Hecklingen Castle

The origins of Hecklingen Castle go back to Hecklingen Monastery (Kakelingen), which was first mentioned in a document in 1140 in a bull to Pope Innocent II. The town of Hecklingen was first mentioned in 1176, when Duke Albrecht II of Saxony gifted the town to the monastery. After the Reformation, the monastery was dissolved. In 1571, Christoph von Trotha bought the monastery buildings for 23,000 and shortly thereafter converted the economic building into a castle. In 1721, the castle was rebuilt into its current form. Until their forced expropriation by the communists in 1945, the castle was owned by the von Trotha family. Fritz von Trotha was arrested and died in 1947 in the Russian special camp Buchenwald (formerly Buchenwald concentration camp). His wife with three children was able to flee to the Western zones before her arrest. Today, the castle is privately owned.