Schloss Schlackenhof

Schloss Schlackenhof stands in the small village of Schlackenhof, part of Kemnath in the Tirschenreuth district of Bavaria. The building is a two-storey Renaissance structure with a pitched roof, built around 1600. Archaeologists have found traces of earlier medieval and early modern buildings on the site, including remains of a former hammer mill. The estate was once surrounded by an oval moat and ring wall, now removed, and was separated from the village by a mill canal fed by the Haidenaab river. The castle’s history goes back to at least 1298, when it was mentioned as ‘Slawatenhouen’. Over the centuries it passed through many noble and bourgeois families, including the Löneisen, Giech, Künsberg and Wilhelm families. In 1809 it came into the hands of Baron Franz von Rupprecht, who ran a manorial court here. By 1852 the estate had been broken up and sold off. Today the former hammer house shows the plain style of late 16th-century architecture. Three stone pillars topped with spheres and a late 19th-century iron gate mark the entrance. The mill canal still runs past the building, and the surrounding fields recall the estate’s working past. The site offers a quiet view of the gentle countryside that once powered the mill and supported the castle’s owners.