Burg Neuhaus

Burg Neuhaus stands in the municipality of Neuhaus in the modern country of Austria.

The hilltop stronghold developed from a fortified house probably erected in the second quarter of the 1200s. The site is first recorded in 1246, when a document names Ulrich of Neuhaus as the local burgrave. During the 1300s the estate belonged to the landgrave administration and was managed by appointed caretakers.

In 1595 ownership passed to the Wolzogen family, who had recently attained knighthood and became barons in the early 1600s. At the start of the 17th century Hans Christoph von Wolzogen carried out a major rebuilding of the castle and commissioned a new church dedicated to Saint John Nepomuk, constructed between 1610 and 1612. That new church replaced an earlier Romanesque castle chapel and at the time served as a Protestant place of worship.

The Wolzogen household suffered losses during the Counter-Reformation. Paul I. von Wolzogen left for Saxony in 1628 and the property changed hands several times thereafter. Ottoman troops plundered the site and set fire to the castle and church in 1683. By 1694 parts of the complex still usable were converted into a glass and mirror workshop. In 1724 the estate returned to imperial administration and repairs were carried out under Emperor Karl VI; a memorial stone on site records that restoration and the establishment of the mirror works. A new west-side wing for the factory was added, and the mirror operations moved to new premises in 1742 and again in 1830.

In the late 1700s and early 1800s the buildings accommodated public functions. From 1769 the east wing housed a public elementary school and by 1780 a teacher-training institute occupied part of the complex. After Neuhaus became its own parish in 1833, the west wing served as the parsonage. From 1830 the castle belonged to Freiherr Georg Simon von Sina, who gave it about twenty years later to his granddaughter Anastasia, Countess Wimpffen.

State forestry authorities took control in 1938. Fighting in the closing days of the Second World War led to a destructive fire on 21 April 1945 that consumed the castle and its church. The church was reconsecrated on 24 November 1946 by Archbishop Theodor Innitzer. Reconstruction of the west wing began after 1955. The east wing passed into private hands in 1977 and was restored; the parsonage portion later received renovation in 2003–04 while the private portion was repaired during the 1980s. The property is now divided between a private family and the Archdiocese of Vienna. In the early 2000s the church received further works, including repainting, restoration of the high altar, a full overhaul of an 1891 organ and electrical renewals in 2005, and the altar was consecrated by Archbishop Christoph Schönborn on 10 September 2006.