Weißenau Castle

The estate was originally called Talleshof. It received its current name after Andreas Weiss, who acquired it at the beginning of the 16th century. Around 1517, he was a caretaker at Twimberg. Weiss had the previously rather simple farm expanded into a manor. His family had achieved considerable wealth and owned, in addition to Weissenau in the Lavanttal, also the castles of Schmelzhofen and Lichtengraben. The Lords of Weiss owned Weissenau until 1683, when the last representative of the family, Sibylla Maximiliana Baroness von Ramschüssel, sold it to the Imperial Prince and Lavant Bishop Franz Caspar von Stadion. He further expanded the castle, placing great emphasis on living culture. The Völkermarkt provost Karl Ludwig Kliess acquired the lordship in January 1702, but sold it just two months later to Johann Christof von Rohrbach. In 1739, the next sale took place, this time to Georg Andrä Josef Count von Christallnigg. He was an industrialist who had become immensely wealthy in iron mining and ore processing and owned nine castles or estates in Carinthia. Around 1807, Ferdinand Count Egger bought Weissenau and attached it to his lordship Ehrenegg. However, he first leased the estate to Kunigunde Grössing and then to the Barons von Staudach. Egger had the roof truss of the main wing completely renewed and the already dilapidated vault renovated. In 1855, the Barons von Helldorf briefly appeared as new owners, but already in the next year, the castle belonged to the Silesian mining industrialist Count Hugo Henckel von Donnersmarck. He left it to his second wife Laura as a widow's residence. The plans for a renovation in the style of romantic historicism were made before the Count's death in 1890. However, most of the work was carried out only afterwards under his widow. Schloss Wolfsberg, which also belonged to the Henckel von Donnersmarck family and had been rebuilt in Neo-Gothic style from 1846 to 1853, probably served as a model. The construction work in Weissenau was carried out by the Wolfsberg master builder Valentin Urbani. The designer is not known. Finally, in 1919, the Thun-Hohenstein family inherited the property, which still belongs to them and serves as the seat of an estate administration.

The castle is located not far from Wolfsberg. It is a good and, for Carinthia, rare example of a uniform castle ensemble from the Historicist period. Weissenau was already built in the 16th century, but it received its current appearance only in 1890 during the renovation in the then popular Tudor style. The three-story building encloses a courtyard in a horseshoe shape with three residential wings. The west side was originally closed by a crenellated wall, in which the entrance gate was located. It was demolished in 1839. The square clock tower, which is adorned with battlements and small turrets, as well as the library, were built around 1890. At that time, the northeast wing was also renewed. In its upper floor is the house chapel, furnished around 1890. It is a uniformly designed, flat-ceilinged room, whose Neo-Gothic interior decoration has been preserved. On the other fronts, all windows were enlarged and a terrace was built on the east side of the building. The facades are kept very simple. Only the somewhat unusual canopies of the large windows on the first floor are striking. They are intended to indicate the presence of a bel étage, although most of the reception rooms such as the dining room, library, smoking lounge, and billiard room were on the ground floor. Inside, the square ballroom in the southwest wing with its plastic baroque ceiling stucco is particularly interesting. A fireplace with a mighty and richly decorated stucco top reminds of Bishop Franz Caspar von Stadion, who furnished this room. His coat of arms is attached to the fireplace top. Opposite the access road, extensive farm buildings extend, which were also commissioned by Laura Countess Henckel von Donnersmarck. They still serve the estate today. Noteworthy is the administration building with horse stable and carriage house, built in 1893, in which various architectural styles were used.