Brand Castle

The present-day manor house near the main road was built in 1751 by the new owner Dr. Georg Ernst Finkler, only a few meters away from the old seat (formerly house number 43 behind the current town hall). The two-story ashlar building on a square floor plan with five by five window axes received a mansard roof. A copper engraving by Johann Adam Delsenbach shows the newly built "Schloss zu Brand". A stone wall enclosed the castle district, in which a barn, bakery, and Vogt's house, as well as a spacious orchard, can be recognized.

Dr. Georg Ernst Finkler was married to Helene von Endter and died in 1759 without male descendants. His property fell to his widow, who, however, died before 1761 and left her inheritance to her only daughter Johanna Helene, who married Paul Christoph von Gugel in 1756 and brought the property back to the family. Paul Christoph von Gugel succeeded in joining the council of the Imperial City, became an old mayor in 1772, Supreme War Councillor in 1791, and died on May 4, 1804; his wife followed him only a few days later. Of their four children, two had already died in childhood, and the other two unmarried, so Johanna Helene bequeathed her inheritance by will to Dr. Wagler from Nuremberg. Subsequently, a long-standing legal dispute arose because the relatives of the Finkler and Gugel families challenged the will, but ultimately lost. Dr. Wagler was able to claim not only the manor house but also all associated houses in Brand. Probably from him or his heirs, the property came to the innkeeper Plank von Altensittenbach, who divided the estate and sold the manor house to the municipality of Brand in 1838, which used it as a schoolhouse until 1966. Afterwards rented to the Sparkasse, the renovated building now serves as the town hall.