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Burg Hohnstein – history and legends

Burg Hohnstein towers above the little town of the same name on the edge of the Polenz valley. It is considered the only surviving castle in Saxon Switzerland on the right bank of the Elbe. Its story runs from the Middle Ages through its time as a prison and a youth hostel to the dark years of the 20th century; since 2019 it has been undergoing extensive restoration.

The Berka of Dubá

The castle was built around 1200 and is first mentioned in records in 1317. In 1353 it passed to the Bohemian noble family of the Berka of Dubá, as a fief from Emperor Charles IV – their coat of arms with crossed oak branches can still be seen today at the passage to the second courtyard. Hohnstein was their ancestral seat in what is now Saxon Switzerland.

Hunting lodge, administrative seat and prison

In 1443 Elector Frederick the Gentle acquired the castle by exchange and purchase; under feudal law it remained tied to Bohemia until 1806. The Wettins used it as a hunting lodge, administrative seat, court and prison; in 1639 it withstood a Swedish siege. Below it, Elector Christian II had the Bärengarten laid out – from 1609 to 1756 bears were kept there for the court hunts.

20th century

In 1926 the castle became a youth hostel – with 1000 beds, the largest in Germany at the time; in 1928 Max Jacob moved into the castle with his puppet theatre, the Hohnsteiner Kasper. From 8 March 1933 to 25 August 1934 the Nazis ran one of their early concentration camps here – some 5,600 people were imprisoned and about 40 lost their lives. From October 1939 the castle was a camp for captured officers. After 1949 it became a youth hostel again, and in 2018 the town took over running it.

Place of remembrance

Since 11 March 2023 a small exhibition in the former women's bunker has commemorated the history of the castle from 1924 to 1945 and the early concentration camp. The memorial stone by Wilhelm Landgraf from 1961 still stands today.

Legend The good angel

In the days of Elector Maurice, a ghost in the shape of a little girl is said to have appeared at Schloss Hohnstein. It helped a child of the same age with its work and even brought it money. The district officer reported the matter to Dresden – but the superintendent dismissed the whole thing as a spook or a swindle and remarked drily that God does not send minted coins by way of ghosts.

Legend The scythe duel in the Tiefer Grund

By the waterfalls in the Tiefer Grund below Hohnstein, two scythes and a cross with the year 1699 are carved into the rock. The legend behind them: two friends from Waitzdorf loved the same girl, and she would only take the bravest. So they met with brand-new scythes to fight it out. One of them fell; the victor threw himself weeping over his dead friend and disappeared. Nine years later he came back to the village as a Prussian cuirassier, saw the girl – pale and careworn – at her spinning wheel, said only “God be with you” and knelt once more at the grave before marching off to Bohemia with his army. She died that same year.

Links to other places

From Hohnstein, the Berka of Dubá ruled over a large part of the rear Saxon Switzerland; in 1410, through the division of an inheritance, the lordship of Wildenstein, with its castle at the Kuhstall, was split off. Once the Wettins had also taken over Wildenstein in 1451, Wildenstein and the Winterstein became part of the district of Hohnstein. The Treaty of Eger of 1459 then fixed this border between Saxony and Bohemia.

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