Farnroda Castle

The moated castle Farnroda is a castle complex and monument built in the 13th century in the municipality of Wutha-Farnroda in the Wartburgkreis. Its remains – an approximately 25-meter-high tower and the pond – are located in the northern part of the historic village of Farnroda. Decades before its construction, a spur castle called Wittgenstein was located near Farnroda, probably a small military road post of the Thuringian Landgraves at a ford on the Erbstrom river.

Since the late 13th century, the Lords of Farnroda, demonstrably a collateral line of the Lords of Baumbach, resided as landgravial ministerials in the manorial lordship of Farnroda, which also included the present-day villages of Seebach, Mosbach and Kittelsthal. The first known bearer of the name was Helmricus de Varnrod (1260).

The Lords of Farnroda erected their castle complex as a moated castle in the middle of a swampy meadow in the Erbstrom valley. A sketch from the official descriptions of later owners shows a very small castle area, barely 100 square meters, with the tower and a few residential buildings around a tiny light well.

Around 1400, the castle frequently changed hands, indicating financial problems (pledging). In 1451, the castle was owned by an Ilse von Wangenheim, who sold it to Siegmund, Burgrave of Kirchberg. The Kirchbergers had previously lost most of their former estates in the Saale valley near Jena. With the purchase of farms in Burbach, Seebach and Farnroda, as well as meadows and arable land near Wutha and Eisenach, they gained an economic basis for a new beginning in the Eisenach area. Around 1600, the traces of the Lords of Farnroda, who as local nobility (since the 13th century) were patrons of the Laurentius Church and lords of the court of Farnroda, disappear.