Schönfels Castle

Schönfels Castle is a typical hilltop castle in the Schönfels district of the municipality of Lichtentanne. It is located at 441 m above sea level in the Saxon district of Zwickau and was built on a rock spur of diabase rock in the 12th century as the center of medieval colonization and a feudal seat. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the castle was redesigned in the Late Gothic and Renaissance styles.

The castle houses a museum, opened in 1975, and a castle restaurant.

Between 929 and 980, a fortification was built in Schönfels by Henry I to protect against the Wends, on whose foundations the castle, still preserved today, would later stand. Over time, the von Weißenbach family held the castle for the longest period. However, its first owners were the von Schönfels, who are first mentioned as von Schoninvels in a document from Bishop Engelhard of Naumburg dated April 25, 1225. After 1200, the bailiffs of Gera and Plauen held the medieval castle as a fief and kept it until the Vogtland War in 1354 and beyond. As late as 1326, Henry II Reuss of Plauen alone controlled Schönfels, and in 1349/50, Henry Reuss of Plauen held the castle as a fief from Margrave Frederick the Strict of Meissen. In 1368, Emperor Charles IV confirmed the Reuss family's fief over Schönfels. After the death of Henry IV Reuss of Plauen, Lord of Ronneburg, in 1398, the complex fell to the Wettins, and from that year Dietrich von Planitz, as bailiff, kept accounts for Margrave Wilhelm I for the Schönfels bailiwick with Werdau and Stenn. In 1402, Margrave Wilhelm I ceded the Schönfels bailiwick to Dietrich von Planitz.

In 1459, the von Weißenbach family acquired the castle. The later Bishop of Meissen, Johann V von Weißenbach, came from this family. Through the Leipzig Partition, Schönfels became part of the Ernestine Electorate in 1485, but then fell to the Albertine Electorate in 1547 after the Capitulation of Wittenberg by the Ernestines. The years between 1583 and 1770 were marked by multiple changes of ownership. Among the castle owners of that time were the families von Milckau, von Carlowitz, von Groß zu Altenhain, and von Dieskau. From 1770 until 1945, the castle was a Römer-Rauenstein family foundation. In 1945, it was expropriated and transferred to public ownership. After extensive restoration, which also took into account the concerns of monument protection, the complex was opened to the public as a museum in 1975. In 1988, the film "The Story of the Goose Princess and Her Faithful Horse Fallada" was shot at the castle, before it served as a film set again in 1994. In that year, the filming for "Trapped - The Night with a Murderer" took place there. Since 1995, it has been owned by the municipality of Lichtentanne.