Wachenburg

Weinheim, Germany, Germany

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Wachenburg is a striking castle on a hill overlooking the town of Weinheim on the Bergstraße in Baden‑Württemberg, and it is the youngest castle on the Bergstraße, built between 1907 and 1928 as a memorial and meeting place for the Weinheimer Senioren‑Convent (WSC), a federation of former student Corps.

Although it looks like a centuries‑old medieval fortress, it was designed by Professor Arthur Wienkoop in Romanesque style and constructed in four stages, with the main building (palas) completed and inaugurated in 1913; electric lighting was only added in 1928 and the festive hall was lit by candles until 1959. After the student Corps were forcibly dissolved in 1938, the castle passed to the city of Weinheim, was returned to the Corps in 1950, and in 1965 the WSC fully acquired the site, with its annual Ascension‑Week gathering in Weinheim remaining the center of its social life.

Today the Wachenburg houses a restaurant, a beer garden with panoramic views over the Bergstraße and Odenwald, and several halls that host weddings, concerts, medieval banquets, crime dinners, and other events, and it is a popular hiking destination especially for its spectacular vista into the Rhine plain and the Odenwald.