Büg Castle

The first reliable evidence of the manor house dates back to 1398, when the Burgraves of Nuremberg enfeoffed the Gotzmann family with it. Older sources, for example, the account book of the Holzschuher family, where the brothers Dietrich, Heinrich, and Ulrich Gotzmann appear in 1304, do not yet mention a seat of the family.

The Gotzmann family remained at their seat in Büg for generations and were vassals of the Hohenzollerns: in 1421, for example, Albrecht Gotzmann was enfeoffed with the male fief. In 1449, the "schloß Pueg" was "conquered by storm and burned out" by Nuremberg troops during the First Margrave War. By 1467, the castle and its fortifications had already been restored. In 1511, Conrad Gotzmann sold the fortress to his brother Albrecht, who served as Schultheiß in Forchheim in 1527. Before 1586, extensive structural changes and extensions are said to have been carried out. With the builder, Hans Friedrich Gotzmann von Thurn zu Neuhaus, Büg, Brand and Stopfenheim, born in 1522, the family finally died out in 1611.

Shortly before his death, the last Gotzmann, with the help of a settlement with the Margraves, was able to prevent the impending reversion of the Büg manor to the liege lord and secure its transfer to his grandchildren, the sons of the Saxon district governor Heinrich von Bünau. From then on, the Saxon family, documented since 1166, remained in possession of the manor, which also included other estates.

Three generations of the Bünau zu Büg followed, with each owner of the manor dying early and the sons only taking up the inheritance after a longer period of guardianship administration. Even after the early death of Rudolf III von Bünau in 1727, his uncle Johann Gottfried Ehrenreich Stettner von Grabenhof managed the property for a long time for Bünau's four underage sons. After the inheritance was handed over around 1749 to the brothers Heinrich, Rudolf, and Günther von Bünau, the old castle, which, as Boener's engraving proves, had until then retained its defensive character, was demolished. A new building was erected in its place, in which apartments were set up for the brothers Rudolf and Günther. For the third brother, Heinrich von Bünau, the Forther Amtshaus was converted into a manor house.

The economic basis of the manor, significantly diminished by the division of inheritance, led after the middle of the 18th century to the generous allocation of settlement land to Christian and Jewish interested parties both in the small hamlet of Forth belonging to the manor and in front of Büg Castle itself. Through the rapid growth of both settlements, the Lords of Bünau increased their income from manorial dues and Jewish protection money. Due to the sometimes quite unrestrained lifestyle of some family members, the economic and family circumstances of the family were nevertheless soon shattered. Over-indebted, the manor fell around 1791 to Günther von Bünau's son-in-law, Karl Freiherr von Egloffstein. Although his heirs were able to redeem the male fiefdom and acquire the free allodial property during the French occupation of the Brandenburg territory in 1807, the high mortgage burden led to insolvency in 1810.

Only after several unsuccessful auction dates did the Nuremberg city commissioner Johann Georg Ritter von Kracker acquire the Büg, Forth, and Brand manor in 1814 with a bid of 50,100 guilders. Von Kracker separated many attractive agricultural areas from the estate and sold them profitably until he sold the remaining property to Friedrich and Felicitas von Gohren in 1818. However, the seller is also said to have spent a lot of money on the renovation of the castle, so that it was in good structural condition in the 1820s.

To obtain the judicial rights of the now quite populous manor, the Bavarian state acquired it in 1841. After the castle building had been offered for sale in vain for a long time, it was finally leased to a farmer in 1844. In 1848, the financial authorities decided on a new public auction, at which it could be sold to a bidding consortium from Forth. The last agricultural areas were separated, and the castle building with its associated garden was sold in 1849 to the Nuremberg tailor Ernst Müller. The economy, court, and administration buildings fell into other hands. After Müller's death, his son inherited the castle, where a fire broke out in 1873/74, leaving severe damage to the roof structure. As the dendrochronological analysis of the timber confirms, the roof structure was renewed in 1874.

After another forced auction in 1880, the castle passed to the Büg farmer Georg Geist and in 1905 to the Nuremberg judicial officer Karl Mayer, whose heirs sold it to the Adolf and Julie Schwarz Foundation in Nuremberg. In 1912, the foundation converted the building into an Israelite children's recreation home. In 1938, the recreation home, valued at at least 50,000 RM, was forcibly evicted in a proverbial night and fog operation, "Aryanized," and awarded to the NS-Lehrerbund Bayreuth for the paltry sum of 9,400 RM. In 1941, the Nazi regime set up a reception camp for Russian-Germans in the castle, later followed by other refugees. In 1945, the castle was briefly occupied by American troops, then again used as a refugee home. After a period of trusteeship, it was handed over to the Jewish Restitution Successor Organization in 1955, which later privatized it again. In the early 1950s, the castle was also used as a schoolhouse.