The Owners of Katzenstein Castle

Appendix.

History.

The owners of Katzenstein Castle. 2/3

(Continuation)

Hans became lord of Katzenstein. He sold the farm on Mount Labers, which is still today called Egger—assigned to him from Heinrich in the 1462 division of the paternal inheritance with the approval or by order of Archduke Sigmund—to Friedrich Peter Amort, citizen of Meran, and his wife Maria, whose family, as far as is known, became extinct only with Father Jeremias Amort, a conventual of Stams who died in Passeier on July 7, 1799.

The seal attached to the parchment document, executed in duplicate and handsomely written for its age, is completely round, of brownish-black wax encased and recessed in white wax. On the shield one sees a staircase of four steps ascending in decreasing size, and on the knightly helmet an oblong rectangle (probably a cushion with tassels hanging from the corners) containing, as in the shield, the staircase. The Gothic circumscription reads: “S. Hans von Aur.” The very same coat of arms is seen on an old frescoed epitaph of a woman of the von Aur family at the entrance to the parish church of St. Vigilius in Mais. The field is red, the stairs or steps white. 1) According to Brandis (loc. cit. p. 177, no. 126), in the year 1517 Ulrich Jäger received Katzenstein from Emperor Maximilian I (whether as a vassal or as a hereditary tenant is uncertain). 2)

Jörg Kanz zu Katzenstein appears among the Mais nobles in a testimony issued by them to the parish priest Simon Gaßler “on the 20th day of March, in the year of the Lord in the lesser number in the 36th” (1536).

According to Brandis (loc. cit.), in 1580 Michael Katzenbök requested Katzenstein as a fief from Archduke Ferdinand. However, according to a document dated Innsbruck, October 24, 1580, Archduke Ferdinand conveyed to Michael Katzenbök von Dürnstein the noble residence of Katzenstein, which he had previously held as a pledge for 4,000 guilders (fl.), as free property.

In a tithe register of 1602, Katzenstein Castle together with its fiefs was listed as a possession of Abraham Katzbök. According to the provincial register, the Katzenböks bore the predicate of Katzenstein. Susanna Maria, probably the last of this name and lineage, married the nobleman Hans Pögl von Türnstein, 3) princely cellar-master of Meran, bringing Katzenstein to him as a dowry. In a corner room of this Katzenstein Castle, from which one enjoys a magnificent view over the romantic landscape of Meran, one sees in the center of the wooden ceiling the coats of arms of Pögl and Katzenbök. The Pögl coat of arms is a quarterly shield with four simple fields: the upper dexter and lower sinister ash-colored (silver), the opposing ones red, in the middle a horizontal ash-gray (silver) fess bearing a yellow bow, and upon the open helmet a half-Moor dressed in red, holding an arrow in one hand and a bow in the other; the colors of the mantling match the fields, namely white or silver, and red. The Katzenbök coat of arms is a cat standing upright on a green hill, all black, resembling a dog more closely, with a yellow collar and a curled long tail in a yellow field; upon the helmet the same animal, the mantling black and yellow. The upper inscription reads: “BETRUCHTS 1635.” The lower inscription: “Hans Pögle zu Katzenstein und Türnstein, für: Durchlaucht Erzherzogin Claudia zu Oesterreich Rath und Keller zu Tirol.” — “Susanna Maria Pöglin geborne Katzböckhin von Katzenstein zu Türnstein und Oberhausen.”

In the antechamber there still hangs this Hans Pögl's half-length portrait: a handsome, but exceptionally tall and corpulent man in black formal attire, with a gold chain around his neck and a sword hanging from a golden sash that runs from his right shoulder across his chest.

The coats of arms described above can also be seen in the chapel located on the second floor of the old castle tower, where Vicar General Franz v. Albertis of Trent, by a grant dated the last day of June 1644, permitted a Holy Mass to be celebrated daily.

According to the tax cadastre of the municipality of Mais (in the marginal note to numbers 3194 to 3196), it appears that this Johann Pögl, married to Susanna Maria von Katzenbök, endowed the twelve annual masses in this chapel. In the marriage register of Mais, this same Johann Pögl appears in 1635 with Perzephal Baron von Annenberg and Johann Karl von Hochenbalken, parish priest in Glurns, as a witness to a marriage contracted in Mais in that year. In 1637 the Abbot of Stams, Paulus Gay, transferred to him a rent from the Bachlerhof near Katzenstein—four urns of wine along with as many pounds in silver coin—in exchange for an equivalent rent in Mals. 4) In 1655 Johann Christoph Pögl, probably a son of the former, married Anna Maria, daughter of Nikolaus von Knillenberg zu Reichenbach, in the presence of witnesses Franz von Trautmansdorf, Franz von Waidmann, and Engelbert von Zötl. This same Johann Christoph Pögl attended on March 2, 1696, as church deputy of Mais, the rendering of accounts for the parish churches at Untermais presented by Johann Kaiser.

In the year 1739, the priest Leopold Pögl, beneficiary of the Holy Three Kings in Burgstall, died at his Katzenstein Castle. According to the probate proceedings conducted in Meran on January 27, 1740 regarding his estate, he had named as heirs to his estate in his will—excluding all other possible Pögl and Katzenbök relatives—the three daughters of Jakob Pögl, former court chamber secretary in Innsbruck, namely Maria Ursula, married to Johann Baptist Braitenberger, caretaker at Hörtenberg; Maria Anna, married to Upper Austrian Vice-Fiscal Anton Telser, and Maria Barbara, married to Johann Paul Meitinger, or rather, since Maria Barbara was already deceased, her children. In the division of the inheritance, the daughter Maria Anna, married to Telser, received Katzenstein as her share.

(Conclusion to follow.)

1) In the Ehrenkranzl on the copperplate for Part II, p. 36, no. 6, the colors of the Aur coat of arms are thus given incorrectly.

2) That the Jägers were truly lords of Katzenstein is proven by an extant document from the year 1532, in which Klara von Waltingen, wife of Martin Jäger von Matrai, grants to Jörg Salomon in Freiberg the building rights to the Bachler estate, which paid rent to Katzenstein.

3) A castle near St. Peter near Tirol, from which, according to another document, the Katzenböks took their name.

4) Annal. Stams. Cap. XLI. §. 16. and according to a document still preserved in Meran.