Eichholz Castle (Silesia)

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Eichholz Castle, view from the northeast

Eichholz Castle ( Polish : Pałac Warmątowice Sienkiewiczowskie ) is a Polish castle nine kilometers southwest of Legnica ( German  Liegnitz ) in Warmątowice Sienkiewiczowskie ( German  Eichholz ), a district of Krotoszyce ( German  Kroitsch ) in the Lower Silesian Voivodeship . It is rooted in a medieval permanent house , which was replaced by the von Zedlitz family at the beginning of the 17th century with a mansion in the Renaissance style and remodeled in Baroque style around the middle of the 18th century . In World War II plundered and laid waste, the facility was used in the 1960s by a state-owned operation before it was abandoned and gradually neglected. In 1995 the buildings came into private hands and the new owners restored the castle. Today they use it as a residence and run it as a small hotel.

The complex, together with its castle park and a garden pavilion inside, is a listed building . The castle has been protected since July 31, 1960, while the pavilion was placed under protection on September 5, 1961. The castle park was only included in the list of monuments 15 years later on September 22, 1976.

history

The village in which the castle is located was first mentioned in a document in 1217, and there had been a permanent house and associated property there since at least the 15th century . From 1506 this mansion belonged to Hans von Eichholz, who was later owned by the von Tunckel family . In 1602, Wenzel von Zedlitz, governor of the duchies of Liegnitz and Brieg and guardian of the Piast princes, acquired the property for 11,000 thalers and instead of the permanent house had a mansion surrounded by wide moats built in the Renaissance style. When he died, he bequeathed the property to his third wife, Anna von Canitz, who sold it to the Austro-Imperial Colonel Baron Johannes Sieghofer von Siegenberg in 1639 . When he died in 1649, his wife Eva inherited the property. Through her second marriage to Freiherr Karl Heinrich Zahradecky von Zahradek, Eichholz Castle passed to his family.

The Barons von Zahradek sold the palace to Carl Ferdinand von Seherr-Thoss, who had it redesigned in baroque style between 1748 and 1762 . Most of the work concerned the interior of the manor house; on the outside, only the portal and the triangular gable above were changed. In 1782 Carl Friedrich von Seherr-Thoss sold the castle and the associated manor to Gotthard Oswald von Tschammer. However, he did not stay the owner for long, as Count Carl von Roedern became the new lord of the castle in 1790 . After his death in 1795, his widow sold the property to the royal Prussian secret finance councilor and president of the South Prussian War and Domain Chamber , Count Hartwig Ludwig Anton von Hoym . Shortly before his death, he gave the castle to his relative Fanny Biron von Curland , née Countess von Maltzahn, in 1811 .

Lithograph of the castle from around 1869

Fanny sold the property in 1812 to the royal Prussian first lieutenant Louis Seraphim von Olszewski, whose family originally came from Podlasie . His family then remained Mistress of Eichholz for over 100 years, but lost the castle in World War II . On August 26, 1813, the Prussian Field Marshal Blücher set up his headquarters in the castle during the Wars of Liberation , before the Silesian Army under his command could defeat the French troops in the Battle of the Katzbach . An obelisk with an inscription placed in front of the castle commemorates the event. The last male representative of the Olszewski family on Eichholz was Alfred, a great admirer of the Polish writer and Nobel laureate Henryk Sienkiewicz and a supporter of the “Polish idea”. In his will he decreed that his children should only inherit the family property if they had proven by the age of 30 that they were able to speak the Polish language and had knowledge of the history and culture of Poland. In addition, they should acquire Polish citizenship. However, his children were not willing to meet these conditions, which is why after Alfred's death Eichholz Castle with its eight- hectare park and the estate with 287 hectares of land should go to Sienkiewicz. The castle alone was worth a million gold marks at that time . Alfred's widow Gabriele tried in vain to contest the will after his death in 1909, which in retrospect turned out to be unnecessary because the writer renounced the inheritance. In 1932 the widow handed the property over to her daughter Draga, who had been married to Heinrich Freiherr von Zedlitz and Neukirch since 1913 and thus brought the property back to the family that had owned it from 1598 to 1639. In memory of the curious episode in the history of the castle, the place was renamed from Warmątowice to Warmątowice Sienkiewiczowskie in February 1998.

During the Second World War, the Provincial Curator for Lower Silesia , Günther Grundmann , used the castle as a depot for "bomb-prone artifacts" and from 1944 stored the large numismatic collection of the Wroclaw City Museum there . However, it is lost today. When Russian troops marched in in the spring of 1945, the palace complex was looted and devastated. The owner family had fled west just a few days earlier. Inhabited by Poles from former Polish eastern regions from 1945 onwards , the castle was used by a state- owned estate in the 1960s before it stood empty and increasingly neglected. Plans in the 1970s to turn the property into a Sienkiewicz memorial and restaurant were not carried out, and so the buildings continued to deteriorate. After the Rabkowski family bought the property in 1995, better times began again. The Rabkowskis restored the castle for several years and set up a small hotel in the former guest rooms of the manor house. The former cowshed was converted into a ballroom, which is now used for celebrations for families and companies.

description

Eichholz Castle consists of a manor house and farm buildings to the east of it. The economic buildings used to belong to a large estate and surround a courtyard on three sides, which also serves as the forecourt for the manor house. The ensemble is located in a 19 hectare landscape park with 58 different tree species and an octagonal garden pavilion from the 18th century. The latter probably dates from the same time as the baroque reconstruction of the castle. The park was laid out at the end of the 19th century, and the forest to the west of the castle and previously used as a zoo was also included in the design. Following the example of the English belt walks , a path leads around the entire castle park.

Portal of the manor

The baroque mansion stands on an island surrounded by a wide moat. A stone bridge with a baluster parapet leads to him . This parapet continues around the moat as its border. The two-storey rectangular building of the manor house is divided into eight axes by windows on the entrance side , with the elaborately designed portal in the fourth axis. It is not exactly in the middle of the facade and therefore does not correspond to the baroque ideal, but at the same time it shows that the current building was created by converting a Renaissance house. A carved inscription still tells of its construction time. Above the axis with the entrance and the two flanking axes, at the level of the half-hip roof, rises a dwelling with a triangular gable and a large clock tower, which is equipped with a lantern and an onion dome. The alliance coat of arms of the von Seherr-Thoss and von Kreckwitz families hangs above the portal, which is flanked by columns . Until 2007 an inscription was to be seen underneath, which read: “Where Zedlitz 1602, Siegenberg 1639 and Zaradecker 1653 to 1736 were, A Seherr-Thoss tries to continue building in 1748, he builds his property only from the inside, but he writes outwards God bless this house ”. Today it is covered by a sandstone slab with the Silesian eagle .

From the historical interior, a baroque painted wooden beam ceiling from the Renaissance period and the ballroom on the upper floor of the building have been preserved.

literature

  • Holger Rüdiger Arndt: Castles in Silesia and Silesian Upper Lusatia. History, fates. CA Starke, Limburg an der Lahn 2010, ISBN 978-3-7980-0583-9 , pp. 15–35.
  • Alexander Duncker (Ed.): The rural residences, castles and residences of the knightly landowners in the Prussian monarchy: in addition to the royal family, house fideicommiss caskets in lifelike, artistically executed, colored representations; along with accompanying text. Volume 11. Duncker, Berlin 1869/70 ( digitized version ).
  • Katrin Schulze: Eichholz, Warmątowice Sienkiewiczowskie. In: Arne Franke (Ed.): Small cultural history of the Silesian castles. Volume 1: Lower Silesia. Bergstadtverlag Wilhelm Gottlieb Korn, Görlitz 2015, ISBN 978-3-87057-336-2 , p. 122.
  • Erich Stübinger: Lower Silesian castles. Your fate after World War II. o. A., Augsburg May 2014, pp. 40–42 ( PDF ; 16.9 MB).

Web links

Commons : Eichholz Castle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ↑ List of Monuments of the Lower Silesian Voivodeship. no year, p. 93 ( PDF ; 1.8 MB).
  2. ↑ Information according to the castle website , accessed on January 18, 2020. In his contribution to the castle, Holger Rüdiger Arndt mentions that evidence of a knightly dwelling has been in existence since 1304. See Holger Rüdiger Arndt: Castles in Silesia and Silesian Upper Lusatia. History, fates. 2010, p. 16.
  3. ↑ a b Holger Rüdiger Arndt: Castles in Silesia and Silesian Upper Lusatia. History, fates. 2010, p. 16.
  4. ^ Holger Rüdiger Arndt: Castles in Silesia and Silesian Upper Lusatia. History, fates. 2010, p. 17.
  5. ^ Castle history on the website of the Wratislaviae Amici Association , accessed January 18, 2020.
  6. ^ Holger Rüdiger Arndt: Castles in Silesia and Silesian Upper Lusatia. History, fates. 2010, p. 23.
  7. ↑ a b c d story on the castle website , accessed January 18, 2020.
  8. ^ Holger Rüdiger Arndt: Castles in Silesia and Silesian Upper Lusatia. History, fates. 2010, p. 26.
  9. ↑ a b c Katrin Schulze: Eichholz, Warmątowice Sienkiewiczowskie. In: A. Franke: Small cultural history of the Silesian castles. 2015, p. 122.
  10. ^ Holger Rüdiger Arndt: Castles in Silesia and Silesian Upper Lusatia. History, fates. 2010, p. 15.
  11. ↑ Information about the castle at roy.at , accessed on January 18, 2020.
  12. ^ Holger Rüdiger Arndt: Castles in Silesia and Silesian Upper Lusatia. History, fates. 2010, p. 18.
  13. ↑ Alexander Duncker: The rural residences, castles and residences of the knightly landowners in the Prussian monarchy. 1869/70, no p.

Coordinates: 51 ° 7 '52.7 "  N , 16 ° 7' 53.4"  E