Cornštejn Castle

Cornštejn Castle stands near Bítov in the Czech Republic, and it was erected by the Lichtenburg noble family in the early fourteenth century.

The land on which the castle sits had been handled as royal demesne and was pawned or granted to the Lichtenburgs in 1308. Raimund of Lichtenburg built the fortification in the first half of the 1300s on land subordinate to Bítov Castle, and construction proceeded with the consent of King John of Luxembourg. The site first appears in a written instrument dated 31 May 1343, which records Raimund’s sons Smil and Czenek dividing their father’s holdings and names the place as Czornstein (later Zornstein, Cornštejn). By 1348 Heinrich of Lichtenburg is recorded in possession.

Through the later fourteenth and into the fifteenth century the castle’s role and size grew. In the last decades of the 1300s an outer forewall was added to create an upper bailey. In the first third of the fifteenth century a new palace was built and a lower ward was established to house barracks and support buildings; at that time a new ring of curtain walls, two gates and two bastions enclosed the expanded area. Cornštejn was attacked by Hussite forces in 1422; after that siege a detached outwork was constructed on the strategic hill to the south.

Political and military turmoil in the mid-fifteenth century brought decisive change. In 1463 Hynek refused to render allegiance and King George of Bohemia laid siege to the castle in 1464. The siege lasted eleven months, after which the king confiscated the property and granted it to Wolfgang (or Heinrich) Kraiger (Kraigk). Wolfgang repaired and modernised the fortress, and his sons added further fortifications suited to artillery warfare and built an advanced fort on a rocky platform south of the main site.

The castle returned to the Lichtenburg family after 1526. In 1542 the Moravian Estates ordered repairs and strengthening of the defenses and a tower was erected on a hill southwest of the castle to improve its outlook. The Lichtenburg male line ended in 1576 and the property passed to the Streuns of Schwarzenau, who abandoned it; thereafter Cornštejn fell into ruin during the late sixteenth century. Ownership later passed to Jankovský of Vlašim in 1617 and to the Counts von Daun in 1788, followed by several private owners in the early twentieth century, including members of the Haugwitz, Zamoyský and Radziwill families. Georg Haas von Hasenfels purchased the site in 1912. After 1945 the estate was confiscated under Edvard Beneš’ decree and nationalised.

During the twentieth century efforts were made to secure and partly rebuild the ruin. Stabilising work and partial reconstruction took place in the 1970s, and since 1987 the South Moravian Museum in Znojmo has been responsible for the site; the ruins were stabilised and made accessible in the late 1990s.