Gettenbach Castle

Gettenbach Castle is a 19th-century castle building in Gettenbach, municipality of Gründau in the Main-Kinzig district in Hesse.

Gettenbach is first mentioned in 1252 in an exchange transaction between Heinrich von Ysenburg and Ilbenstadt Monastery. The Hube (hide of land) as the object of the exchange could already be identical with the estate that served as the endowment for a forester. The place is located in the Büdinger Wald and was, since the Middle Ages, the seat of one of the twelve mounted foresters of the forest. The forest law (Waldweistum) of the Büdinger Wald from 1380 counts Gettenbach among the villages "dye geforstes sin in dem Büdinger walt" (that are forested in the Büdinger forest).

In the late 17th century, two glassworks were successively operated and an iron smelter was established, which worked as a supplier for the Büdinger Hammer. The older farmstead was expanded into a small castle during major renovations in the 1840s and 1850s. It served as a hunting lodge, summer residence, and widow's seat for the Isenburg-Meerholz line, a collateral line of the County of Isenburg, which had its main seat in the nearby Meerholz Castle.

With the extinction of the Meerholz line in 1929, the property fell to Isenburg-Büdingen, who, however, did not use the castle themselves and rented or leased it out. In 1938, the female labor service was housed here, and from 1945–1957, a hospital. Since 1958, there has been a hereditary building right contract with usufruct (until 2025) with the Internationaler Bund, which operates a care facility for people with disabilities here.