Hochosterwitz Castle

The dolomite rock east of Sankt Veit an der Glan, settled since the Bronze Age, first enters the record in 860, when Louis the German, King of East Francia, donated several of his properties in the former principality of Carantania to the Archdiocese of Salzburg; the deed names the place Astarwiza. It remained a Salzburg possession until the 11th century, when Archbishop Gebhard ceded the castle to the descendants of Count Siegfried of Sponheim in return for their support during the Investiture Controversy. After Siegfried's grandson Henry IV became Duke of Carinthia in 1122, the Sponheims shook off Salzburg's overlordship altogether.

The dukes later bestowed the fiefdom on their ministeriales, the Osterwitz family, possibly a cadet branch of the Sponheim dynasty, who held the hereditary office of cup-bearer at the ducal court in Sankt Veit. In 1209 one of them, Herman of Osterwitz, accompanied Duke Bernhard of Carinthia to Rome for the coronation of Emperor Otto IV.

A legend first noted by the medieval chronicler Jakob Unrest, and later by Jacob Grimm, attaches to the castle's walls. Margaret of Tyrol — Margarethe Maultasch — cheated by the House of Habsburg of her inheritance claims to Carinthia on her father's death in 1335, invaded the duchy and set her troops against Hochosterwitz. The garrison slaughtered its last ox, filled the carcass with grain and hurled it over the wall, pretending the fortress held provisions enough to waste as projectiles. Deceived, the besiegers withdrew. The tale is a common one across the Eastern Alps, told in many variations with different characters.

In the 15th century the line of cup-bearers ran out. Georg of Osterwitz was captured in a Turkish invasion and died in prison in 1476 without descendants; Hans, the last survivor of the family, owed a substantial debt to the Emperor and was forced to surrender the deeds of the castle to pay it. On 30 May 1478, after four centuries, Hochosterwitz reverted to the Habsburg emperor Frederick III.

Over the next thirty years the castle was badly damaged by repeated Turkish campaigns. On 5 October 1509 Emperor Maximilian I handed it as a pledge to Matthäus Lang von Wellenburg, then Bishop of Gurk, who undertook a substantial renovation of the damaged fortress. About 1541 the German king Ferdinand I of Habsburg bestowed Hochosterwitz on the Carinthian governor Christof Khevenhüller.

In 1571 Baron George Khevenhüller acquired the citadel outright by purchase, and against the continuing threat of Turkish invasion he fortified it on a scale considered unique in citadel construction: an armoury and fourteen gates built between 1570 and 1586, each gate equipped with its own treacherous means of guarding the path. Local legend holds that the castle was never conquered, and that no attack ever got beyond the fourth gate, the Engelstor.

A marble plaque of 1576 in the castle yard records George's request that Hochosterwitz remain with his family, and so it has: the castle is still in Khevenhüller hands, and since the 16th century no major changes have been made to it.