Schrofenstein Castle

Otto and Ulrich von Schrofenstein are the first members of their family known to us by name. They first appear in documents in 1228. However, a fortified house likely already existed towards the end of the 12th century.

From 1380 to 1806, the castle was under the feudal sovereignty of the Bishop of Chur. The Schrofensteiners were initially ministerials of the Bishops of Chur, but already in the second half of the 13th century, they appeared as such for the Counts of Görz-Tirol. The castle served as a court seat from 1254 to 1282. In the first quarter of the 14th century, the family became involved in a feud, leading to a siege of their castle, which suffered severe damage. Further damage to the castle likely occurred when the Appenzellers advanced into the Inn Valley towards Innsbruck in 1406.

The family died out in 1546 with Georg Philipp von Schrofenstein. However, the castle had already been abandoned by its owners at the beginning of the 16th century and was only managed by caretakers. The Bishop of Chur granted the lordship to Hans Trautson, who was related to the Schrofensteiners, but he no longer invested anything in the preservation of the building. After the extinction of the Trautson family, the castle, which had by then become a semi-ruin, fell to the Princes Auersperg in 1775. In 1810, Schrofenstein passed into peasant hands. After everything usable had been removed, the east front collapsed in 1846. In 1851, the governor of Upper Austria, Dr. Alois Fischer, acquired the complex.

After a largely unsuccessful restoration attempt, he bequeathed it to the Auersperg family in 1880. They began urgently needed stabilization work in 1908. In 1943, Joseph Karl Graf Trauttmansdorff inherited the ruin. Three years later, he gifted it to the renowned Tyrolean castle researcher Provost Josef Weingartner and his friend Building Councillor Dipl. Ing. Karl Innerebner. Both succeeded in saving the tower from final decay and even making it partially habitable again. Schrofenstein is currently owned by the heirs of Karl Innerebner.