Naudersburg Castle is located in the village of Nauders, just north of the Reschen Pass. Since Roman times, when the Via Claudia Augusta was built here in 15-16 AD, one of the most important north-south connections in Central Europe has led over it. The German emperors' routes to Rome passed through here, especially in the Middle Ages, but the countless pilgrims of the Crusades also populated this pass road.

In the wake of the Frankish-Alemanic wave of settlement, the Patscheiders came to the valleys of the Tyrolean Alps between 1300-1500 and settled here at the Reschen Pass, especially in the adjacent high valleys.

Since the 10th century, this area of the Etsch spring has belonged to the Vintschgau and thus to the political nucleus of Tyrol. Count Meinhard II, who gave the Tyroleans freedom to defend themselves and bear arms, transferred the sovereign jurisdiction of this region to the fortified Nauder Castle in the 13th century. This Count Meinhard II was married to the widow of the last Hohenstaufen Emperor Constantine, and the Hohenstaufen heritage cannot be overlooked in this region. It is documented in the church patrons of St. Martin and St. Nicholas alone, and the Patscheider and Schuchter families are repeatedly identified as their benefactors and founders.

The old lion coat of arms from 1646 testifies to the importance of the Patscheider family for the court district, and in 1639 a chamois coat of arms is awarded "to the noble Gabriel Patscheider in Langtaufers court-appointed and his conjugal brothers for services rendered to Her Imperial Majesty the Holy Roman Empire and Most Serene House of Austria. In both documents, the feoffed persons are called "Gerichtsverpflichtete", which is roughly equivalent to the term "Erbrichter" (hereditary judge).

The documented family research did not get beyond the ancestor Claus Patscheider (born 1497). It is considered fairly proven that the Bavarian-Franconian immigrants founded the single settlement of Patscheid in the Langtaufer Valley at the same time as the nearby Gschwell, Grueb and Wies, in all of which there is evidence of Patscheiders until the 16th century. Even today, they still sit there between Mals and Reschen, close and firm on inherited soil. The history of this down-to-earth family gives the picture of a closed rural class. Lechthaler, Seyfahrt, Plöck, Federspiel, Maas, Plack, Plangger, Joss, Verdross, Mesener and Waibl - names of old Tyrolean families associated with the Patscheider.

The average number of children was seven, 2/3 were peasants, including the "court-appointed", 1/3 consisted of intellectual professions, of this third again more than two thirds were clergy, all this taken on average over four centuries, gives the overall picture of a healthy rural class, sufficient for itself and the cultural soil.

End of chronicle excerpt (written in 1988 by Giselheid Patscheider-Riedmann)