Burgruine Lichtenhag

Burgruine Lichtenhag stands above the Große Rodl valley in Gramastetten, Austria, and was built by the noble von Haag family in the medieval period.

The first documentary reference to the place appears in a 1455 fief register of King Ladislaus Postumus. The castle itself was erected in the mid-15th century by Sigismund Aspan von Haag and his wife Agnes on land that belonged to the freehold Alhartinghof, a fact recorded in a 1504 property record compiled by Jörg Aspan. The name Lichtenhaag also appears in a title associated with Martin Aspan von Haag and his brother Wolfhard, who died in 1409; documentary attributions placing the family or the site in 1167 and 1278 have been judged unreliable.

The von Haag family held the estate as a princely fief and administered a local lordship that included forest and hunting grounds, fishponds, the tenant farm known as Maier in Aspanhof, and a mixture of free and enfeoffed tenants. Members of the family occupied important regional offices and performed military service; some served as regional judge, castle governor, and steward. Around 1598 Jacob Aspan von Haag was elevated to baronial rank while serving as an imperial councillor and as a provincial councilor in Austria above the Enns.

By 1615 the property had passed from Hans Joachim von Aspan to Wolf von Gera. At the time of that sale the castle was described as badly dilapidated and scarcely fit for a lord to live in. Wolf von Gera, who lived at Waxenberg, allowed Lichtenhag to decline further. In 1654 Konrad Balthasar von Starhemberg acquired the lordships of Waxenberg, Lichtenhag and Eschelberg and placed Lichtenhag under the administration of Eschelberg; thereafter the inhabitants of Lichtenhag were governed from Eschelberg. A contemporary graphic by Georg Matthäus Vischer shows Lichtenhag already in ruin by about 1670.

Conservation work to stabilise the remaining residential tower began in 1954–1955. In 1964 Kurt Wöss bought the ruin and transformed the forebuilding into a weekend dwelling. Since 2012 Harald and Renate Kogler have been the owners. The ruin remains privately owned and may be visited only by prior arrangement. The castle’s position on a ridge above the valley, at about 470 metres above sea level, probably gave the von Haag family the ability to oversee the salt route running from Aschach on the Danube toward Bohemia.