Leutstetten Castle

Leutstetten Castle is located in Leutstetten, not far from Starnberg, on a hill above the Leutstettener Moos. The listed Renaissance-style complex includes a small, fenced park. The castle and park are not accessible to the public.

Hans Urmiller, a member of a Bavarian patrician family, ducal councilor and chamberlain to Duke Albrecht V, had the castle built around 1552. Stone blocks from the remains of the nearby early medieval Karlsburg were also used for this purpose. It is not certain whether the building was equipped with the two transverse corner towers from the very beginning. In 1565, Urmiller received the inn in Leutstetten and the bath in Petersbrunn from the Duke. After his death around 1572, his property passed to his widow Kunigunde, née Rosenbusch von Notzing, who sold it in 1576.

In the following period, various owners of the castle and the associated Hofmark are recorded. However, the Hofmark did not include the entire village, which repeatedly led to conflicts with the district court and the administrator in Starnberg.

In 1833, Ludwig Prince of Oettingen-Wallerstein came into possession of the castle. He handed it over in 1850 to his son-in-law Hugo Count Waldbott von Bassenheim. In 1875, Prince Ludwig of Bavaria, later King Ludwig III, acquired it from Baron von Walden, who had owned it since 1864. Since then, it has been a favored property of the Wittelsbach family, where important members of the family were born and died. These include Franz Maria Luitpold Prince of Bavaria, who was born here on October 10, 1875, and died there in 1957.

After Ludwig III died in 1921, Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria took over his inheritance in Leutstetten. From here, he maintained diverse contacts with personalities of his time. From 1936 to 1938, he had the castle extended sideways according to plans by Carl Sattler. With the beginning of the Second World War, the Nazis drove him from Leutstetten Castle. German refugees from the combat zone in the Saarland were then housed there. In 1945, the castle temporarily served as accommodation for people made homeless by the turmoil of war. Among them was the sculptor Arno Breker, who had to leave his studios in Wriezen and Jäckelsbruch in the Oderbruch due to the advance of the Red Army.

Leutstetten Castle has remained in the possession of the House of Wittelsbach to this day. Luitpold Prince of Bavaria was born there on April 14, 1951.