Schloss Blühnbach

Formerly, it was a hunting lodge of the Prince-Archbishops of Salzburg and Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, whose assassination in Sarajevo triggered World War I.

[2] The name of the architect is not known, but an attribution to the Italian Vincenzo Scamozzi from Vicenza could be defended, as he was working in Salzburg at the same time.

[2] However, the planned magnificent interior decoration was largely omitted, as Wolf Dietrich was disposed and his successor Prince-Archbishop Markus Sittich von Hohenems (1574-1619) was not fond of hunting.

[3] Also, he invited important guest such as Leopold V, Archduke of Austria (1586-1632) and Claudia de' Medici (1604-1648) to join the hunt events.

[4] When Archduke Franz Ferdinand became interested in the estate, it was transferred from the Austrian state to the Habsburg private property in 1908.

[2] Franz Ferdinand was able to acquire practically the entire valley,[2] creating a hunting estate with 14,000 hectares of forest.

[2] He engaged the Viennese architect Ludwig Simon to convert and expand the castle in historicist style and “embellish” the former Renaissance fronts with Neo-Renaissance decor.

[6] The aim was to find furniture in the art trade that once belonged to Prince-Archbishop Wolf Dietrich or at least came from his time.

[2][6] However, the heir to the throne could not enjoy his new hunting lodge for long, as the construction work was not completed until 1913 and he was assassinated in Sarajevo the following year, which triggered the First World War.

[2] In 1916, Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria sold the estate to Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach (1870-1950),[6][2] who used it as a place to spend the summer holidays.

[2] In 1988, Arndt’s widow sold the castle and the estate to Frederick R. Koch (1933-2020),[6][7] an American collector and philanthropist.

As from the 1980s, Frederick Koch started to collect and restore historic houses such as the Donahue house, a Woolworth mansion in Manhattan;,[8] the Romanesque Villa Torre Clementina in Cap Martin, France; and Elm Court, a Tudor Gothic manse in Butler, Pennsylvania.

[2] The narrow side in the southwest has four floors and is equipped with a Gothic portal, a terrace resting on columns and a romantic balustrade.

[13] The last member of the Krupp family, Arndt von Bohlen und Halbach, was buried in the crypt of the castle chapel in 1986.