Burg Hohenwaldeck

Burg Hohenwaldeck stands above the Schliersee on a rocky spur of the Leitnerberg, 209 metres above the water. The ruins rise from a narrow ridge that drops steeply on three sides, with only a shallow hollow to the east. A wooden walkway now crosses the ditch-like cut and leads past the south face of the tallest remnant, a six-metre tower of large ashlar blocks. The stonework’s sharp edges suggest it was built late in the 13th or early in the 14th century. Below the tower, sections of the enclosing wall still stand up to eight metres high, built of limestone and rubble without any windows or openings. The site was first raised by the Waldeck family, ministeriales of Freising, who turned from service to independence in the late 13th century. By 1312 Arnold of Waldeck had destroyed the bishop’s castle at Miesbach, and in 1454 Georg of Waldeck secured imperial immediacy for the Herrschaft Waldeck. After the family died out in 1483 the Maxlrain lords took over, though the castle had already been abandoned for a century. A great rockfall in 1480 finished what time and war had begun, and by 1568 Philipp Apian noted only an ancient ruin with giant trees growing within its walls. Visitors now reach the plateau along the high path from Schliersee, a climb of three kilometres and a hundred metres. The surviving north spur offers a clear view down to the lake and across to the peaks beyond. Inside the tower’s shell the rough rock core and the careful lime-mortared facing stones show how the builders shaped the spur itself into part of the defences. The whole ruin, cleared and stabilised in 2023–24, stands as a quiet witness to the ambitions and the fragility of medieval power on this rocky outcrop.