On the northern shore of Lake Zell in the Salzburg region of Austria stands Schloss Prielau, a small castle whose ownership history runs through a bishopric, a celebrated Austrian literary family and, more recently, the Porsche family.
Medieval origins
Schloss Prielau is first documented in 1425, when records mention a Christian Glaser zu Prielau in connection with the property. By 1466 it belonged to Polykarp von Hunt, and ownership changed hands several more times over the following century, including to Caspar Panicher zu Wolckersdorff, a regional official, from 1577. Between 1560 and 1565 the building underwent a significant reconstruction under Hans Christoph Perner von Rettenwörth, and it is this rebuilding that established much of the castle's present architectural form.
Three centuries under the Bishopric of Chiemsee
From 1590 the estate was held by Dietrich Kuen-Belasy, Freiherr von Chiemsee, and in 1722 it passed formally to the Bishopric of Chiemsee, which retained it into the early nineteenth century. The coat of arms of Sigmund Christoph von Zeil und Trauchburg, the last prince-bishop associated with the castle, is still visible on its portal. Secularisation in 1803 ended church ownership, and the property was auctioned in 1811 to Anton Neumayer, a local sexton.
The Hofmannsthal years and Nazi seizure
In 1932 Gertrud von Hofmannsthal, widow of the Austrian writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal, bought the castle and began restoring it, living there with her son Raimund and his wife. During the Nazi period the family attempted to transfer the property to a daughter and her husband to keep it out of official hands; the transfer was initially approved but later blocked, and the estate was confiscated. It subsequently passed to the sculptor Josef Thorak. The Hofmannsthal family received restitution of the property in 1947, after the war.
The Porsche hotel
Since 1987 Schloss Prielau has been owned by the Porsche family, who converted it into a small luxury hotel and restaurant. The building combines its sixteenth-century structure with later additions, and the estate today includes parkland, a deer enclosure, private lake access and a golf course. A baroque chapel on the grounds, dating from the period of episcopal ownership, remains in use and hosts a few dozen weddings each year.
Visiting today
Guests can stay in a small number of rooms and suites, dine in the restaurant housed in the historic building, or simply walk the lakeside grounds. The castle's architecture still reflects the 1560s reconstruction under Perner von Rettenwörth, giving the hotel a genuinely historic core rather than a modern building dressed in period style.
Visitors today can also walk the estate's public lakeside paths even without staying at the hotel, giving the wider public a view of the castle's grounds along Lake Zell that earlier private owners, from the bishops of Chiemsee to the Hofmannsthal family, would not have offered.