Mittelweiherburg, Castle and museum in Hard, Austria

Mittelweiherburg is a 16th-century structure with a three-story rectangular main building, steep gabled roof, and a round staircase tower on its western side. Today it houses a museum dedicated to textile printing history and displays various hand-crafting techniques.

Built around 1570 at the source of the Harder Dorfbach, the castle passed through owners including the Deuring family and Weingarten Abbey. In 1794 Samuel Vogel from Alsace set up a cloth printing works, making it the cradle of Vorarlberg's textile industry. Melchior Jenny bought it in 1838 for Jenny & Schindler, and Samuel Schindler continued the printing after 1867.

The museum displays the textile printing traditions of the region through different hand printing techniques and their development into the 20th century. Visitors can see how these crafts shaped the daily life and economy of the area.

The museum occupies the surviving western annex of the former water castle, a three-storey rectangular building with a round staircase tower, in Hard in Vorarlberg. The pond that once surrounded the complex no longer exists, so the setting is a built-up village plot rather than a moated site. The exhibition covers form cutting, hand printing and industrialisation up to the 1930s.

The pond that gave Mittelweiherburg its name has not survived; only the western annex with its round stair tower remains of the original complex. Traces of the demolished main tract are still visible on the eastern facade.