own the estate today and manage it as an agricultural and forestry business.