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Wellmich, Sankt GoarshausenMaus (Thurnberg)
Built by Trier to enforce a toll against the Counts of Katzenelnbogen, and named by its rivals as an insult that stuck.
- Place
- Wellmich, Sankt Goarshausen
- Chainage
- rkm 559
- Built
- from 1356
- Condition
- Standing; restored 1900–1906
- Owner
- Private
- Protection
- Within the Upper Middle Rhine Valley World Heritage Site (inscribed 2002)
A border work
Archbishop-Elector Bohemond II of Trier began the castle in 1356; building continued for some thirty years under his successors. The purpose was to enforce Trier's newly acquired Rhine toll rights and to hold the electorate's border against the Counts of Katzenelnbogen, whose own works stood immediately upstream.
The name
The intended name was Burg Peterseck. Local tradition has it that the Katzenelnbogen counts mocked the slow construction by calling it a mouse that their cat — Burg Katz, a short walk downstream — would swallow. The nickname outlived the intended one, and Burg Katz was in due course renamed to match the joke.
Decay and restoration
Unlike most of its neighbours the castle was never slighted, but it decayed through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A thorough restoration was carried out between 1900 and 1906 under the architect Wilhelm Gärtner, and further repairs followed after shell damage in the Second World War.
Present use
The castle houses a birds-of-prey aviary — falcons, owls and eagles — with flight demonstrations from late March to early October. Access is on foot up a steep path from Wellmich.