Wernstein Castle, Medieval castle in Mainleus, Germany

Wernstein Castle is a hilltop fortress at the western edge of the Mainleus district of Wernstein in Upper Franconia. Its core is a three-storey two-wing building with a massive west tract and a narrower north tract at right angles. To the east lies the Lower Castle, with a two-storey southeast wing built in 1588 by Georg von Künsberg, flanked by two semicircular towers bearing relief portrait medallions. A 45-metre-deep groundwater well stands before the pointed-arch inner gate.

Wernstein Castle was built between 1362 and 1376 on the site of an earlier destroyed fortification, as recorded in the 1398 land register of the Plassenberg lordship. It was first mentioned in a 1376 document when Heinrich von Künsberg endowed a chapel in Veitlahm with the condition that the priest read masses 'zu dem Wernstein'. The castle has remained in the uninterrupted possession of the von Künsberg family since then. From 1567 Hans Friedrich von Künsberg transformed the family seat into a Renaissance palace, and in the Thirty Years' War Swedish Colonel von Rosen occupied it, leaving it 'ruined to the utmost' by 1644.

Wernstein has belonged to the von Künsberg family without interruption since 1376, when Heinrich von Künsberg endowed a parish in Veitlahm on condition that the priest read one or two masses weekly "zu dem Wernstein". The family still lives in the castle, and a few hundred metres away lies their forest cemetery, where the pianist Wilhelm Kempff is also buried.

The castle is still lived in by the descendants of its builders and cannot be visited; the grounds and the outer gate can be reached on foot from Mainleus. A few hundred metres away lies the Künsberg family forest cemetery, where the pianist Wilhelm Kempff is buried.

The castle has belonged without interruption to the von Künsberg family since 1376, and it is still lived in by the builders' descendants, which is why it cannot be visited. A few hundred metres away lies the family's forest cemetery, where the pianist Wilhelm Kempff is buried.