Location: Schloßberg, 8463 Leutschach an der Weinstraße
On November 17, 1944, the castle was hit by an aerial bomb, killing three people. The south wing and the tower on the park side were also destroyed.
Carl Amgwerd from the canton of Schwyz bought Trautenburg Castle on April 14, 1928 and moved in with his wife Maria and their three children. He used a steam locomotive to generate electricity in the adjoining estate, which he had fed into the castle. In December 1939, the German Reich, represented by the Chief Finance President in Graz, bought a plot of land from the castle estate, on which two customs houses were built on the road to Großwalz. In 1941, a concrete bunker was built on the road to Langegg.
On March 12, 1941, Carl Amgwerd sold Trautenburg Castle to Count and Countess Anton and Kamilla Ostrowski for 220,000 Reichsmark and returned to the Swiss Confederation as a Swiss citizen. In the course of the resettlement of South Tyroleans in 1942, a family came to Trautenburg and took over the cellar management. Several “bombed-out” people, i.e. people who had lost their house or apartment due to bomb damage, were also accommodated in the castle.
On November 17, 1944 at 11 a.m., the castle was hit by three aerial bombs, the third of which fell on the south wing of the castle. This was the room of Eugenie Countess Ostrowski, the aunt of Anton Count Ostrowski, who had come to Trautenburg from Munich as a “bombed-out” person. She was fatally hit by the bomb while lying in bed. The Countess’s remains were first buried in the cemetery in Leutschach and later in the family grave in the central cemetery in Graz. Other fatalities were the cook Margareta Oblonschek and the housemaid Angela Gritschnig, both of whom were hit and buried by falling debris. They were only found five days later during clearing work. Other residents of the castle survived, some of them unharmed. The spire of the second tower at the south-eastern corner of the castle was destroyed by the bombing. The clean-up work and reconstruction of the damaged rooms began during the Nazi era. Among other things, the southern wing was given a wrought-iron gate to replace the wooden gate to the inner courtyard. A replica parapet was built on the second tower after 1973.
To commemorate the three victims of the bombing of Trautenburg Castle on November 17, 1944, a memorial plaque was placed in the anteroom of the castle chapel on the 55th anniversary in 1999.
Literature: Herbert Rauch-Höphffner von Brendt, Schloss Trautenburg, in: Wilhelm Alexander (ed.), Die Rebenland-Chronik. Eichberg-Trautenburg, Glanz an der Weinstraße, Leutschach, Schloßberg. Graz/Leutschach 2004, 531–563, besonders 557–561.
Text: Markus Rieger-Roschitz / Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on War Consequences
