Schloss Grafeneck

Gomadingen, Germany, Germany

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Schloss Grafeneck is a Renaissance castle near Gomadingen in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, located about 25 kilometers southeast of Tübingen next to the Marbach State Stud Farm on the Swabian Alps.

Originally built as a medieval service castle by the Counts of Urach in the 13th century, it was transformed into a four-winged hunting lodge for the Dukes of Württemberg starting in 1560, with Duke Christoph ordering the medieval castle demolished and a baroque palace with opera house constructed between 1650–1772 under Duke Carl Eugen.

The castle's darkest chapter occurred during Nazi Germany when it became the Grafeneck Euthanasia Centre in 1940, one of the first extermination sites in the T4 program, where 10,654 disabled and sick people were murdered through lethal injections and gas and cremated on-site. After the war, the French occupying forces returned the castle in 1946–47 to the Samaritan Foundation, which acquired it in 1928 and had originally established a handicapped home there.

Today the site operates as both a social care center providing housing and work for people with intellectual disabilities and chronic psychiatric conditions and the Grafeneck Memorial with a documentation center open daily from 9:00–18:00 featuring exhibitions and educational programs about its history.