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Schloss Sonnenstein – history
Schloss Sonnenstein towers above Pirna's old town and the Elbe. It was in turn a castle, a fortress, a model mental hospital and, in 1940 and 1941, a Nazi killing centre – which today is commemorated by the Pirna-Sonnenstein Memorial. Since 2011 it has housed the district administration of the county.
A border fortress between Bohemia and Meissen
Slavs were already settling here in the 10th century; the castle above the Elbe ford was probably built around 1200. It is first mentioned on 5 December 1269 in a charter of Margrave Henry the Illustrious, who granted five marks of silver from the Elbe toll to the castle chapel – Pirna itself is documented as early as 1233. In 1291 castle and town passed to the Bishop of Meissen, and from 1293 to 1405 they belonged to the Bohemian crown. Emperor Charles IV visited several times from 1348 onwards, a princes' assembly met here in 1351, and in 1372 the Treaty of Pirna settled the border between Bohemia and Meissen for the first time. In 1405 the castle finally passed to the Wettins; soon afterwards the name “Sonnenstein” appears. A tournament followed in 1459, the new construction of the Kemenate from 1470 to 1473, and a severe fire in 1486.
Fortress and state prison
Duke Moritz had the castle extended into a “fortified house” between 1544 and 1548, Elector August planned a great new building in 1570 to 1573, and Christian I used it as a hunting lodge from 1588; a pleasure house was added in 1604. During the Thirty Years' War the Sonnenstein offered refuge to Bohemian religious refugees and withstood the Swedes in 1636 and 1639. From 1668 it was developed into a national fortress – with the Schlossschänke (1678), the Zwinger wall (1683–1685) and the Elbkaserne (1737–1740) – and from 1700 to 1756 the Alte Kemenate served, alongside Königstein, as Saxony's most important state prison. Canaletto painted the Sonnenstein from 1752 to 1755. In the Seven Years' War the Prussians occupied it in 1756, and in 1758 it surrendered after bombardment; in 1764 the fortress was abandoned, and until 1810 veterans lived in its buildings.
The asylum
In 1811 a hospital and care institution for the mentally ill opened on the Sonnenstein – one of the first large ones in Germany. Its first director, Ernst Gottlob Pienitz, relied on humane care and made the institution known internationally. In 1813 French troops drove out the patients, and the buildings were badly damaged during the siege; from 1826 a convalescent home was housed here. New buildings from 1855 to 1875, the demolition of the Alte Kemenate in 1862 and a major extension from 1890 to 1913 still shape the hill today – along with the institution's church of around 1902, the district council wing on the redesigned castle courtyard from 1905 to 1907 and the Canalettoweg of 1911. In 1939 the institution was dissolved.
Nazi crimes and remembrance
Between the end of June 1940 and August 1941, as part of the so-called “Aktion T4”, the Nazis murdered 13720 mentally ill and disabled people on the Sonnenstein, according to the Saxon Memorials Foundation, among them some 700 children and young people; including concentration camp prisoners murdered later, the number of victims is put at around 15000. The Pirna-Sonnenstein Memorial commemorates them; one memorial room tells the stories of 22 people, standing for all the others.
From camp to district office
From 1941 to 1945 an Adolf Hitler School was housed on the Sonnenstein. After the war came a large refugee camp, the district office and a police school, from 1949 to 1953 a school of the Kasernierte Volkspolizei, and from 1954 to 1991 an industrial plant for turbomachinery. Since 1991 large parts of the grounds have been open to the public – with a sheltered workshop, a special-needs school and businesses. From 2009 to 2011 the castle was converted into an administrative headquarters; since December 2011 it has housed the district office of Saxon Switzerland-Eastern Ore Mountains and the district council. For the anniversary “750 years since the first mention” in 2019, the archive association showed a facsimile of the 1269 charter.
As of: 10/2026
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