Osterstein Castle

The origins of the Osterstein Castle remains date back to the 12th century, when the Lords of Weida erected a castle complex on the Hainberg. This was built on the site of a Bronze Age rampart and a later Slavic castle. The keep dates from this early construction phase. For a long time, Osterstein Castle played a subordinate role compared to the town castle in Gera, as it was located outside the Quedlinburg collegiate territory and was subject to the Landgraves of Thuringia. Only after the destruction of the Gera town castle in the Saxon Fratricidal War around 1450 did the Lords of Gera move their seat here. In 1550, the line of the Lords of Gera died out, and the territory passed to the related line of the Reuß of Plauen zu Greiz. In the 16th and 17th centuries, under the aegis of Heinrich the Younger, the castle was transformed into a Renaissance palace, with the name Osterstein first mentioned in 1581. Until 1802, it was the ancestral seat of the Reuß-Gera line and from 1863 the residence of the Principality of Reuß Younger Line.