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19-529: The hill castle is atop a 666-metre (2,185 ft) knoll at the entrance to the Brixental valley, about 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) south of Wörgl and 20 kilometres (12 mi) west of Kitzbühel . A fortress at the site was first mentioned in a 1241 deed; previous constructions may have existed since the 10th century. The Brixental originally was a possession of the Prince-Bishops of Regensburg ;

38-578: A quarry. Upon the Final Act of the Vienna Congress , the valley became part of the Austrian , crown land of Tyrol in 1816. The present-day building was erected on the foundations of the former one from 1878 onwards. Itter Castle was purchased as a residence in 1884 by Sophie Menter , pianist, composer, and student of Franz Liszt . Liszt himself as well as young Arthur Rubinstein stayed at

57-573: Is a castle built on a natural feature that stands above the surrounding terrain. It is a term derived from the German Höhenburg used in categorising castle sites by their topographical location. Hill castles are thus distinguished from lowland castles ( Niederungsburgen ). Hill castles may be further subdivided depending on their situation into the following: When in the 10th and 11th centuries castles lost their pure fortress character and were increasingly built as residence castles for

76-850: Is also likely that Weiter personally killed the dissident Georg Elser , whose death was officially announced by Weiter as having been caused by an air raid. After the war, a letter to Weiter from Heinrich Müller was discovered in which the order was given that Elser was to be killed and that the death was to be blamed on a bombing raid. Inmate leaders would later testify that Weiter had spoken to them shortly before leaving Dachau in an attempt to get them to testify to his lack of direct cruelty at any subsequent trial. Weiter did not face trial, as he fled Dachau immediately before its liberation and reached castle Schloss Itter in Austria , where he died under mysterious circumstances. According to Paul Reynaud , on Wednesday May 2, 1945, after drunkenly bragging about

95-766: The German Imperial Army at the age of 20. He served as a soldier for ten years, seeing action on the Eastern , Western and Balkan fronts during the course of World War I . He served as divisional and then regimental paymaster and following the reductions in the German military that followed the Treaty of Versailles he took up a similar position in the Bavarian police. Weiter continued as an anonymous bureaucrat until in 1936 he retired from his paymaster role,

114-533: The Marksburg (hilltop castle), Ehrenfels Castle (hillside castle) and Schachenstein Castle (rock castle). Eduard Weiter Eduard Weiter (18 July 1889 – 2 May 1945) was a German bureaucrat who became a Schutzstaffel Obersturmbannführer and concentration camp commandant during World War II . The son of a horsewhip maker, Weiter worked as a book salesman whilst studying part-time until he joined

133-517: The Phoney War ; former tennis champion Jean Borotra , later General Commissioner of Sports in the Vichy regime ; right-wing leader François de La Rocque , leader of the right-wing Croix de Feu movement; trade union leader Léon Jouhaux ; André François-Poncet , a politician and diplomat; and Michel Clemenceau, politician and son of Georges Clemenceau . The former republic president Albert Lebrun

152-695: The Second World War , he was put in charge of administering Dachau concentration camp , it was still a bureaucratic role away from the actual camp. Despite this, Weiter succeeded Martin Weiss as camp commandant on 30 September 1943. Inmate accounts suggest that Weiter's regime was characterised by the same anonymity that had defined his career, as he was rarely seen around the camp. Conditions did decline, however, notably due to overcrowding (as other more easterly camps were closed), but Weiter made little attempt to expand Dachau to cope with this influx. It

171-652: The Bavarian police having been incorporated as a unit into the Ordnungspolizei . He then took a role with the SS, although once again as a paymaster and even at this point Weiter wrote that he had no particular political beliefs or identity. Indeed, he did not join the Nazi Party until 1937. Weiter did win the favour of Oswald Pohl , but his ambivalence to politics slowed down his advancement; and even when, during

190-543: The afternoon of May 4, 1945, the Dachau prison's commander, Eduard Weiter , fled to Castle Itter where he died under unclear circumstances. Shortly after the SS-Totenkopfverbände guards fled, the prisoners armed themselves and awaited an anticipated attack from Waffen SS troops still aggressively resisting surrender. Two Sherman tanks of the 23rd Tank Battalion of the U.S. 12th Armored Division under

209-687: The castle was an administrative seat of the Counts of Ortenburg in their capacity as Vogt bailiffs, and it also served to protect the Regensburg estates from incursions undertaken by the neighbouring Archbishops of Salzburg . Nevertheless, the Brixental was acquired by Salzburg in 1312, and in 1380 the Regensburg bishops finally sold Itter to Archbishop Pilgrim II of Salzburg . Within the Burgfrieden jurisdiction of Itter, feuds and breach of

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228-454: The castle; Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky orchestrated one of his compositions during a visit in 1892. Menter sold Itter Castle in 1902; it was again extensively remodeled in its present Tudor Revival style by later owners. After the 1938 Anschluss annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany , the Reich government officially leased the castle in late 1940 from its owner, Franz Grüner. Itter Castle

247-562: The command of Capt. John C. ‘Jack’ Lee Jr., and anti-Nazi elements of the Wehrmacht under the command of Major Josef ‘Sepp’ Gangl , arrived. Together the three groups repelled probes by SS reconnaissance elements throughout the night. The battle continued through the morning of 5 May, with a strong force of 100–150 SS pressing the attack until reinforcements from the American 142nd Infantry Regiment arrived around 4 PM that day. After

266-451: The kings and the nobility, the hill castle was the preferred choice owing to its better defensive capability. In Germany, almost 66 percent of all medieval castles ( Burgen ) known today are of the hill castle type. In the earliest centuries of castle construction only great nobles and kings had the power to build them. From the 12th century, however, the higher imperial ministeriales also built representative hill castles. This pattern

285-531: The public peace were banned, nevertheless the castle was devastated during the German Peasants' War in 1526. In the 17th century, the seat of the local administration was moved to Hopfgarten , whereafter the premises decayed. The Brixental belonged to Salzburg until it fell to the newly established Kingdom of Bavaria in 1805; the Bavarian government left the castle ruin to the Itter citizens who used it as

304-652: The war, the castle fell into disrepair until 1950 when Willi Woldrich acquired it and turned it into a luxury hotel. However, the hotel encountered financial problems and it was acquired by a holding company before it was sold to a private owner in 1985. Since that time, it has remained in private ownership and is not open to the public. It is owned by attorney Dr. Ernst Bosin from the city of Kufstein , Austria . [REDACTED] Media related to Itter Castle at Wikimedia Commons [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] Hill castle A hill castle or mountain castle

323-409: Was followed in the 13th century by the lesser nobility. Today hill castles primarily serve as tourist attractions, mainly because they often have good views − albeit in some cases for the cost of an entrance fee. They also often have restaurants or kiosks. In some cases, where they are preserved, the interior of the castle may be visited. Examples of hill castles are Kriebstein Castle (spur castle),

342-536: Was held at Itter for three months in 1943, before being sent back to France for health reasons; Marie-Agnès de Gaulle , Resistance member and sister of General Charles de Gaulle , was interned in the castle at the very end of the war, in April 1945. Besides the French VIP prisoners, the Castle held a number of Eastern European prisoners detached from Dachau, who were used for maintenance and other menial work. On

361-598: Was seized from Grüner by SS Lieutenant General Oswald Pohl under the orders of Heinrich Himmler on February 7, 1943, and transformed into a prison by April 25, 1943. Established to incarcerate prominent French prisoners valuable to Nazi Germany, the facility was placed as a subcamp under the administration of the Dachau concentration camp . Notable prisoners included former Prime Ministers Édouard Daladier and Paul Reynaud ; Generals Maurice Gamelin and former commander-in-chief Maxime Weygand , who had been prominent during

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