Ochsenhausen Old Castle

The present-day municipality of Tannheim was a territorial exclave and administrative seat of the former Imperial Abbey of Ochsenhausen from the late 11th century until the secularization in 1803. 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 farmyard is conveniently located at the intersection of the roads to Biberach, Leutkirch, Memmingen, and Ulm. In the Pfleghof, business was conducted between the monastery, neighboring territories, and the local subjects. Legal transactions, trade in agricultural products, collection of taxes such as the tithe, and their storage in the Pfleghof 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 Wenzel 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 possibly southwest of the Haldenhof on a hill above the Iller. Inside the building there are also guest rooms where the abbot or guests of the monastery could stay overnight. In 1700/01, the present parish church of St. Martin was also built by Franz Beer von Bleichten directly next to the Pfleghof. Because the church, which was added later, closes off 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.

The Ochsenhausen Pfleghof 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 von Schaesberg. Above Ulmer Straße in an eastern location, there is the approximately 10,000 m² Rehgarten, which is open to the public. In the Rehgarten, at the northeastern end, there is the von Schaesberg family crypt designed by Ernst Haiger in 1913, a children's playground, and a wayside shrine with Saint Joseph.