Burgstall Wolfsbach

The Burgstall Wolfsbach stands on a low hill east of the Neuwirth farm in Katsdorf, Upper Austria. The site is a ruined medieval hilltop castle, its remains visible under scattered woodland at about 300 metres above sea level. A small stream called the Gusen flows eight metres below, giving the place its name. The hill shows clear traces of a circular curtain wall and an outer ditch. Part of the western slope was removed long ago for quarrying, so the surviving plateau is smaller than it once was. Archaeologists Franz Gindlstrasser, Alfred Höllhuber and Leopold Josef Mayböck found flint tools showing that people lived here as early as the Stone Age. The castle is linked to the lords of Chazilinisdorf, first mentioned in monastery records around 1035. They built the first church in Katsdorf, consecrated in 1116 by Bishop Udalrich I of Passau. By 1170 the family disappears from written records, and the castle’s end remains unknown. Today the hilltop still shows sections of a romanesque wall built from small stone blocks. The outer face of the ditch was reinforced with a bank of loamy sand. Excavations in 1984, supported by Josef Gusenbauer of Neuwirth farm, revealed a rectangular enclosure measuring roughly 25 by 17 metres. At the south-west corner a steep rocky slope marks where the great hall once stood. A square bergfried probably rose at the north-east corner, while inside the walls further buildings, including a stable, once stood. Visitors can walk the remaining circuit of the old wall and see the faint outline of a round tower base about twelve metres across.