Reinhardsbrunn Castle

The origins of Reinhardsbrunn lie in the founding of a Benedictine monastery in 1085 by Count Ludwig the Springer. This monastery, which was under papal protection and affiliated with Hirsau and Cluny, became a center of the Hirsau Reforms in Thuringia. It served the Ludowingians, who rose to become Landgraves, as their dynastic monastery and burial site. In the early 13th century, the monastery began to decline, exacerbated by the extinction of the Ludowingian line in 1247 and a fire in 1292. During the Peasants' War in 1525, the monastery was plundered and destroyed. The monks fled, and the property passed to the Elector of Saxony. Five years later, in January 1530, nine Anabaptists were held at Reinhardsbrunn; six of them were executed for refusing to recant their faith.