Röthenbach Castle

The Hammerschloss Röthenbach is a castle in Röthenbach in the market town of Kohlberg (Upper Palatinate) in the Upper Palatinate district of Neustadt a.d.Waldnaab.

The castle was built in 1678. The chapel Mariä Empfängnis belonging to the castle dates from 1728.

In 2007, entrepreneur Raymond Grassick bought the property. Since then, he has been working on renovating the estate.

Brewery

In 1843, Franz Johann von Grafenstein founded the "von Grafenstein Castle Brewery Röthenbach". This existed until 1960.

Glass Grinding and Glassworks

In 1759, the mirror glass grinding mill at the Schmelzweiher was mentioned for the first time.

In 1873, the then owner of the castle, Hermann sen. von Grafenstein (1840 - 1902), built a glassworks. The convenient location on the Neukirchen–Weiden railway line and the skill of the von Grafenstein family ensured that the glassworks developed splendidly. At its best, the glassworks and its subsidiaries employed around 50 people in Röthenbach and in the branch operations for finishing in other localities. The son of the glassworks founder, Hermann jun. von Grafenstein (1874 – 1955), managed to marry into the porcelain manufacturer family Rasel around 1907, with the glassworks as a prestigious operation behind him, and with capital from his father-in-law Eduard Rasel, to comprehensively renovate and modernize his rustic Hammerschlösschen, so that its Art Nouveau interior offered all the living comfort of a grand bourgeois household of the turn of the century.

In the course of the demise of small hand-blown glassworks in the 1920s, the Röthenbach glassworks also ceased operations in 1928.

The glassworks itself was demolished after the Second World War. The workers' house and the polishing plant building, however, are still preserved.