Feistritz Castle

Feistritz Castle is located a few kilometers north of Ilz in Eastern Styria.

In 1170, the parish priest of Vustriz (Feistritz), among others, was instructed by the Archbishop of Salzburg to deliver certain tithes for Vorau. It is concluded from this that the castle, which included the church – already a parish church at that time – had also existed by then.

According to F. Posch, the predecessor of the castle, a manor house, was built after 1122 by Hartwig von Reidling, who was also the founder and namesake of the neighboring (Groß-)Hartmannsdorf (today part of Großsteinbach municipality). Hartwig, like his brother Walter, the founder of Waltersdorf, belonged to the lineage of the originally high-ranking free lords of Traisen-Feistritz, who had taken over the surrounding land from the Palatine Aribonen, who in turn had been commissioned around 1020 with the clearing work in Eastern Styria. Adalram von Waldegg, also a brother of Hartwig and Walter and founder of Seckau Abbey, had, among other things, donated the neighboring Hainersdorf to his collegiate foundation.

In 1270, an Alram von Feistritz appears, also wealthy in Traisen, married to a sister of the powerful Marshal Hartnid von Wildon, though a ministerialis of the sovereign (as one of the Radkersburg burgraves).

After the death of his son of the same name, one of his sons-in-law, Alram von Reifenstein (near Pöls), acquired the main inheritance as a free allod. The Reifensteiners were also princely cellarmen in Fürstenfeld.

After the extinction of the Reifensteiners (1400–1407), the cellar master Tybolt and his sons owned the lordship and the church patronage. After Walter Kellermeister, Feistritz came into the possession of the sovereign in 1471 (Baumkircher Feud?).

After the deployment of administrators – 1473 Jörg Reichenburger, 1474 Martin Klöcher, 1483 Pangraz Gosseneder, 1493 the Mindorfers – Truchsess Siegmund von Mindorf was enfeoffed with the lordship in the same year.

During the Reformation, the castle church lost its status as a parish church.

After the extinction of the Mindorfers in 1648, the lordship passed to the related Barons/Counts of Wildenstein and in 1809, through sale, to the Counts of Lamberg. A representative of the latter family born here was Hugo Raimund Reichsgraf von Lamberg. In 1959, they sold their moated castle to the Hamker family. Today, the castle is privately inhabited.

The castle was probably a simple tower house in the 12th and 13th centuries, surrounded by a ring wall and a moat fed by the Feistritz river.

The Reifensteiners added the "house"; the Mindorfers rebuilt it around 1570 to roughly its current appearance.

In 1605, the Hajduks devastated the castle and set it on fire. It was restored and expanded.

In 1890, Graz archive director J. v. Zahn praised: A pearl in this series [of moated castles] is Feistritz near Ilz, which clearly shows the growth from the 14th century to the magnificent buildings of the 17th century in all its parts.

Ownership

The Feistritz lordship was a medium-sized lordship in 1532 with 102 subjects; the tax base was 186 pounds pfennigs.

The areas surrounding the castle, Leithen, Tambach/Dambach and Buchberg (all three now part of Ilz), Obergrien/Obgrün and Hainrichsdorf/Hainersdorf, belonged entirely or predominantly to the lordship, as did the "exclave" consisting of Aichperg/Eichberg and Hochenegg. In addition, the lordship also owned individual farmsteads in the districts/cadastral communities of Steinbach/Großsteinbach, Großhartmannsdorf, Ilz, Dörfl, Neudorf, Mutzenfeld, Ziegenberg and Ottendorf, Großwilfersdorf, Maierhofen, Heufeld/Hainfeld, Herrnberg, Gschmaier.