Be­fore the es­tab­lish­ment of the con­cen­tra­tion camp, Floss­en­bürg was mere­ly a small vil­lage in the Up­per Palat­in­ate for­est. Be­ginn­ing in the late 19th cen­tu­ry, a num­ber of quar­ries were opened in the area in or­der to ex­ploit loc­al gran­ite de­pos­its, and Floss­en­bürg de­vel­oped in­to a work­ers’ vil­lage. At the same time, the re­gion was dis­cov­ered as a hol­i­day des­ti­na­tion. Af­ter the Na­tion­al So­cial­ist sei­zure of pow­er, the gran­ite de­pos­its and cas­tle be­came the site’s key loc­a­tion­al fac­tors.

The quar­ry in­dus­try shaped so­cial re­la­tions in the vil­lage and in­flu­enced the cul­ture and self-per­cep­tion of its in­hab­it­ants.

Floss­en­bürg re­mained a des­ti­na­tion for day trip­pers. The bor­der re­gion in­creas­ing­ly drew na­tion­al­ist and völk­isch groups, which styl­ized the ru­ins as a bas­tion of res­ist­ance to the “Slav­ic peo­ples.”

The Na­tion­al So­cial­ist state con­struc­tion pro­gram cre­ated a boom in the de­mand for gran­ite. As a res­ult, quar­ry own­ers and work­ers wel­comed the Na­tion­al So­cial­ist sei­zure of pow­er.