The Owners of Katzenstein Castle (Conclusion)

Appendix.

History.

The Owners of Katzenstein Castle. 3/3

(Conclusion)

From the descendants of the Telser or Delser family, Baron Johann Joseph von Priami and his wife Elisabeth, née von Waid zum Rößl, acquired this castle by purchase on 4 August 1774 for 6,000 florins, and remained in possession thereof, although Leopold Anton von Braitenberg sought to assert the right of redemption as the nearest kinsman. *)

The Barons von Priami, who had come from Italy or the Valtellina, had settled around the year 1670 at Rottenstein Castle in Obermais. Hypolitus, a son of Baron Johann Baptist von Priami, married to Barbara Baroness von Maming, was the father of Joseph Anton, born on 3 June 1675 in Obermais, who with Maria Katharina von Pallaus fathered Johann Joseph Anton (born 30 July 1701), and the latter with Maria Anna von Sprinzenberg fathered Johann Joseph (born 27 May 1738), who was soon orphaned by the death of his noble father (died 8 September 1745). The beautiful inscription upon the tombstone bears witness to his truly noble character:

STA VIATOR ET LEGE:

HIC JACET ALTER PRIAMUS,

VIR, QUI STETIT PRO SUIS, PAUPERIBUS

ET EMOLUMENTO COMMUNITATIS:

NEMPE

JOAN. JOS. ANT. L. B. PRIAMI A

ROFFERAT, LYSNA, ET WISTRIZ, QUI

PIE OBIIT A. 1745 DIE 8. SEPT.

DIC PATER ET AVE.

The coat of arms situated above this epitaph is a quartered shield surmounted by the baron's coronet. In the upper right and lower left fields is the double-headed eagle without an inescutcheon, in the opposite fields an upright half-lion rampant holding a branch with three leaves; in the lower left field below, in the upper right field above, a fess, with three roses in the former and three stars or star-shaped flowers in the latter.

Following the death of her first husband, the Countess mother of the young Johann Joseph was remarried on 10 July 1748 to his cousin Johann Ulrich, a son of Albert, brother of Baron Hypolitus von Priami, who took up his residence at Marling, a parish village across the Adige opposite Mais.

Baron Johann Joseph von Priami lived from 2 October 1764 in a happy, yet childless marriage with Elisabeth, née von Waid, of a noble, now extinct lineage that held its seat, from which it took its name, at Rößl in Riffian. Johann Joseph died in 1805 in Meran, concluding the line of his ancestors. His widow followed him into the land of reunion in the year 1811. The memory of this worthy couple is immortalized, alongside the blessings of the poor whom they supported with rare generosity—the poor, like churches, being the principal objects of their charity—by two annual masses endowed by Johann Joseph, and the Waid coat of arms placed on a side altar renovated in 1806 in the Maria Trost Church, which fully resembles the Goldegg arms depicted in the Ehrenkränzl on the copperplate on page 124, displaying two plain helmets with a spread wing between them.

According to the last will of the widowed baroness, Katzenstein passed to her nephew Joseph Wenter of Rosenstein, who sold it in 1817 to the peasant Johann Gögele.

*) From a legal proceeding: "Actum Ansitz Rundegg in Obermais before His Countly Grace Count Paris v. Wolkenstein, administrator of the regional captaincy; present Titl. Mr. Thomas Joseph v. Prenner, commission clerk, 27 July 1775."