Burgruine Ortenburg

Geschichte

Ortenburg Castle is a ruined mediaeval castle located in Baldramsdorf, in the Austrian state of Carinthia. It is located on the northern slope of Mt. Goldeck, part of the Gailtal Alps, above the Drava valley at a height of 740m.HistoryThe construction of the fortress was begun in the late 11th century by one noble Adalbert from Bavaria, a ministerialis of the Bishops of Freising, who then held large possessions in the Upper Carinthian Lurngau around the former Roman city of Teurnia. Adalbert's son Otto appeared as a Count of Ortenburg in 1141. First mentioned in a 1136 deed, Ortenburg Castle served as an administrative centre of the vast Ortenburg estates, initially rivalled by the Counts of Lurn with their ancestral seat at Hohenburg Castle beyond the Drava river.The Ortenburg inherited large estates in the Drava valley upon the extinction of the Lurn counts in 1135. In 1192 Count Otto II of Ortenburg and his brother Hermann founded the settlement of Spittal below the castle. Otto II is also mentioned as a participant of the Crusade of Henry VI in 1195. In 1276 the Ortenburgs sided with Count Meinhard II of Gorizia-Tyrol and the newly elected Habsburg king Rudolf I of Germany against the occupying forces of King Ottokar II of Bohemia. Damaged by the 1348 Friuli earthquake, however, the significance of the comital castle diminuished in favour of the nearby Spittal residence.