Oberurff Castle

Oberurff Castle (also known as Hanau Castle) is located in the Oberurff district of the municipality of Bad Zwesten in the Schwalm-Eder district in North Hesse.

The castle was built in 1877. The builder and owner was Prince Philipp von Hanau-Hořovice (* December 29, 1844 in Kassel; † August 28, 1914 in Oberurff Castle), the youngest of six sons from the morganatic marriage of Elector Friedrich Wilhelm I of Hesse-Kassel with Gertrude Lehmann. Philipp, who lived with his parents from 1867 in Bohemian-Austrian exile in Prague and at Hořowitz Castle, became a Rittmeister in Austrian service. After the death of his father (1875) and the renunciation of his agnates' claims to the throne in favor of Prussia, he returned to Hesse and acquired the manor house of the von Wintzingerode family in Oberurff, today a district of Bad Zwesten in the Schwalm-Eder district in North Hesse, as his residence.

The estate was originally owned by the Lords of Breidenbach gen. Löwenstein. Then Carl Reinhard Goddaeus bought it and bequeathed it to his sister Maria Amalia (* 1710), the wife of the Hessian Privy Councillor and Vice Chancellor Christian Heinrich von Motz (1687–1751). Their son Justin (1733–1813), Hessian Privy Councillor and President of the Higher Court of Appeal in Kassel, was elevated to the Imperial Nobility in 1780. With the extinction of the von Motz family in Oberurff, the estate came as a dowry to the von Wintzingerode family. Philipp von Wintzingerode, Prussian regional director in the Kassel administrative district and former Hesse-Kassel administrative official, died in 1871, and his widow, née von Berlepsch, sold the property to Philipp von Hanau. On the grounds, he had Oberurff Castle built in 1877, a manor house in the Neo-Baroque style, along with an extensive landscape park. He then brought his father's library and cabinet files to Oberurff.

Since 1952, the castle has belonged to the CJD Jugenddorf-Christophorusschule Oberurff, a private grammar school with a Realschule and boarding school operated by the Christliches Jugenddorfwerk Deutschlands, as well as an attached dyslexia center.