Stauffenberg Castle

The "Stauffenberg Castle" was first mentioned in 1275 as a manor house. The predecessor of the current castle was destroyed by the Swedes during the Thirty Years' War. After 1650, Hans Jakob von Stauffenberg built a simple rectangular house with four round towers on the same site. Around 1784, Imperial Baron Hugo Damian Anton Schenk von Stauffenberg, lord of Jettingen, Wilflingen, Lautlingen, and Geislingen (near Balingen) in addition to Rißtissen, began construction of the new church, the predecessor of the current rectory, and the execution of the current castle complex in the Louis XVI or Zopfstil style. In the process, Hans Jakob's house, which no longer conformed to the taste of the era, was demolished. The new complex consists of a rectangular, three-story, simple main building with a three-axis, indicated central risalit and also indicated single-axis corner risalits. Two simple, two-story cavalier houses, arranged symmetrically to the transverse central axis of the main house, form the courtyard of honor together with the main house. The alliance coat of arms in the central gable field of the main house is that of the builders, the (ennobled in 1791) Imperial Count Hugo Damian Anton Schenk von Stauffenberg and his wife, Imperial Countess Antonie von Kageneck. Antonie was an aunt of the Austrian State Chancellor Prince von Metternich. The gable of the central risalit on the rear facade of the main house shows the initials of the builders' names in the form of a Zopf garland.

The English park was laid out around 1820 after the acquisition and demolition of several farmhouses along the stream now running through the park and the Riß, by the son of the castle's builder, Imperial Count Clemens Wenzeslaus Schenk von Stauffenberg, according to a sketch by Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell, by the Rißtissen landscape gardener Klank, who was trained in England.

Shortly after the Second World War, the Rißtissen master cabinetmaker Mißler, whose Biedermeier-style house can still be admired today on Ersinger Straße, removed the baroque staircase railing from the rectory, which was slated for demolition, and installed it in the main staircase of the castle. In 1920, Franz Schenk Freiherr von Stauffenberg built the former administrator's house opposite the castle, which is now inhabited by a member of the Stauffenberg family. Overall, the Schenken von Stauffenberg were imperial knightly owners of the lordship of Rißtissen from 1613 until the Imperial Deputation Main Resolution of 1803. They exercised lower jurisdiction. Napoleon Bonaparte indirectly forced the mediatization of Rißtissen, first under the crown of Bavaria until 1810, and then under the crown of Württemberg, through Article 7 of the Treaty of Lunéville and the resulting Imperial Deputation Main Resolution (1803). The castle with its fields and forests is still owned by the Schenken von Stauffenberg today.