Wasserschloß, Medieval moated castle in Eschau, Germany

Wasserschloss Oberaulenbach is a Renaissance water castle in the Spessart, about 800 m east of Unteraulenbach. Its irregular layout combines a late Gothic main building with two cross wings and a polygonal stair tower added in 1579 and 1589. The upper storey is timber-framed, the wings are rubble masonry with corbelled corner quoins and wavy gables, and a moat with a stone bridge dated 1788 surrounds the south-west residential building.

The core of the castle is a late Gothic residential building, possibly built after 1474 by Leonard Kottwitz, replacing an earlier castle perhaps destroyed in the 1342 Magdalenenhochwasser. In 1579 and 1589 the side wings, chapel and stair tower were added in Renaissance style. In 1693 Georg Philipp Kottwitz sold the estate to August Maximilian Freiherr von Mairhofen, whose descendants still own it.

The name Aulenbach comes from the Aulenbach stream in whose side valley the castle sits. The Kottwitz family, who acquired the estate in the early 15th century, later called themselves Kottwitz von Aulenbach. A carved Kottwitz coat of arms dated 1594 survives in the timber-framed upper storey.

The complex can only be viewed from the outside; there is no interior access. The residential building in the southwest corner is enclosed by a moat crossed by a masonry bridge dated 1788. The estate lies about 800 m east of Unteraulenbach in a side valley of the Elsava, between Sommerau and Hobbach.

The stair tower's lower entrance bears the Mairhofen coat of arms dated 1693, but traces of an older Kottwitz coat of arms remain visible beneath it, showing the panel was inserted later. In the upper storey's timber framing, a carved Kottwitz coat of arms is dated 1594.