Batzenhofen Castle

Batzenhofen Castle is a former summer residence of the Canonesses' Collegiate Church of St. Stephan in Augsburg, to whose estates Batzenhofen belonged. The castle is protected as a historical monument.

The collegiate church had owned land in Batzenhofen since 969 and acquired the entire village after the local nobility died out in 1530. Around 1750, the two-story, hook-shaped building with a hip roof was then erected above the Schmutter river and used as a summer residence. After the secularization of 1803, the building was immediately sold again by the Electorate of Bavaria and converted by the new owners into a brewery, which operated with a restaurant until 1920. The master brewer Max Schmidt then sold the house to the Innere Mission, which temporarily ran a children's home here from 1925 to 1928 under the name Sonnenhof. From September 1928, the Augsburg Deaconess Institution then established an old people's home with initially 50 places, which was modernized in 1947/48 and enlarged with an extension for another 40 rooms. Further renovations and modernizations with an elevator and nursing station followed until the 1980s. Nevertheless, the listed building no longer met the standards, and the old people's home was moved to a new building in Gersthofen in 2007.

The former castle was then bought by a resident of Batzenhofen, completely renovated, and converted into a multi-party residential building. Currently (as of autumn 2013), the last exterior walls are still being renovated.