Bächingen Castle

Bächingen Castle is an imposing but largely unadorned building with four round towers in the Renaissance style with late Gothic elements. It is located in the municipality of Bächingen an der Brenz (on the eastern edge of the Swabian Alb) in the district of Dillingen in Swabia.

In the 16th century, the Bächingen manor came into the hands of the knightly family von Westernach, who had a moated castle built there in place of a previous building directly on the south bank of the Brenz.

The foundation stone was laid on August 28, 1531, by Bernhard von Westernach and his wife Margaretha, née von Knöringen. This information can be found on the building inscription crafted by Loy Hering above the east portal of the castle.

Under their son Eitelhans, Bächingen, previously a Hofmark, separated from the Duchy of Pfalz-Neuburg and established itself as an imperial knightly lordship. Bächingen Castle thus became the official "seat of government".

Through marriage in 1594, the lordship passed to the Lords vom Stain, who ruled in Bächingen until 1790 and introduced the Reformation there. Even today, Bächingen is a Protestant diaspora in a strictly Catholic environment. Finally, Duchess Franziska von Württemberg, better known as Franziska von Hohenheim, bought the three-story gabled building. The Imperial Countess maintained a small court in Bächingen and intensively cultivated her artistic ambitions. A large-scale renovation planned by her in 1792/93 remained largely unexecuted.

After the death of the Duchess in 1811, her chamberlain Karl Axel Ludwig Freiherr von Böhnen inherited the Bächingen estate and brought the Duchess's library to Bächingen. In addition to several thousand magnificent volumes, it also contained the original of Schiller's first youthful work (Zum Geburtstag der Herzogin, 1779), but was sold piece by piece from 1972 onwards. Böhnen sold Bächingen Castle and estate in 1821 to the newly ennobled Augsburg banker Johann Gottlieb Freiherr von Süßkind, who used it as a summer residence. He had most of the outbuildings surrounding the castle on all sides demolished and renovated the castle. The noble family also held the patronage over the local parish church until 1988, on whose grounds they own a small family cemetery. The castle remained in the possession of the von Süßkind family for five generations.

The castle is surrounded by several outbuildings, a natural park with old trees, the Brenz river, and a (partially) dilapidated castle wall. The castle and park are not accessible to the public, but a public footpath and cycle path runs through the old castle avenue on the north side of the Brenz (consisting of approximately 250-year-old lime trees).