Niersteiner Höfe
The Niersteiner Höfe are three independent manors in the Aachen district of Vetschau . They are located on Laurensberger Straße at the entrance to Vetschau, which connects the center of Laurensberg with the village. Coming from Laurensberg you will find the largest of the three courtyards on the right, eastern side of the street at number 20 and is referred to as the “Große Niersteiner Hof” or, in old sources, also as the “Vetschauer Burg”. Opposite is the "Südliche Hof" with the house number 21 and to the north of it the "Nördliche Hof" with the house number 29. The sources do not initially distinguish the three courtyards according to their above names, but rather describe the history and ownership of the Niersteiner Höfe bis to its provisional destruction in 1388 in its entirety. Only with the rebuilding from the 16./17. In the 19th century, the different developments in the courtyards were different.
History of the farms until 1388
As the tombs and ruins of Roman settlements prove, the earliest rural settlement of the farms and the entire town goes back to the construction of a former Roman road between Aachen and Heerlen that ran through this fertile stretch of land . According to some sources, the battle of Aduatuca assumed here is more likely to be classified in the area of unproven speculation, since such a large battle would have left archaeologically clearly verifiable traces.
The first documentary mention can be found on February 6, 1000 AD and proves that the Niersteiner Höfe were initially side courtyards of the Aachen Palatinate, the income of which served the Marienstift Aachen and the Imperial Burtscheid Abbey as a source of food. In this document is from a donation Otto III. reports, who transfers the Tiel and Nierstein farms to the diocese of Aachen . It was not until two hundred years later, in 1232, that the next mention was made, when the knight Ricolf von der Forst donated the “ Gut Laurensberg ” to the imperial abbey of Burtscheid . This foundation involved several farms in the Laurensberg area, as well as one of the Nierstein farms. From 1354 there was a legal dispute over several years over the ownership structure, as a result of which the Nierstein farm complex fell entirely to the Imperial Burtscheid Abbey, which in 1381 bought another 7 acres of land. With a total area of now 48 acres of arable land, the Niersteiner Höfe were among the largest in the Burtscheid Imperial Abbey in Laurensberg and Horbach . Seven years later in 1388, a certain knight Born and his troops set fire to all of the Vetschau farms and razed them and the settlements around them to the ground.
Reconstruction and further use
After the destruction, the farms lay in ruins for two centuries and reconstruction began in the first half of the seventeenth century. For example, courtyard No. 29 or the northern courtyard with iron fittings is dated ANNO 1651 and it can be assumed that the reconstruction of the other two more important courtyards had already been completed by this time.
Characteristic for the courtyards as a whole and for the large Niersteiner Hof in particular is the massive construction, including an outer wall made of heavy natural stones, which can be justified with the unrest and the political situation during the Thirty Years War (1618–1648). The expansion of the army under Louis XIII. as well as the restoration of the " natural borders of Gaul " in the Rhine area were seen as a threat at the time. Why the other two courtyards were not developed to the same extent for military use can only be explained with the history of the large courtyard in the tradition of the former Vetschau castle believed to be there. The associated agricultural area at the large farm alone was around 160 Prussian acres , a few of which were later expropriated for the construction of the Aachen-Maastricht Railway Company .
The ownership structure is also unclear, since the old sources do not contain any specific information about which farm it is. It is only known that around 1703 the Lords of Cortenbach were the owners of one of the farms, probably the large court, and almost thirty years later, on January 3, 1731, the Aachen lay judge and mayor Leonhard Joseph von Lamberts zu Cortenbach took over this Nierstein farm St. Ann's monastery had to pledge because he needed the money as security for his daughter Maria Lutgardis on the occasion of her profession in the above-mentioned monastery.
At the same time, the Lords of Hardenberg are named at Quix as the owners of the northern court, which then came into the possession of the Laurensberg family Deden and a certain Servatius Peusgens as the owner of the southern court. The large Niersteiner Hof, however, verifiably passed to Carl Joseph Emonds (1749-1819) in 1775, whom he left behind to his second wife, Maria von Broich (1767-1839) from Richterich , after his death . This transferred the farm to her nephew Arnold Freiherr von Broich (1797–1873) to Schloss Schönau , who then bequeathed it to the Deden family in 1858. Nowadays the Große Niersteiner Hof is just as privately inhabited as the northern courtyard, in which more than ten families now live, with the southern courtyard housing a gardening and landscaping company.
Building description
Great Niersteiner Hof
The on the foundations of the old Vetschauer castle in the 16./17. The large courtyard, built in the 18th century, consists of a main building and several lower farm buildings, all of which have gable roofs . A rectangular tower made of ashlars and quarry stone was added to the two-storey mansion with its original one to four axes , which is covered with a four-sided slate lantern and a polygonal helmet . The entire courtyard is provided with a massive quarry stone wall, which shows a basket arched passage on the street side .
Southern Niersteiner Hof
This four-wing courtyard complex made of quarry stone masonry with brick additions was built in the 17th century, but changed several times in later years. The traufständige main building with its original cross Stock windows from Blaustein has two storeys and a hipped roof covered. The gate passage is on the street side of the building and there are several farm buildings on both sides.
Northern Niersteiner Hof
The northern courtyard, too, was initially a regular four-winged courtyard area, originally white muddy, whose regularity was broken after the Second World War by the construction of part of the barns made of sand-lime brick . The house with its eight to two axes has baroque arched windows on the ground floor, cross-lattice windows on the upper floor and a round arched gate passage in the second pair of axes from the right. On the front of the house there is the year 1651 with iron anchor pins. The adjoining farm buildings have arched entrances, the gate wedges show the year 1565 and 1786. The facility is equipped with an enclosure wall, on the southern side of which there is another arched gate entrance.
The courtyard was shut down in the early 1980s and parts of the buildings, especially the roofs and the marl on the walls, were then subjected to rapid decline. After extensive renovation began in 1987, the buildings were converted into an exclusive residential complex taking into account the monument protection statutes, although the roof had an atypical overhang.
Web links
- Building history (excerpt) Niersteiner Höfe on AASTRA ( Memento from February 11, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
- The village of Vetschau, information from the St. Laurentius Archers Brotherhood 1885 Vetschau eV
Individual evidence
- ↑ Original: Otto III (undated) Rheinisches Urkundenbuch No. 31–34, Wisplinghoft in Meuthen, E. (1972) Aachener Urkunden 1101–1250 Bonn
- ↑ Christian Quix , History of the former Burtscheid Imperial Abbey from its founding in the 7th century to 1400 , Aachen 1834, pp. 93/434
- ↑ Clemens / Reiners p. 155 or note d. Prof. Christian Quix, history of the former imperial abbey of Burtscheid from its foundation in the 7th century to 1400 , Aachen 1834, p. 93/434. A Salvagardien letter from 1703 for the Nierstein court in the city archive of Aachen or from Laurensberg in its history of Herbert Lepper , Aachen 1995
- ^ Louise v. Coels von der Brügghen : The lay judges of the royal chair of Aachen from the earliest times until the final repeal of the imperial city constitution in 1798 In: Journal of the Aachener Geschichtsverein . No. 50, Verlag des Aachener Geschichtsverein , Aachen 1929, p. 459
- ^ Herbert Lepper: Laurensberg in his story , Aachen 1995
- ↑ Niersteiner Hof residential complex
Coordinates: 50 ° 48 ′ 38 ″ N , 6 ° 2 ′ 38 ″ E