Burgruine Grafenstein

Burgruine Grafenstein stands in Grafenstein, Austria, and was constructed during the medieval period for the regional feudal elite.

The castle first appears in a surviving record dated 20 June 1158, when Bishop Roman I of Gurk granted the duke Heinrich V of Spanheim the farm known as Gravindorf and named the nearby fortress as Gravenstaine. Duke Heinrich entrusted the site to a vassal, Heinrich von Truchsen, and later the role of burgrave passed to Heinrich’s sons Gottfried and Adalbert (also recorded as Albert). During the later twelfth century a noble line that grew out of the Trixen Grafen family adopted the castle’s name and became known as the Grafensteiner family.

Members of the Grafensteiner line appear in the record through the early thirteenth century. One named Heinrich von Grafenstein took part in a tournament at St. Veit in 1227. Another, Rudolf von Grafenstein, left a seal that was later chosen as the municipal coat of arms in 1954. After the Grafensteiner line died out and the neighbouring settlement expanded, the fortress was repeatedly pledged and passed to new owners, appearing in transactions in the fourteenth century, including a transfer in 1330 to Hans Liebenberg and another in 1351 to the Kraiger family.

A catastrophic landslide and earthquake in 1348, the collapse of the Dobratsch massif, is cited as the most likely cause of the castle’s terminal damage. From that point onward the site is recorded only as a castle site, and over the following three centuries it declined in importance and fell into decay. On 30 July 1629 Johann Andreas von Rosenberg acquired the lordship of Grafenstein together with the ruined stronghold. In later local memory the location became known as Schloss Lerchenau and passed into regional legend. In the 1920s Franz Xaver Kohla carried out archaeological excavation work at the top of the rock cone and uncovered sections of a surrounding wall; those exposed elements were subsequently reburied and have since grown over.