Schloss, Water castle in Sulzdorf an der Lederhecke, Germany

Burg Brennhausen is a water castle whose two Gothic residential towers and connecting wing rise from a rectangular stone terrace in the valley floor. The four-storey north tower and the lower square south tower have steep red-tiled gable roofs, and the walls are mostly unplastered irregular sandstone with interlocking corner blocks and some timber-framed upper storeys. The moats and castle pond have been restored, so the complex is again fully surrounded by water.

Brennhausen was first documented in 1182, when Count Poppo von Henneberg leased a tenth of Brunechenhusen. The Truchseß family held it until 1542; roof beams and a cellar entrance date from just after 1525, when peasants burned the castle during the German Peasants' Revolt. In 1681 it passed to the von Bibra family, who still own it through the Stiftung Brennhausen founded in 2002.

The name Brennhausen is explained by Josef Braun as "the houses by a water source", from an old form Brünn for the spring beside the settlement whose stream flows into the Saale; Heinrich Wagner instead derives it from the old German given name Brunicho. The castle is still owned by the Freiherren von Bibra-Brennhausen line founded by Friedrich Gotthelf von Bibra, and the family has the estate farmed while occasionally living in the castle.

The castle stands about four kilometres west of Sulzdorf an der Lederhecke, on a rectangular stone terrace in the valley floor. It is still lived in and can only be viewed from outside. Access is from the west over a stone bridge; the moats and castle pond have been restored, so the building is again fully surrounded by water.

The moats and castle pond were drained and shown as swampy meadows in the 1915 inventory, then restored in recent decades, so the castle is again fully surrounded by water. The Bibra family, owners since 1681, emigrated to the USA in the early 20th century but still farms the estate and occasionally lives in the castle, owned since 2002 by the Stiftung Brennhausen.