Schattenburg castle was mentioned in the chronicle by the monks Ortlieb and Berthold in 1138. Muntifurt Castle, mentioned in the first half of the 12th century, may have housed vassals of the Earl of Bregenz, who ruled over the area at the time. At his coming to power (1182) the Earl Hugo I, the grandson of the last Earl of Bregenz Rudolf (1150), repositioned his residence to Feldkirch Castle, important for reasons of power politics and the control of traffic.
For 200 years, the Castle remained the property of the Earls of Montfort. Upon the death of the last of the Montforts, Rudolf IV (1390), the castle and the power that came with it passed to the Habsburgs. The Habsburgs ruled the estate through governors who lived in the Castle until 1773.
Only from 1416 until 1436 was their rule briefly interrupted, when it came into the hands of the Earls of Toggenburg. Duke Friedrich of Austria’s help in the flight of the antipope Johannes XIII turned out to be fatal for him. Not only was he outlawed in the name of the Emperor and excommunicated, he also lost all is possessions, among which Feldkirch. In 1825 the City bought the partially ruined Castle from the state for 833 Guilders. Today Schattenburg is a museum.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.