Schloss Lehen

The Alte Schloss stands in Freiburg’s Lehen district on Bundschuhstraße, just south of the Baroque church of St Cyriak. It is a fortified manor house, first recorded in 1478 when Jakob Widergrün of Staufenberg received the village and its pond-house as an Austrian fief. Earlier still, a 1427 deed may refer to the same site when Duke Friedrich of Austria granted Heinrich Bangergeben a house, court and land. The origins of the water castle remain unclear, though it likely dates from after the decline of the Zähringen dynasty. The building changed hands several times: after the Widergrüns came Balthasar von Blumeneck, whose widow’s house was destroyed in the Peasants’ War of 1525. The von Stadions sold the estate to Freiburg in 1587 for 24 000 gulden, including moats, ponds and a new stone farmyard still known as the Hof zu Tutsch. Once repaired, the little castle served as the city hunter’s lodging before being sold into private ownership in 1870. From the street the three-storey house looks almost Baroque, with its hipped roof and dressed windows, yet its massive eastern section suggests a medieval tower roughly ten metres square. Above the door hangs a shield combining Freiburg’s and Vorderösterreich’s arms. The original water defences once encircled the house on three sides, reached by a bridge on the northern side. Traces of the moat and island platform remain, giving a sense of how the manor rose above the marshland where the Dreisam’s arms once flowed.