Schloss Tribuswinkel

Schloss Tribuswinkel in Traiskirchen, Austria, is a medieval castle established by local landholders, with origins in the high Middle Ages and a principal building phase that belongs to the medieval castle tradition of the 12th to 14th centuries. Its long history links the site to early documentary records and to regional religious and military life, and the complex later served changing civic and social purposes into the 20th century.

The site first enters the written record in the early 12th century, when a person associated with the place appears in a 1136 charter. An initial fortified installation was built around the 12th to early 13th century, originally protected by an external water trench. In the first half of the 14th century the settlement grew into a substantially larger castle complex, and by the later Middle Ages the castle included its own chapel with a resident chaplain; a local lord, Wolfgang von Winden, established the parish of Tribuswinkel before 1368.

Ownership passed through a succession of regional families and individuals. A locally recorded family held the place into the early 14th century, followed by the Mistelbach family. Wolfgang von Winden purchased the property in 1359 and his descendants retained it until 1527. In the late 16th century Georg Federl acquired the estate, in 1588; after his conversion to Protestantism he seized goods from the Catholic parish church, an action that required intervention by Archduke Matthias. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries the property changed hands several times, including possessions by the Starhemberger, the Streun von Schwarzenau and the Hoyos, a purchase in 1637 by Johann Hector, Count Isolani, and lengthy ownership by the Wägele family overall between 1666 and 1772, with an interruption from 1707 to 1733. In 1772 Maria Anna von Schulenburg-Oeynhausen, known as Countess Kottulinsky, acquired the estate; the Bartenstein family owned it from 1799.

Around 1800 the surrounding landscape was reshaped into an English-style garden. By the mid-19th century the counts Spiegel held the property, and in 1877 the Freiherren Christoph and Johann von Doblhoff became owners. Ludwig Urban purchased the castle in 1917 and undertook reconstruction work, including rebuilding a tower that had been removed about 1800 and adding a second floor. During the Ottoman wars the manor had functioned as a well-defended refuge for the civilian population.

After the Second World War occupying Soviet forces confiscated the building and used it as a local headquarters and for film censorship. In 1947 Gertrude Urban transferred the estate to the City of Vienna on the condition that it be used as a convalescent home. The orchard was sold for private housing, and in 1958 the structurally altered castle was adapted to accommodate roughly 160 children from Vienna; the Ludwig-Urban convalescent home opened on 17 August 1959. The convalescent home closed in 1988 and the market town of Traiskirchen purchased the property three years later. Renovation work took place beginning in 1995, and from 1997 the building housed a kindergarten among other uses. The castle and its grounds now carry formal protections as an architectural monument and as a designated natural area, and three large plane trees and one ash in front of the building are protected as individual natural monuments.