New Castle Lautrach

In 1781, Prince-Abbot of Kempten, Honorius Roth von Schreckenstein, had Lautrach Castle built over a three-year period as a provostry and hunting lodge, replacing the old castle that had burned down. In 1803, Bavaria became the new owner of the castle. In 1805, it was auctioned off to the French Count Firmas-Perier. The castle owes to him the small theater hall with its valuable hand-printed pictorial wallpapers from the Dufour wallpaper manufactory in Paris. After Firmas-Perier's death, the castle was sold in 1831 to Baron von Speth. In 1838, the Catholic priest Josef Deybach acquired both castles with the support of Baron Vequel auf Kronburg. He and his sister opened a boarding school for young ladies. In 1840, a boys' institute was also opened in the old castle. Both institutions became well-known far beyond the country's borders. In 1889, the Wagnersche Anstalten of Dillingen acquired Deybach's legacy. From 1921 to 1931, the new castle was owned by Hermann Anschütz-Kaempfe, the polar explorer and inventor of the gyrocompass. In a letter to Albert Einstein, he wrote:

(...) Do you know that I have acquired a dreamy old castle for the university here, very close to your homeland, which should primarily be open to all friends from the philosophical faculty. You must not be absent. We want to go there for the first time next summer, possibly in August, if my work allows it. The area is as untraveled by Berliners as is conceivable in Bavaria. The castle and grounds are in Lautrach near Memmingen. (...)

After his death, he bequeathed it to the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, which sold it in 1966 to the Wagnersche Anstalten of Dillingen (today Regens-Wagner-Stiftung). In 1989, Lautrach Castle was converted into a management center and conference hotel, and in 1993, the official opening of the Management Centrum Schloss Lautrach took place. Today, it is one of the leading further education institutes with its own four-star conference hotel in Germany. The two shareholders are the IHK Schwaben and the Kolping-Bildungswerk in the Diocese of Augsburg.