Old Castle Hainewalde

Below Hainewalde Castle stands the old stately moated castle, which the then extensively ruling noble family von Nostitz had built. Above the entrance is the Nostitz coat of arms with the year 1564, which suggests the completion of the castle's construction in that year.

A first mention of a property already occurred in 1547 for Ulrich von Nostitz, Imperial Councillor and Landeshauptmann of Upper Lusatia. After his death in 1552, his son, Christoph von Nostitz, continued the construction of the castle. Once, the building formed a closed rectangle of four wings with an inner courtyard. Access was via a stone bridge over the moat. Paintings completely covered the exterior walls of the castle.

However, the owners did not enjoy it for long, because soon after its completion, individual parts of the building slipped on the marshy ground and were so severely damaged that they had to be demolished. Only the east wing, originally built as the entrance area, remained, from which the partially preserved stone bridge over the former moat still leads today. After the main building was demolished, the forecourt was used as a court prison until patrimonial jurisdiction passed to the state in 1857.

Together with the new castle, the moated castle passed to the municipality of Großschönau in 1927. Until the 1980s, the castle was predominantly inhabited by resettler families. In 1984, the roof was renewed to stop its decay. During research and preservation work by the monument authority in 1994, employees uncovered and preserved depictions of hunting scenes in colored sgraffito painting on the portal side, under the plaster. In the meantime, the moated castle has been sold to a private owner, who extensively converted and expanded it into a residential and commercial building.