Braiten Castle

The Polish scholar Joseph Max Ossolinski (1748–1826), Count of Tenczyn, had this building and the adjacent building constructed in 1809 and 1810 respectively by city architect Anton Hantl (1769–1850). The builder made this generously furnished property, like his apartment in Vienna, a gathering place for the scholarly world. Artists also often stayed here, including Ludwig van Beethoven from July 29, 1816, to mid-October 1816.

After Ossolinski's death, the Wertheimer family took over the palace and expanded it (facades, terraces) around the mid-19th century. The subsequent changing owners used the castle as a tourist establishment and, after a division of the property, located the Hanausek Pension (today: Elisabethstraße 10) in the western part in 1911/12. In 1925, the Cooperative of Butchers in Vienna acquired it and set up a recreation home there. From 1939 to 1945, it served as the official building of the District Administrator for the Baden district (i.e., as part of the former district administration). During the occupation by Russian troops, from 1945 to 1955, the Russian city commandant's office was housed in the building. In 1960, the sponsoring association for the Painting School of the Austrian Painting Trade (since 1948 in Leesdorf Castle, which the Federal Guild of the Painting Trade had leased from the Hartmann sisters at the time) bought the small castle and renovated it. Braiten Castle was then, from 1960 to 1998, the Federal Institute for Residential Education and later the Federal Institute for Social Pedagogy.