Wasserschloss Mitwitz

The Wasserschloss Mitwitz stands in the small market town of Mitwitz, where the Föritz river meets the Steinach in the Steinach valley. It lies between the towns of Coburg and Kronach in Upper Franconia. The castle was first recorded in 1266 as a Bamberg fief of the barons of Schaumberg. Parts of the north wing and the northern corner tower date from that period. In 1425 the knightly lords of Rosenau, who held large estates nearby, became owners. The castle suffered damage in the German Peasants’ War of 1525 and was partly burned. Hieronymus von Würtzburg bought it in 1575 and had it rebuilt and enlarged by the master builder Daniel Engelhardt, who had planned the expansion of Kronach’s Rosenberg fortress. The Würtzburg family owned the castle until 1922. Through the marriage of Annie von Würtzburg to Theodor von Cramer-Klett junior in 1903, the estate passed to the Cramer-Klett family. After the Second World War the Frankfurt City Library stored its collections here. Today the Landkreis Kronach maintains the castle under a 99-year lease and runs the Ökologische Bildungsstätte Oberfranken and the Imkerschule Oberfranken with a small beekeeping museum. The Renaissance core is a four-storey four-wing building with a moat, saddle roofs and four corner towers. Inside the courtyard stands an 18th-century Neptune fountain and a copy of the sandstone statue Der fränkische Ritter. The west wing contains the castle chapel, and upper floors display original furnishings from the 16th to the 20th centuries. A painted room from 1755 attributed to Georg Anton Urlaub is one of the interior highlights.