In 1780, Prince Dmitri Mikhailovich Galitzin, the Russian ambassador in Vienna, acquired forested property from Field Marshal Count Franz Moritz von Lacy, situated uphill of what was then the village of Ottakring.

By 1824, when the building was already in disrepair, ownership of the estate had passed on to Prince Julius de Montléart (1787–1865) and his wife Princess Maria Christina of Saxony.

When Julius' son, Prince Moritz de Montléart, acquired the property after considerable legal battles, he gave it to his wife Wilhelmine (née von Arnold) and named the castle "Wilhelminenberg".

In 1903, Archduke Leopold Salvator had the dilapidated building demolished and in the years to 1908, a palace in the Second Empire style was built according to plans of the architects Eduard Frauenfeld and Ignaz Sowinski.

Following Austria's Anschluss to Nazi Germany in March 1938, Wilhelminenberg was confiscated and transferred to the Österreichische Legion, a paramilitary unit of exiled Austrian National Socialists.

[1] The Vienna city authorities conducted an investigation that lasted six years, and was essentially concluded in 2016, with cumulated settlement payments to victims amounting to €52.5 million.