Hohenfreyberg Castle (Ruin)

Hohenfreyberg Castle, together with the directly opposite Eisenberg Castle, forms a widely visible castle group in the southern Allgäu, about four kilometers north of Pfronten in the Ostallgäu district. The late medieval hilltop castle was abandoned and set on fire during the Thirty Years' War. From 1995 to 2006, the former noble residence was extensively secured and preserved as part of a highly acclaimed "model renovation".

The castle ruin is located on a two-peaked, rocky ridge in front of the Tannheim Mountains. In the immediate vicinity, on both sides of the German-Austrian border, there are numerous other castles, ruins, castle sites, and fortresses, including the famous Neuschwanstein Castle.

The castle is considered one of the last great new castle constructions of the German Middle Ages. The builder deliberately reverted to the - actually anachronistic - building type of the high medieval hilltop castle, while elsewhere the first castles were already being abandoned or expanded into palace-like structures.

The fortress was built starting in 1418 by Friedrich von Freyberg zu Eisenberg, the eldest son of the lord of Eisenberg Castle of the same name. Construction dragged on until 1432, with funds coming from the revenues of the small surrounding lordship, which the builder had prematurely transferred to himself as an inheritance.

The masonry of the core castle with the keep-like main tower and large sections of the outer bailey walls date back to this first construction phase. This first castle complex presented the image of a high medieval hilltop castle about two hundred years older, with an impressive "keep" and two palas buildings. Friedrich von Freyberg apparently wanted to create a symbol in times of knightly decline and the rise of the bourgeoisie, a manifest of unbroken noble claims to power. He certainly also oriented himself in terms of size and ambition to his father's ancestral castle, which was only a five-minute walk away.

However, the construction and immense maintenance costs forced the descendants to sell the castle to the Archduke of Austria around 1480; there was also no male heir. The Archduke soon pledged Hohenfreyberg to the Augsburg merchant Georg Gossembrot, the administrator of the nearby Tyrolean Ehrenberg Castle. He invested large sums in the fortress, which was militarily strengthened and modernized. Gossembrot married his daughter Sibylle to Ludwig von Freyberg zu Öpfingen-Justingen, a relative of the Freybergs at the neighboring Eisenberg Castle.

In 1502, the Augsburg merchant died, and his widow Radegunda Eggenberger returned the pledged lordship of Hohenfreyberg to Austria by contract on May 9, 1513. She claimed that her deceased husband had spent 17,000 to 18,000 guilders on purchase and construction measures.

The modernization of the fortifications by the pledge lord already paid off in the Peasants' War of 1525. The Austrian administrator successfully repelled the rebels after requesting reinforcements and mercenaries from Innsbruck.

In 1646, towards the end of the Thirty Years' War, the Austrian outposts Hohenfreyberg, Eisenberg, and Falkenstein were set on fire by order of the Tyrolean provincial government. The castle complexes were not to fall intact into the hands of the approaching Protestants. However, the attackers changed their marching route, so the abandonment of the castles was pointless. All three complexes have been uninhabited ruins ever since.

After the Battle of Austerlitz, Austria had to cede its Allgäu possessions to Bavaria. The Kingdom of Bavaria sold Hohenfreyberg back to the Barons von Freyberg in 1841, to whom the castle still belongs today.

In 1995, an elaborate renovation of the castle complex, which had been decaying almost unhindered until then, began. The Alp Action Foundation, under the patronage of Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, enabled the start of the securing work, which could only be completed in 2006 due to financial reasons. The aim of the measures was a monument-appropriate conservation of the condition at the beginning of the renovation; additions and major archaeological interventions were avoided. The internationally acclaimed "model renovation" is considered a model for numerous similar monument preservation projects throughout Europe.

In the course of the development of the Allgäu Castle Region from 2004 onwards, two didactic installations and some information boards were subsequently installed inside the castle. The planning concept of the Allgäu Castle Region is an extension of the cross-border Ostallgäu-Außerfern Castle Region, which also includes the spectacular fortress ensemble around Ehrenberg Castle near Reutte in the Tyrolean Außerfern.