Schwandegg Castle

A picturesque former castle from the 13th century on a flat hill above Waltalingen. Until the early 15th century, Schwandegg was the ancestral home of the ministerial family of the same name. Parts of the residential tower and the shield wall from the Middle Ages are still preserved on the complex, which has been redesigned many times.
The field name Schwandegg, certainly older than the castle itself, refers to a hill on which the original trees were cleared by stripping off the bark and then drying them out (schwenden). The barely 30-meter-high elevation to the northwest of Waltalingen did not offer much natural protection for a castle. It can therefore be assumed that when the complex was built in the second half of the 13th century, the easily accessible northwest side was protected by a moat that has now disappeared. The center of the castle was the partially preserved residential tower, whose walls are noticeably thin at 1.2 meters thick. Adjoining it, a ring wall protected the hilltop, which was reinforced on the west side like a shield wall.
Schwandegg was the ancestral castle of a family of the same name, whose members, like their neighbors at the nearby Girsberg Castle, were probably originally servants of the Counts of Kyburg. In 1288, the first representative of the family, Knight Heinrich von Schwandegg, a follower of the House of Habsburg, is attested. Through his marriage in 1292 to Katharina, widow of the Habsburg bailiff Konrad von Tillendorf, the considerable income of the Zurich granary passed into his possession.
Thanks to their good economic base, the Lords of Schwandegg were able to repeatedly lend money to Habsburg Austria, which brought them into possession of various pledges. In addition, they owned fiefs from the monastery of St. Gallen and became citizens of the town of Diessenhofen. When the neighboring Lords of Girsberg died out, Burkhard von Schwandegg also received Girsberg Castle as a fief from the Austrian Duke. However, with Wolf von Schwandegg, his family also suddenly died out in 1413.
Through a female line, Schwandegg Castle was inherited around 1419 by Hans von Münchwil, a servant of the Abbot of St. Gallen. His grandson sold this property to the von Schönau family in 1470. Gregorius von Roggwil, the Obervogt of Constance, acquired the castle from them in 1502 and caused quite a stir because he kept the altar and pictures in the castle chapel even after Zwingli's Reformation. The next owner of the castle from 1537 was the farmer Anton Hermann, who still lived in the complex but nevertheless left it partly to decay and partly to deliberate demolition.
Because he needed a safe refuge, the mayor of Constance, Thomas Blarer, bought Schwandegg in 1553. He saved the castle from ruin by having it restored and expanded. The stepped gables that are still visible today are probably partly the result of this reconstruction, as is a round tower at the eastern end of the castle grounds that has now disappeared. In the decades that followed, there were many more changes of ownership until Schwandegg was acquired by the merchant Tobias Schmelz from Kempten in Allgäu in 1614. He had the complex redesigned once again by builders from his homeland. On this occasion, the striking southeast wing was built with the so-called "Imperial Hall": an elongated room with large windows on three sides, on the walls of which twelve Roman emperors are depicted.
Further changes of ownership followed, and in 1677 Hans Kaspar Escher was able to purchase the former castle from the city of Zurich and was the last to unite Schwandegg and Girsberg under one ownership. After further changes, Schwandegg came into the possession of the Zurich captain Hans Konrad Bürkli in 1770, who again made structural changes to the complex by adding a mighty hipped roof to the northwest wing. After him, the owners changed again in rapid succession until Karl Fierz-Landis donated Schwandegg and the valuable collection it contained to the Zurich municipal community in 1890. The city kept the collection, but sold the castle again just eight years later. Now Schwandegg saw new owners come and go almost every year. In 1933 there was a fire that destroyed the northwest wing. It was replaced in 1935 by the new building that can be seen today. In 1974 the canton of Zurich was able to acquire Schwandegg and had the complex thoroughly renovated. The castle now serves as a hostel and restaurant.
Source:
www.burgenwelt...
Music:
Legacy of Handel by White_Records