Old Castle Tannheim

The Ochsenhausen Pfleghof (also called Old Castle) is a three-story castle-like Pfleghof built between 1696 and 1698 during the reign of Franziskus Klesin by the Vorarlberg master builder Franz Beer von Au in Tannheim in the Biberach district in Upper Swabia. The property, built directly next to St. Martin's Church, has been owned by the von Schaesberg family since the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss of 1803. It also houses the Count von Schaesberg's Forestry Office.

The present-day municipality of Tannheim was, from the 12th century until the secularization in 1803, an exclave and administrative seat of the former Imperial Abbey of Ochsenhausen. During the tenure of Imperial Abbot Franziskus Klesin, the castle-like building was erected in the form of a three-story L-shaped complex.

The farmstead is conveniently located at the crossroads of the roads to Biberach, Leutkirch, Memmingen, and Ulm. Business between the monastery, neighboring territories, and the local subjects was conducted in the Pfleghof. Legal transactions, trade in agricultural products, collection of taxes such as the tithe and their storage in the Pfleghof, as well as in the adjacent Tiberiushof, were further functions of the building.

The Pfleghof also served as a court seat for the monastery. On October 13, 1397, the Roman-German King Wenceslaus of Luxembourg granted the Ochsenhausen monastery imperial immediacy. With the construction of the Pfleghof, Tannheim received its own high and criminal court due to its remoteness. The execution site with gallows was located southwest of the Haldenhof on a hill above the Iller.

Within the building there are also guest rooms where the abbot or guests of the monastery could stay overnight. In 1702, the current parish church of St. Martin was also built by Franz Beer von Au directly next to the Pfleghof. Because the later added church encloses the existing Pfleghof to the west, it was not oriented to the east but to the north.

In 1719, the mentally disturbed and deposed Ochsenhausen abbot Plazidus Kobolt moved into the Pfleghof; in the same year, he fell from a two-step high stove chair and died.

Old Castle Family von Schaesberg

The Pfleghof Ochsenhausen has been in the possession of the von Schaesberg family for five generations, who also own further land and properties in and around Krickenbeck in the Rhineland. The building is inhabited by members of the family and serves the annual hunting parties of the Count and the Count's Forestry Office of Schaesberg. Above Ulmer Straße to the east, there is the approximately 10,000 m² Rehgarten, which is accessible to the public. At the northeastern end of the Rehgarten are the von Schaesberg family crypt, a children's playground, and a wayside shrine with Saint Joseph.