Steuerberg Castle

The castle ruin Steuerberg is located on a wooded rocky cone at the entrance to the narrow Gurk valley near Wabl, a district of the municipality of Steuerberg in the Feldkirchen district in Carinthia, Austria. It was initially known as Touernich/Tauernich Castle or also Dovernig/Dovernic/Dovernik, later as Steyrberch, Styrberch and Steuerberg. The name is derived from the former feudal lords of the castle, the Margraves of Steyr. Today it is often popularly referred to as Marbauer Castle.

The castle ruin stands on a wooded hilltop west of the Gurktal Road (B 93) after the upper Gurk, about 800 m south of the Gurk. From the Gurktal Road, a hiking trail leads to the hilltop at the Neuwirt inn in Wabl. The ruin is not visible from the valley.

The castle was probably built by the Eppensteiner Dukes of Carinthia in the 11th century. After the extinction of the Eppensteiners in the male line in 1122, the castle was in the possession of the Lords of Touernich in the 12th century as vassals of the new Carinthian Dukes from the House of Spanheim. It is first mentioned in an undated donation note from the Styrian Benedictine monastery of Admont, whose creation could be narrowed down to the period between 1130 and 1145. The donation took place when the noble Reginher (sometimes also called Reinher) de Touernich, son of Swiker I of Hollenburg, and his wife Petrissa of Feistritz handed over their young and only son Luitold to the monastery for education, and his parents and maternal relatives bequeathed extensive possessions in the Steuerberg area and in the Mölltal to the monastery on this occasion, including the Dalling estate and other farms on the Zammelsberg, in Steuerberg and around Glödnitz. In 1147, Reginher de Touernich joined King Conrad III on the Second Crusade with his feudal lord Bernhard von Spanheim, the Margrave of the Windische Mark. Margrave Bernhard, who had marched along the Anatolian coast with the army division of Bishop Otto of Freising, died on November 16, 1147, near Laodicea during the attack of the Rum Seljuks with most of his knights, but Reginher returned unharmed to Carinthia. Bernhard's lands, and with them his ministerials, came to a nephew of his wife, Margrave Ottokar III of Styr. After its new owner, Touernich Castle was soon called "Styrberch". The renaming took place between 1147 and 1169: in a document of Patriarch Ulrich II of Aquileia dated March 24, 1169, the castellan was first referred to as "Reinherus de Styrberch". However, the name Touernich probably remained in use until the 13th century.

Around 1180, shortly before his death, Reginher himself entered the Admont monastery, where his son Luitold had been abbot from 1165 to 1171. His wife Petrissa simultaneously entered the Admont women's monastery. Reginher's brother Gebhard also entered the monastery. The castle and lordship of Steuerberg came to Reginher's nephew Otto, the son of his brother Swiker II of Hollenburg. With Otto and his brother Amelrich, the Steuerberg line died out in the male line by 1246 at the latest. They were inherited by the Lords of Pettau (Ptuj), Salzburg ministerials; Mathilde of Hollenburg-Wurmberg († 1265) had married Hartnid of Pettau († 1251). After the death of Hartnid I, their son, in 1254, the castle and lordship of Steuerberg came to the Counts of Ortenburg. During the decades-long inheritance disputes over the neighboring Albeck Castle, the Peggauer-Pfannberger fled to Steuerberg Castle in 1260 after being driven out of Albeck Castle by vassals of Bishop Dietrich II of Gurk. Count Heinrich von Pfannberg, since 1253 governor of Styria and a relative of Count Friedrich von Ortenburg, who at that time held the lordship of Steuerberg, undertook several military campaigns from Steuerberg Castle in 1264 against possessions of the Diocese of Gurk, with which he was in a feud. After a renewed attack by the Peggauer on Gurk possessions, the people of the Bishop of Gurk stormed Steuerberg Castle and set it on fire.

A document from June 15, 1305, shows for the first time a coat of arms seal of Otto von Steierberg, an Ortenburg ministerial residing at the castle. It shows three small shields attached to a boss ring with a strap. This coat of arms seal served as the basis for the coat of arms granted to the municipality of Steuerberg on March 8, 1966. The official blazon of the coat of arms reads: "In green, three silver shields in trefoil, connected by black straps to a black boss ring."

According to an inheritance contract between the Counts of Ortenburg and the Counts of Cilli from 1377, with the extinction of the Ortenburgs in 1418, their possessions, including Steuerberg Castle, fell to the Cilli. In 1456, the Habsburgs inherited the lordship of Steuerberg and most of the extensive territories of the Cilli due to an inheritance contract. Emperor Maximilian I ceded them in 1517 to the Order of St. George's Knights of Millstatt. The order, which had been founded in 1469 to defend against the Turks, rapidly declined after the death of Emperor Maximilian; its possessions were mortgaged from 1541 or administered by imperial commissioners. In 1588, Archduke Karl ensured that Steuerberg Castle was mortgaged to his court chamber councilor Hans von Basseyo, to whom he owed money, until the death of his "Catholic sons".

In 1598, the entire property of the St. George's Order, which had by then de facto ceased to exist, was transferred to the Jesuit College Graz as the legal successor of the St. George's Knights, including Steuerberg Castle. From 1607, the castle was probably administered by the Jesuit lordship of Millstatt. After the dissolution of the Jesuit Order in 1773, the Studienfondsherrschaft Millstatt, as successor to the Jesuits, administered the Steuerberg property under a state cameral administrator and also exercised jurisdiction in the Steuerberg castle district. The income from the lordship served to finance the University of Graz. In 1797, the Studienfondsherrschaft sold the lordship of Steuerberg, which included about 20 properties in the area of today's municipality of Steuerberg, in addition to farms in Albeck and Deutsch-Griffen, to the Prince-Bishop of Gurk, Franz II Xaver von Salm-Reifferscheidt. In 1825, Matthias Liebenwein, owner of the lordship of Poitschach, acquired the Steuerberg property with the already dilapidated castle from the estate of the Prince-Bishop, who died in 1822. Already in 1827, the castle was no longer marked on the cadastral plan.