Nazza Castle

Nazza Castle is a castle and a listed building in the municipality of Nazza in the Wartburg district. It is located in the historic village center and is privately owned.

Nazza Castle was built around 1550 as an estate with a representative residential building by the Lords of Hopffgarten zu Haineck in Nazza. Haineck Castle, located above Nazza, was at that time still the official seat of the Wettin bailiwick of Haineck and had been received by the Knights of Hopffgarten as a fief and temporarily as a pledge since 1503. In 1513, the sovereign Duke Frederick the Wise handed over Haineck Castle and the associated possessions and rights to Georg von Hopffgarten, who was a Knight of the Order of Malta, Privy Councillor, and bailiff of Haineck. He became the progenitor of the Hopfgarten zu Haineck in Nazza branch.

After the Peasants' War, which had also spread to the Haineck bailiwick, the subjects of the bailiwick had to pay 760 guilders in fines as atonement for the suppression of the peasant uprising. At this time, the military value of Haineck Castle had decreased, but the shock of the first siege of Vienna by the Turks in 1529 had also alarmed the Saxon sovereigns, and they were also urged by the Emperor to restore existing fortifications and castles.

At this time, the Lords of Hopffgarten began to move their residence to the edge of the village; administrators and servants remained in the castle for guard duty. A stone tablet with the chronogram 1551 commemorates the inauguration of the castle building by Georg Christoph von Hopffgarten and his wife Elisabeth von Greußen. His son, Georg Wilhelm von Hopffgarten, was married twice. He initiated further embellishments of Nazza Castle, which displays his alliance coat of arms. Jurisdiction over the village of Nazza remained in the hands of the von Hopfgarten family until 1815; the village was an exclave of the Duchy of Saxe-Gotha. The wealthy forester Hans Ernst von Hopffgarten, a forest owner, was the last owner of the estate and sold the buildings in 1816 with the consent of his cousins. At the same time, Nazza was placed under the district court in Thal. In 1835, the municipality of Nazza acquired ownership rights over the ruins of Haineck Castle.

Only a small remnant of the original building complex of Nazza Castle has been preserved; the stables, barns, and storage buildings, built as a four-sided courtyard, occupied the northern part of the estate complex, extending to the steep slope of the Lempertsbach stream and also accessible from the north by a side path (Triftweg). The southern block of houses consisted of four houses grouped around a rectangular courtyard, each with a solid ground floor and attached half-timbered upper floors, serving as a stately residential castle.