Top 13 Castles around Treffelstein

The former Grafenried (Czech: Lučina) stood on a small hill near the German border (today the Untergrafenried border crossing) west of Nemanice. Grafenried also included the villages of Anger (Upor), Seeg (Pila), and Haselbach (Liskova). Around 800 people lived there. After the end of the Second World War, the German population was expelled from the border area, and the village, with all its buildings, was gradually razed. The Grafenried church of St. George still stood until the 1970s. Although it had the status of a monument, it was blown up and demolished. On the initiative of a former German resident of the community and some historians on the Czech side, the remains of the church were partially excavated and renovated in 2011. The search for traces was extended to the entire lost village and its districts.

Reichenstein Castle can be considered an early settlement center in the Schönsee area. It was probably built in the late 11th century. Apart from a few remnants of the walls, only the stump of the round keep remains. However, the Reichenstein ruins are still shrouded in mystery. Legends tell of white women haunting the castle, and a treasure of gold lies beneath the ruins.

Frauenstein Castle Ruins The village of Weiding belonged to the Frauenstein lordship in hereditary servitude, about whose beginnings nothing is known. In the second half of the 13th century, Duke Heinrich of Lower Bavaria bought Frauenstein from Fredrich the Siegenhofer. This source states that the area around the village of Weiding, which had a brick church, was largely deserted. In the 14th century, the Frauenstein lordship and thus Weiding became a fief of the King of Bohemia. The Satzenhofers, Zengers, Fuchs and the Lords of Murach followed as further owners. In 1512, Hans von Selbitz (knight, friend of Götz von Berlichingen) appears as the owner of Frauenstein Castle. On January 29, 1580, Emperor Rudolf II enfeoffed Andreas Georg von Murach auf Kürnberg und Winklarn and his wife Anna, daughter of the late Hans Fuchs zum Schneeberg, with the two desolate castles Frauenstein and Reichenstein, today preserved as the Reichenstein castle ruins, the small town of Schönsee and the villages of Weiding and others. On November 26, 1605, Hans Friedrich Fuchs received an imperial letter of fief. His hereditary possessions included the castles Frauenstein and Reichenstein, the town of Schönsee, Weiding, Pondorf, Gaisthal, Schönau, Stadlern and Schwand with the iron hammer. Today, unfortunately, only a few remains of the walls in a romantic location remain. Only the tip of an entrance arch protrudes from the overgrown piles of rubble. A little higher up, further east, a wall remains that is about to collapse rises from the collapsed material. Large piles of bricks lie everywhere. The whole thing impressively shows the decay of a castle and looks a bit like a sunken fairytale castle. Source: www.wikipedia.de

Frauenstein, one of the five mysterious vanishing points of the early Middle Ages - next to Hirštejn (Czech Republic, between Závist (Neid) and Nemanice (Wassersuppen)), Reichenstein (between Stadlern and Ebene or Böhmerwaldturm, Drachenturm (Treffelstein) and Thanstein. You have to experience them all with all their secrets in order to get to the bottom of the secrets of the “Schwarzachtaler holiday region 🤣).

Thanstein Castle Ruins Uto von Thanstein, a ministerial of the Count of Sulzbach, is mentioned for the first time in a document in 1218, and the Murachers are also named as co-owners. The last representative of the Thansteiners, Alto, becomes abbot of the St. Emmeram monastery in Regensburg in 1358. In Thanstein, a branch of the Zenger family takes over rule from 1353 onwards, and calls itself von Thanstein from then on. In 1390, Thanstein is captured by the Leuchtenbergers during a feud, but not destroyed. In 1425, it survives a looting by the Hussites. In 1530, the Saxon knight Georg von Ebenleben marries the last Zenger, Margarethe. When he takes over rule, he also orders the introduction of the Protestant faith in Thanstein. In the Thirty Years' War, his descendants were expropriated by Elector Maximilian of Bavaria because they fought on the side of the Swedes, but in the Peace of Westphalia it was agreed that the property would be returned. After that, the owners changed hands constantly. The castle burned down almost completely in 1811, but the rule did not end until 1848. The keep was restored in 1887. Extensive security measures and excavations have been carried out since 2011. The core of the complex is a rectangular fort on a granite hilltop, which is relatively rare in the Upper Palatinate. After the latest renovation work, the history of the complex had to be rewritten and the floor plan redrawn. Parts of the walls and the foundation of the keep were dated to around 1200 - in line with the first mention of the castle nobility. Uto was therefore not, as is often said, lord of the nearby Altenthanstein castle near Dautersdorf, but was already at home in what is now Thanstein. The entrance area is dominated by the round keep made of ashlars and rubble stones, which is still 17 m high today. It was added to the complex later and dates from around 1300. The tower has a wall thickness of 2.5 m and an entrance at a height of 5 m. The floors were once separated by wooden ceilings, and the wall recedes slightly at each step. A deep moat, spanned by a stone bridge, separates the inner castle from the large outer castle area. The entrance is a gate system that provides access to the moat, which also forms the driveway to the outer castle. At the top, houses and utility buildings are grouped around a square, some of which incorporate older wall remains. Source: Excerpts from www.burgenseite.de

The tower is finished and no longer scaffolded. But honestly... you can see more and get nicer pictures from below! The tower has no entrance and cannot be visited from the inside. You can save yourself the altitude 😉

Beautiful hike from Hannesried to the Frauenstein................

To get to the tower you only need a machine-readable identity card. A good thing, unfortunately, doesn't always work.