Freudental Castle

Freudental Castle, also known as Grävenitz Castle, is a Baroque-style castle in Freudental in the Ludwigsburg district.

Before the construction of the castle in 1729, a predecessor building already existed, which was built in the 16th century. In 1727, Wilhelmine von Grävenitz, the court mistress and mistress of Duke Eberhard Ludwig of Württemberg, bought Freudental for 47,000 guilders from a collateral line of the Thüngen family. Grävenitz had the existing building demolished and commissioned the master builder Paolo Retti, who had already participated in the construction of Ludwigsburg Castle, to construct a new building. This was built from 1729 to 1731, but only one year after its completion, the Countess lost Freudental and the castle to Württemberg. From 1742, the building housed the seat of the Chief Forester of Stromberg, and from 1807, also the seat of the cameral administration of the Court and Domain Chamber. In 1810, King Frederick I of Württemberg had extensive alterations carried out by Nikolaus Thouret to expand the castle into his hunting and summer residence, such as extending an existing outbuilding as a third wing of the castle and the new construction of the so-called Prince's Building and the Cavalier Building. After Frederick's death in 1816, the building remained unused for a long time. In 1860, the official residence of the court chamber forester was then housed in the Cavalier Building, and for a time, a Christian elementary school. From 1867, the pensioners of the Katharinenstift also spent their summer holidays at the castle estate. In 1903, Baron Wilhelm Schertel von Burtenbach bought the entire property. In 1911, the castle was sold to the Stuttgart local health insurance association for 70,000 marks, which had the building converted by the architectural firm Suter & Liedecke. During both World Wars, the castle served as a military hospital. In the first post-war years, a lung sanatorium was operated in Grävenitz Castle, before it was bought in 1961 for 730,000 DM by the Ludwigsburg district, which had it converted again for 500,000 DM into a retirement and nursing home. From 1962, it thus housed the retirement and nursing home of the Ludwigsburg district. In 2007, the castle was bought by the art dealer and publisher Rudolf Bayer and has since been a conference venue.