Wolfurt Castle

Wolfurt Castle is a castle in Wolfurt in Vorarlberg and was the ancestral seat of the Lords of Wolfurt.

It is first mentioned in documents from 1217 and 1226. In 1402, Mehrerau Abbey acquired half of the castle from the Wolfurts. The castle became a summer residence for the abbots. Before the middle of the 15th century, Wolfurt became princely territory. In 1451, it fell to Austria and has since been granted as a fief to various Bregenz patrician families. First to the Kaisermann family, then in 1463 to the Leber von Wolfurt family.

In 1530, the abbot of St. Gallen Abbey, Germann Kilian (1485–1530), bought Wolfurt Castle near Bregenz and fled here from St. Gallen. After him, Abbot Diethelm Blarer inhabited the castle.

In 1653, Johann Wilhelm Marius took over the fief, which had since reverted to the crown. After him, Benedikt Reichart from Bregenz was enfeoffed with Wolfurt in 1696. Around 1707, he commissioned the Baroque renovation of the interior. After Joseph Xaver Tröndlin von Greiffenegg (1705–1765) acquired the building in 1750, it passed into peasant and then bourgeois ownership two years later. His grandson Hermann Gottlob von Greiffenegg then additionally named himself von Wolffurt. After 1856, a Bregenz merchant carried out a renovation in the Neo-Romanesque style. Further renovations were carried out from 1937 according to plans by Johann Anton Tscharner.

A descendant of Friedrich Wilhelm Schindler, Fritz Schindler, acquired the castle in 1936 and moved from Villa Grünau to the castle in 1950. In 1939, it was destroyed by fire, and reconstruction took place in 1940 in Gothic forms according to the plans of the former architect. In 1945, the castle, transformed into a palace, temporarily became the seat of the French military command for Vorarlberg. It is considered a landmark of Wolfurt and is in the private possession of the family.