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Origin and history

Kolbsheim Castle, built in the 18th century west of the village, is the last remaining of the two castles that once occupied Kolbsheim. Ranked a historic monument and labeled a remarkable garden, it succeeds a first medieval castle, the Altenau, built near the Bruche and demolished in 1760 after the extinction of the Voltz von Altenau line, its owners since 1479. This low castle, surrounded by ditches and equipped with a drawbridge, co-existed with a noble house built around 1570-1580 at the top of the village by the Voltz, before being shared with the Mullenheim family, member of the Strasburg Patriarchate.

The present castle, known as Oberschloss, partially replaces the old house of the Mullenheim. An inscription of 1703 on his balustrade attests to his reconstruction by Marie Catherine Wurmser of Vendenheim, which adds firm, stables and walled gardens. The family von Falkenhayn, allied with the Wurmser by marriage in 1719, united the seigneury of Kolbsheim in 1759 before extinguishing after the Revolution. The estate then passed into the hands of Charles de Dartein (1801), a former royal lender, and then of Jean-Georges Humann (1824), Minister of Finance under Louis-Philippe, who enlarged the castle and made it his secondary residence.

In the 19th century, the castle was acquired by Carl Alexander Grunelius (1874), a German entrepreneur married to a Mulhusian heiress. His family, converted to Catholicism under the influence of philosophers Jacques and Raissa Maritain, organized intellectual symposia there until 2014. The gardens, devastated during the First World War by German trenches, were renovated in the 1920s by the English landscaper Breggins. They stand on three terraces decorated with topiary, basins and sculptures from other Alsatian castles, such as Saverne and Bischheim.

The architecture of the castle combines a west wing of the early eighteenth century with a south wing later added. The entrance courtyard, framed by communes and a guard house, opens onto a seven-span main façade, flanked by imperial pavilions. The gardens, classified as a remarkable garden, descend downhill towards the Bruche Canal, built by Vauban. The estate, protected since 1972, also includes a neogothic chapel (1933) and a sculpted cross path (circa 1950), testimonies of the Maritain's spiritual influence.

The cylindrical water castle, built at the end of the 19th century to feed the estate, imitates a medieval tower. The commons once housed the Circle of Studies Jacques and Raissa Maritain, a place of philosophical encounters. Today run by a family SCI, the castle opens its gardens to the public. Its history reflects the political upheavals of Alsace, from feudal seigneury to German annexation, then French, while maintaining its role as a place of culture and memory.

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