The Wildon Schlossberg – a strategic key site

At the mouth of the Kainach river into the Mur river rises the 450 m high Wildon Schlossberg hill. It rises about 150 m with steeply sloping flanks on all sides from the surrounding countryside. Geomorphologically, this hill is an erosion relict several million years old. Its favorable strategic location at a traffic junction with integration into the supra-regional road network as well as the special natural conditions, including the possibility of extensive agricultural use, make it obvious why the first rural settlement began before the middle of the 5th millennium B.C. The Wildon Schlossberg represents an extraordinary finding-place in the entire southeast alpine archaeological context. The almost continuous settlement activity, spanning more than 6,500 years, is unique in this geographic area. Several excavation campaigns by the former Landesmuseum Joanneum in the 1980s and 1990s yielded evidence of 22 occupation horizons dating to the period from about 4600 B.C. to the 16th/17th century A.D. The enormous amount of finds, including richly decorated pottery, stone and bone artifacts, as well as metal objects, shows far-reaching connections to various cultures of Central and Southeastern Europe. The find material from the Schlossberg covers all archaeological periods from the Stone Age to modern times and, accordingly, many archaeological cultures (e.g. the Copper Age Lasinja and Vučedol cultures, the Early Bronze Age Somogyvár-Vinkovci and Kisapostag cultures or the older Iron Age Hallstatt culture) and underlines the prominent position of the Wildon Schlossberg in comparison to other known hilltop settlements. In specialist literature, the Schlossberg was aptly described as a “Styrian history book” as early as 1989.

The topographical-strategic location of the Wildon Schlossberg, which had proven its worth for thousands of years, was also held in high esteem in the Middle Ages and in the early modern period. There is much archaeological evidence to suggest that the much sought-after Hengistburg of the 10th/11th century was located on the castle hill; and around 1170 the Lords of Wildon built Altwildon Castle on sovereign land to the west of the mountain plateau, which was followed about 100 years later to the east by the “novum castrum” Neuwildon – apparently a fiefdom of the Archbishops of Salzburg. On the castles Ful and Hengst, halfway up the castle hill, the Wildonians placed loyal servants. From the two main castles – separated from each other by a mighty sectional moat – the lords of Wildon repeatedly intervened powerfully in Styrian provincial politics in the 12th and 13th centuries, especially when it was necessary to elect a new sovereign. Through the marshal’s office they held, the Wildonians transferred their personal coat-of-arms colors of silver and green to the duchy, they founded the Augustinian canonical monastery of Stainz as their burial place, and Herrand II of Wildon, son-in-law of Ulrich of Liechtenstein, distinguished himself as a politician and talented poet. After the defeat of the Lords of Wildon in the uprising of the nobility against the Habsburg King Albrecht I in 1292, the sovereign took possession of the two castles of Altwildon and Neuwildon. The castles were administered by burgraves and subsequently formed the center of the sovereign lordship of Oberwildon, which was sold to the princes of Eggenberg in 1624 and has remained in changing private ownership ever since.

The accumulation of fortifications of various types illustrates the great strategic importance of the Wildon Schlossberg, which also came to bear several times in the warlike events of the late Middle Ages – for example in the Baumkircher Feud of 1469/71 and in the war between Emperor Frederick III and King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, when large parts of Styria were occupied by Hungarian mercenaries between 1479 and 1490. In the 16th century, the Schlossberg was a rallying point for the country’s military contingent against the Ottomans, so that the sovereign custodians had to invest large sums of money in securing and expanding the castle facilities. Thus it becomes understandable why in 1528 the councillors of the new sovereign Archduke Ferdinand I, the later Roman-German Emperor, urgently advised against handing over Wildon Castle and Market to the Styrian provincial estates. From this favorable position, the councils argued, the sovereign residence in Graz could all too easily be threatened. The provincial estates’ wish to create their own provincial capital in Wildon thus remained unfulfilled.