Königstein Fortress - Use As A Prison

Use As A Prison

Until 1922 the fortress was the best-known state prison in Saxony. During the Franco-Prussian War and the two world wars the fortress was also used as a prisoner of war camp. In World War I the castle was used as a prisoner of war camp (Oflag) for French and Russian officers. In World War II it again served as an Oflag, called Oflag IV-B, for British, French, Polish and other Allied officers.

After the Second World War the Red Army used the fortress as a military hospital. From 1949 to 1955 it was used as a so-called Jugendwerkhof for the reeducation of delinquent youths and those who did not fit the image of a socialist society.

Some of the more notable prisoners incarcerated at Königstein are given below (dates of imprisonment in brackets):

• the Crypto-Calvinists, including Caspar Peucer (1574-86) and Nikolaus Krell (1591–1601), chancellor of the Electorate of Saxony
• Count Wolf Dietrich von Beichlingen (1703–1709), great chancellor and senior court-marshal of the Electorate of Saxony
• Franz Conrad Romanus (1705–1746), Bürgermeister of Leipzig
• Johann Friedrich Böttger (1706–1707), co-discoverer with Tschirnhaus of European porcelain
• Johann Reinhold von Patkul (1706–1707), Livonian statesman
• Count Karl Heinrich von Hoym (1734–1736), cabinet minister of the Electorate of Saxony; committed suicide in his cell
• Mikhail Bakunin (1849–1850), Russian anarchist and revolutionary
• August Bebel (1872–1874), German politician, president of the SPD, founder of German social democracy
• Thomas Theodor Heine (1899), caricaturist and artist
• Frank Wedekind (1899–1900), writer and dramatist
• Henri Giraud (1940–1942), French general; successfully escaped from the castle

Königstein was never taken, not even during World War II. However, on April 17, 1942, French General Henri Giraud successfully escaped German captivity from the castle.