Schloss Forchtenegg

Schloss Forchtenegg once stood on a hill called Schloßberg above the village of Forchtenegg, part of the municipality of Halfing in the Rosenheim district. The site is now marked as a medieval and early modern archaeological monument in the Bavarian state atlas. Halfing itself first appears in a 10th-century exchange document of the Salzburg archbishop Odalbert. The castle is first recorded in 1353, when it belonged to the Laiming family. Later owners included the Pienzenau family from 1597, the Dachsberg family from 1628, and the Fossa family from 1639 until 1731. Franz Armand Cajetan von Fossa gave the castle and the manor to Seeon Abbey in 1732. After the secularisation of church lands in 1803 the building was demolished in 1817, leaving only the small Baroque chapel. The chapel is a square structure with a simple pitched roof, restored in 1814. Michael Wening’s 1721 engraving shows the main building as a two-storey L-shaped block under a hipped roof with small turret-like finials. The hilltop location once commanded wide views over the surrounding countryside before the castle was lost to fire and demolition.