Mitwitz Castle

Mitwitz Water Castle is located in the municipality of Mitwitz, between Coburg and Kronach, in the Steinachgrund valley at the confluence of the Föritz and Steinach rivers.

Mitwitz Water Castle was first documented in 1266. At that time, it belonged to the Barons of Schaumberg as a Bamberg fief. The lower floors of the north wing and the northern corner tower already existed then.

In 1425, the Lords of Rosenau, a wealthy family of mint masters from Coburg, became the new owners of the castle and village of Mitwitz. Plundered during the German Peasants' War and partially destroyed by a fire in 1525, the castle was only provisionally repaired in the following years before Hieronymus von Würtzburg acquired it in 1575. At the end of the 16th century, Hans Veit I. von Würtzburg had the castle rebuilt and expanded to its current external appearance by the master builder Daniel Engelhardt, who had previously planned the expansion of Rosenberg Fortress in Kronach.

Until the death of Ludwig Freiherr von Würtzburg at the age of 77 in 1922, the complex was owned by the Barons of Würtzburg. Since Annie von Würtzburg, his daughter, had married Theodor von Cramer-Klett junior, son of the industrialist Theodor von Cramer-Klett, in 1903, the castle passed into the ownership of the von Cramer-Klett family, to whom it still belongs today. At the end of the Second World War, the Frankfurt City Library was relocated to Mitwitz Water Castle.

Between 1977 and 1989, the Kronach district renovated the castle and received a 99-year right of use for it. The castle houses the Upper Franconian Ecological Education Center and the Upper Franconian Beekeeping School with a small beekeeping museum, which can be visited. Today, the castle and the adjacent park are regularly used for cultural events, markets, and festivals. Castle tours are conducted from May to September.