Lower Castle (Ruppersdorf)

From Federal Highway 178 between Löbau and Zittau, near the town of Herrnhut, a small road branches off to Ruppersdorf. It leads visitors to a castle, whose still-existing mighty foundation walls reveal that it was once a moated castle.

The first documentary sources are sparse, but already in the middle of the 12th century, a settlement named Ruppersdorf - presumably after the first settlement leader - is said to have been mentioned for the first time in the sparsely populated area.

The first years of the existence of the Niederruppersdorf manor were marked by multiple changes of ownership. Finally, in 1540, Dr. Ulrich von Nostitz acquired the estate from the von Haugwitz family. The von Nostitz family - an old noble family from Upper Lusatia - kept the estate in their possession for almost 300 years. Their coat of arms, together with the coat of arms of the von Minckwitz family, can still be seen above the entrance door today.

The castle burned down in 1687 - possibly again in 1752 - and was rebuilt on the old foundations with a steep mansard roof on behalf of the Canon and Senior of the Diocese of Meissen, Johann Heinrich Gottlob von Nostitz, and according to plans by Andreas Hüningen.

The castle is a massive, largely unadorned building erected on a square floor plan. Buttresses support the cellar, on which two residential floors and the three-story hip roof rise. A stone bridge with two round arch openings leads to the castle portal, above which the coats of arms of the former owners are found as the main decorative elements.

Of the old garden complex, remnants of the lime tree avenue, which lies on the main axis of the castle, are preserved. The area of the former castle park is delimited from the road by a rubble stone wall and a red beech hedge. A castle pond - as a remnant of an earlier fortification - adorns the complex on the village side.

Until 1830, the von Nostitz family lived in the castle. Then, after a lengthy inheritance dispute, it passed to the Regional Administrator of Upper Lusatia, Dr. Carl Wilhelm Traugott von Mayer, and finally to the von Treba family. In 1930, Hans von Treba sold the castle to the city of Löbau. From 1938 to 1945, the "Bund Deutscher Osten" operated the castle as a borderland school. After displaced persons were accommodated in the building from 1945 to 1947, the entire complex was used as a Red Cross children's home from autumn 1948. Today, the castle is in the hands of a Christian association and is to be used as a training center.