Turjak Castle - Cultural Significance

Cultural Significance

Turjak Castle is fairly well known in Slovenia, in part for its colorful and turbulent history, which includes several grotesque vignettes:

• Once displayed in the castle armory were the heads of Herbard von Auersperg and Friedrich von Weichselburg (Slovene: Herbard Turjaški and Friderik of Višnja Gora), both killed in battle with Ottoman forces in 1575. Their heads were skinned and tanned, then sent as mementos to the Sultan in Constantinople, from where relatives later ransomed them at considerable cost.

• The chapel of the Turjak graveyard houses a glass jar containing the preserved heart of the young count Hanno von Auersperg (1838-1861), who supposedly committed suicide after being exiled to Naples by his family for refusing to give up a girl who was beneath him socially.

The castle is also known for its importance to the history of the Reformation in Slovene lands; its greatest claim to fame, however, is as the setting of one of Slovene national poet France Prešeren's most popular ballads, "Rosamund of Turjak" (Turjaška Rozamunda). It concerns the wooing of the bratty heiress of Turjak in the late Middle Ages, and begins:

An oak there stands in the court of Turjak,

lifts its top into the clouds,

in its shade by a stone table,

an assembly sits of noble gentry,

for the Lord of Turjak hosts again

the suitors of Rosamund.

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