Weidenkam Castle

Weidenkam Castle is a stately Art Nouveau estate on the eastern shore of Lake Starnberg in the municipality of Münsing in Bavaria.

The Weidenkam estate is documented in 945 as "Wittichenheim". It consisted of two farms (the "Weidenkamer" and the "Harrer" farm), which changed hands several times in quick succession from the mid-18th century until 1875. In 1875, the estate was acquired by a member of the Franck family (chicory coffee) and sold two years later to Eduard Rosenthal. It then passed into the hands of Baroness von Reizenstein, a native Englishwoman whose husband was shot in Weidenkam, and who built a small English-style castle on the estate. In 1879, the property passed to Hermann Graf Wedel and in 1892 to Georg Käs, a great industrialist and charitable patron who owned a spinning and weaving mill in Haunstetten. He enlarged the area by purchasing Schalenkam.

His daughter Maria Käs married the penniless Count von Tattenbach and built the current Weidenkam Castle from 1911 to 1913. As Countess Maria von Tattenbach, she also distinguished herself as a benefactor. As the owner of Eurasburg Castle, for example, she endowed a church in Eurasburg.

In the 1930s, she met the young pastor Herman Weidelener, who – originally associated with Rudolf Steiner – soon pursued his own paths in the philosophy of religion and founded the Religious-Philosophical Study Group, which was able to hold its conferences at Weidenkam Castle thanks to the Countess. She bequeathed the castle to the philosopher, who transferred it to the study group. The registered association has since taken care of the estate.

After the study group was banned by the National Socialists during the Second World War and the conferences could not take place in Weidenkam, the entire estate was confiscated by the American occupation forces for ten years after the war. After the end of the occupation in 1955, the building, furniture, and art treasures were in poor condition. The building itself had been spared from bombing; however, the ten years of American occupation did the rest to almost completely destroy the interior.