Brille Castle

At the site of the small Baroque castle (Castle No. 2), directly on the road to Lauf and on the third hill in Neunhof, a second manor house stood since about 1570. The seat was established because after the death of Martin III. Geuder, his sons Christoph and Sebald divided the Neunhof estate in 1541, and the manor house fell entirely to Christoph Geuder, later to the Koler family. The other half, which fell to Sebald Geuder, was connected with extensive possessions in Neunhof itself as well as in the surrounding villages, but had neither buildings for the administration of the property nor for the stays of the lords.

While Sebald Geuder was still content with the seat in neighboring Heroldsberg, his son Anton had a modest manor house built after 1570 next to the Voithaus and farm buildings, and in 1575, the castle complex was supplied with its own water pipeline. The appearance of the castle complex is depicted in a plan from 1610 and, in more detail, in a copper engraving from 1760, which is intended to show the state of 1660. On a stone plinth with small window openings sat an unadorned half-timbered upper floor projecting towards the street with two or three window axes. Dormer windows loosened up the simple hip roof; an attached hexagonal stair tower provided access to the upper floor. After the construction of the new manor house in 1610 [cf. Neunhof V], the seat was referred to as the "Altherrenhäuslein" (Old Lord's House). Apparently without major damage, it survived the Thirty Years' War and passed into the possession of the Welser family in 1660.

In 1722, Carl Welser had the rather unrepresentative, probably already dilapidated "Altherrenhäuslein" demolished and replaced by a two-story Baroque building with a mansard roof. The rooms were often used for residential purposes and today serve as the estate archive. The hardly altered castle shared the fate of the main castle and, like it, is now owned by the Welser Family Foundation. Placed directly in front of the main castle, the building is often referred to as the "Brille" (Spectacles).