Cultural heritage D-3-6439-0068 in Wernberg-Köblitz

Schloss Woppenhof stands in Woppenhof, a village that belongs to the market town of Wernberg-Köblitz in the Upper Palatinate region. It was once a small castle built where three streets meet near the St Johann Baptist church. Repeated fires in the 17th and 18th centuries destroyed both church and castle, leaving no visible remains above ground. The site’s history begins in the 11th century, when local nobles first appear in records. In 1225 Heinrich and Eberhard von Losau, ministerials of Ortenburg, held the estate. By the late 1300s the Landgraves of Leuchtenberg had become lords of Woppenhof, and from the 14th to the 19th century various Hofmarksherren administered low justice here. The last holder, Karl Franz Freiherr von Murach, died childless in 1836 and the fief reverted to the Kingdom of Bavaria. Today the only trace of the vanished castle is the archaeological record beneath the church and surrounding streets. Visitors walk past ordinary village lanes where cellars and foundations lie buried. The quiet Johannesstraße and Brauhausstraße mark the triangle once occupied by walls and towers. The medieval church of St Johann Baptist still stands at the centre, its older phases recorded in the same excavation.