Around 1160, the knight Helwicus de Usleybe is mentioned in a document. As a ministerialis (official) of the territorial lord – the Bishop of Würzburg – he was appointed to secure the northern border of the territory against the Counts of Henneberg. This border roughly coincides with the present-day border between Bavaria and Thuringia. With the extinction of the Unsleben knights, the estate passed through their daughter Margarete to Christoph Truchsess von Wetzhausen.
Wilhelm von Truchsess’s daughter Ursula married Wilhelm von Spesshardt, bailiff of Meiningen and Massfeld. They built the spiral staircase, added new rooms, and covered the entire castle with ashlar plaster, which is still preserved in the inner courtyard.
Heavily indebted due to overly generous donations to the church, the Barons von Spesshardt were forced to sell the estate to Baron von Gebsattel in 1727. At that time, buying knightly estates and profitably breaking them up was a lucrative business. Gebsattel was clearly unsuccessful in this endeavor and sold the property in 1741 to Cornelius Freiherr von Habermann, Chancellor of the Court of Würzburg, Imperial Councillor, and Count Palatine of the Court.
His great-grandson Gustav, a member of the Imperial Diet, erected most of the estate buildings in 1848; his son Hugo (1849–1929), professor at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts and co-founder of the Munich Secession, restored parts of the building around 1900.
One of the two daughters of the painter Hugo Freiherr von Habermann the Younger (1899–1981) married Maximilian Graf zu Waldburg Wolfegg in 1960. The Waldburg family is first mentioned in a document from the mid-12th century. Their origins lie near Leutkirch in Swabia. Their ancestral castle and other castles and fortresses owned by the family are also located there.
The Waldburg family rose to prominence as high-ranking ministeriales (unfree knights) in the Holy Roman Empire during the High Middle Ages, under the Hohenstaufen emperors. Their coat of arms, like that of their overlords, features three black lions on a gold field. They ruled their own territory until the end of the Empire in 1806, after which it was successfully annexed by the Dukes of Württemberg and Bavaria. The Hohenstaufen lions were also adopted as the emblem of the newly founded state of Baden-Württemberg. In Unsleben, the Waldburg/Habermann coats of arms can be seen on the globe beneath the Madonna at the gate.
Christoph Count zu Waldburg Wolfegg is the current owner. He is married to Viktoria Countess zu Waldburg Wolfegg, née Baroness von Rosenberg.
The castle received only minimal repairs from previous generations. Major preservation work began only in the 1980s. In 1996, we were awarded the Hypo Cultural Foundation’s Monument Preservation Prize, which supported the preservation of the castle and the estate. Furthermore, the castle is listed under the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, which seeks to protect special cultural assets. In 2008, thanks to a grant from the district of Lower Franconia, several urgent restoration measures could be initiated. Most recently, the timber-framed wing, which had become unstable due to structural alterations in the 17th and 18th centuries, underwent extensive structural reinforcement.
This project was funded by the Free State of Bavaria, represented by the Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Historical Monuments. The Friends of the Castle Association also contributed, and further preservation measures followed.