Ernsthofen Castle

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Ernsthofen Castle around 1895 (partial view)

The Castle Ernsthofen is located in the district Ernsthofen the community Modautal in Darmstadt-Dieburg in Hesse . It is privately owned and cannot be viewed.

Geographical location

The castle in the northwest of the Vorderen Odenwald is on the western edge of the village of Ernsthofen at Schlossstrasse 19. The valley road that opens up the Modautal leads past just to the east and below the castle complex. The confluence of the Groß-Bieberau road coming from the east is also very close. The edges of the Odenwald , in the west the Bergstrasse near Seeheim-Jugenheim , in the north the Reinheimer Hügelland behind Ober-Ramstadt and in the east the Gersprenz lowlands near Groß-Bieberau are each around six and a half kilometers away.

history

Entrance to the castle with coat of arms and plaque
The coat of arms in detail

The beginnings of Ernsthofen Castle go back to a Franconian settlement of the 8th / 9th centuries. Century back. The former court of Ernst , which was expanded into a castle in the 12th to 13th centuries, is said to have given the place Ernsthofen its name. The aim was certainly to build a barrier over the Modau valley in order to be able to exercise control over the region.

The first proven owners are the lords of Raben (old) zu Ernsthoffen ( Rabenold zu Ernsthofen ) in the early 15th century. In 1440 they were mentioned in a document when the castle and the village were sold to the new lords of Wallbrunn .

The castle as a territorial center was perhaps to be seen in its function as a successor to the robber baron castle of the Calf von Reinheim, which was destroyed in the 14th century and which was located on a hill near Nieder-Modau. At first Ernsthofen was only a base of the Lords of Bickenbach against the Lichtenberg Castle of the Counts of Katzenelnbogen, later the Lords of Wallbrunn were able to cancel the feudal sovereignty of the Lords of Bickenbach by purchase.

The Wallbrunners were servants and castle men of the Counts of Katzenelnbogen . With the acquisition of the castle succeeded the lords of Wallbrunn own little rule in Modau- and Fischbachtal down to individual fiefdoms on Otzberg and the centering Umstadt build. The property was expanded in the course of the 15th and 16th centuries.

After the death of the Katzenelnbogen family, they became fiefs for the Landgraviate of Hesse . In 1491 the Erbach taverns were briefly named as feudal lords. After internal disputes between the Wallbrunners, the participation in the Landshut War of Succession (also known as the Bavarian feud ) on the part of the Count Palatine in 1504 and by taking sides with Franz von Sickingen in his feud with Hesse in 1518, the Wallbrunners lost several possessions and had to close the castle and property of Hesse from 1521 Take fiefdom. For around 25 years there was a dispute with Philip I of Hesse over the sovereignty of Ernsthofen Castle. In 1542, the village and castle were almost cremated as a result of the disputes after a fire, which according to documents only four houses survived unscathed. It was not until 1545 that the confiscated fiefs were returned to the Wallbrunners, who, however, had to submit to the landgrave's sovereignty and come to the tithes of Ober-Ramstadt . However, the disputes continued and in 1569 the castle was again conquered by Hessian troops under Georg I of Hessen-Darmstadt . This confirms the fief again, but enforces an opening right for the House of Hesse .

The place was almost depopulated by the Thirty Years' War , the gentlemen survived the time in their possessions in Darmstadt . In 1694, the future German theologian Johann Konrad Dippel must have stayed for a short time as a private tutor in Wallbrunn Castle. After resettlement, reconstruction and reconstruction of the castle, the rule with Ernsthofen Castle and the villages Asbach , Ernsthofen, Hoxhohl , Klein-Bieberau and Neutsch (“along with slopes in twelve other places, including Ober-Modau , Rodau , Waldhausen , Billings , Meßbach , Seeheim , Jugenheim , Ober- and Nieder-Beerbach, Hausen unter Lichtenberg , goods in Reinheim , Neutsch, subject to landgrave authority, and the court in Rohrbach ") finally sold to Landgrave Ernst Ludwig von Hessen-Darmstadt and on 28 May 1722 Castle, town and population handed over.

The landgraves used the castle as a hunting lodge until 1770. After that it stood empty for a long time. At the beginning of the 19th century it served forest officials as an official residence and official residence.

In 1918 the Hessian state took over the grand ducal property and in 1923 sold the castle to private hands. It came into the possession of the German-American Edmund A. Stirm from New York , who had the lock repaired. He set up a children's home here that was based here from 1923 to 1935. With the beginning of fascism in Germany, it had to close in 1935, as Stirn was considered a foreigner. After the end of the Second World War he brought his nephew Friedrich Carl and his wife to Ernsthofen as castle administrator. After his death in 1957, Stirn bequeathed the castle to Friedrich Carl, who sold it to a Frankfurt entrepreneur around 1960. Friedrich Carl himself retained ownership of the management courtyard of the palace, built in 1923 by Edmund Stirn, at Schlossstrasse 17. From this time on, the palace was no longer open to the public. An acquisition by the Ernsthofen community seems to have failed due to the sale price of around DM 100,000 and possible follow-up costs. The property has since been restored and rebuilt.

Building history

Site plan and structure of Ernsthofen Castle

The castle, which had a courtyard as a predecessor, was built as a barrier and control system of the Modau valley as a moated castle. The Lords of Wallbrunn enlarged it as ancestral seat of their small surrounding estate over several generations. Created as a moated castle with wide moats, the castle initially consisted of an outer and a core castle. The mansion was angular, of which only the western leg stands today. In both western corners it was secured by round towers, only the southern keep is still standing. The north was protected by the large keep, which was connected to the main building by the defensive wall. The core and outer bailey were separated by a wide moat with a drawbridge. The outer bailey consisted of two buildings. The inner smaller building is no longer standing, only the converted and extended long southeastern farm building on the defensive wall still exists. To the east, the entrance to the outer bailey was surrounded in a U-shape by the servants' residential and farm buildings. The former gate tower with drawbridge over the moat , which was located at the place of today's main entrance, is also only present in remnants .

Between the 15th and 17th centuries (including around 1592) the castle was rebuilt and expanded by the Lords of Wallbrunn, whose seat was the castle until 1722, whereby the castle complex increasingly lost its purpose as a dam and was transformed into a castle .

In 1516 the castle chapel is mentioned, dedicated to St. Mary . At the beginning of the Thirty Years' War a school was set up for the village, which was probably located in the castle in order to give lessons to the children of the castle and its followers.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the castle then repeatedly served as quarters for Landgraves Hessian hunting parties.

From 1848 to 1852 the east wing of the manor house was torn down, the defensive wall razed and the trenches filled. In 1923 the castle was renovated and the ruins of the large keep was rebuilt and given the current curved hood.

Present stock

View from the gate entrance along the farm building attached to the defensive wall, moat and wall can be seen.

After being converted into a castle, the former moated castle is still a self-contained residential complex, consisting of a residential building ( mansion ) in the south, a keep in the west, connected to the residential building by a wall with a gate, and a commercial building with a gate in the east .

The residential building made of plastered quarry stone masonry is three-story, with a mansard gable roof, largely a baroque building. It has coupled twin windows from the late 16th century, for example on an altar- like porch on the ground floor of the gable side. The basement of the manor house is vaulted with ribs and still belongs to the late Gothic period. On the ground floor there is a segmental arched portal with the year 1592.

The commercial building is a single-storey building, which is angularly made up of a short south wing and a long east wing. At the southeast corner there is a round tower, which probably belonged to the castle complex of the 15th century.

At that time, the round keep made of quarry stone was built in the west, which was given new windows in the 16th century and probably an upper floor instead of a defensive platform. This upper floor is divided by a surrounding cornice on which the coupled twin windows sit. On the courtyard side, the tower has a bay window , three arched arcades and a triangular gable .

Towards the village, the complex has a round arched passage with a coat of arms in the apex, next to it is the gate . The jambs are diamond blocks and fog plant-like ornaments decorated. Between the keep and the residential building there is another wall with a round arched gate passage, which is profiled with a throat.

The coat of arms of the von Wallbrunn family can be found on several ribbed stones in the vaulted cellar and on a portal gable . There is also a landgrave portal with hunting problems and Ernst Ludwig's initials. The mocking mask , the so-called Breilecker, could come from the time before the Lords of Wallbrunn .

The whole ensemble is extended to the northwest by the large palace garden.

Structural features

The adaptation of the late medieval large keep to a renaissance tower without any noteworthy defensive character is, although not an atypical conversion when changing from a castle to a castle character, but a very remarkable architectural detail.

Interesting

Memorial plaque for the work of Edmund A. Stirn for and around the castle

Three of the total of eight guns in Lichtenberg Castle (including one in the bulwark ) came from the holdings of the Lords of Wallbrunn from the castle in Ernsthofen. They came there after the armed conflicts with the Hessian troops in the 16th century.

There are two old folk tales about the castle: on the one hand about the white woman of Ernsthofen and the gatekeeper in the castle of Ernsthofen .

To the right of the gate of the castle on the defensive wall is a memorial plaque for Edmund A. Stirn, a German-American who campaigned for the renovation of the castle between the World Wars (1922–1923) and organized the foundation of the children's home there (1923–1935 ).

Todays use

In 1923 the castle came into private ownership. Unfortunately, it cannot be viewed. The castle ensemble itself is a listed building.

literature

  • Gernot Scior: The Lords of Wallbrunn zu Ernsthofen - history of a rule 1440–1722 . Self-published by the Association for Local History, Ober-Ramstadt 1977.
  • Gernot Scior: Johann Georg Stockmar . View of Ernsthofen Castle and the village in the hunting picture gallery in the Kranichstein hunting lodge . In: The Odenwald . Breuberg Bund 2009.
  • Rolf Müller (Ed.): Palaces, castles, old walls. Published by the Hessendienst der Staatskanzlei, Wiesbaden 1990, ISBN 3-89214-017-0 , pp. 255–256.
  • Siegfried RCT Enders: Darmstadt-Dieburg district (monument topography of the Federal Republic of Germany - cultural monuments in Hesse) . Braunschweig / Wiesbaden 1988, pp. 328-329.
  • Rudolf Knappe: Medieval castles in Hessen. 800 castles, castle ruins and fortifications. 3. Edition. Wartberg-Verlag, Gudensberg-Gleichen 2000, ISBN 3-86134-228-6 , pp. 523-524.
  • Gernot Scior: Johann Georg Stockmar: View of the castle and village of Ernsthofen in the hunting picture gallery in the hunting castle Kranichstein . In the Odenwald. Journal of the Breuberg Association . No. 1, 2009.
  • Georg Wilhelm Justin Wagner : General statistics of the Grand Duchy of Hesse . Darmstadt 1831, p. 68.

Web links

Commons : Schloss Ernsthofen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wiki project “Renaissance castles in Hessen” of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum - DFG project Ernsthofen, formerly moated castle (section history)
  2. ↑ Stephan Goldschmidt: Johann Konrad Dippel (1673-1734) - His radical Pietist theology and its emergence , Göttingen 2001, chap. 4, p. 83 ff
  3. ↑ former Waldmark, including the communities Billings, Meßbach, Niedernhausen and Nonrod. A desolate village of the same name was assumed to be northwest of the forest between Billings and Nonrod ( 49 ° 45 ′ 41.3 ″  N , 8 ° 48 ′ 28.9 ″  E ), cf. Georg Wilhelm Justin Wagner: The desertions in the Grand Duchy of Hesse, Darmstadt, 1862, p. 115 ff
  4. ↑ Festschrift 650 Jahre Ernsthofen , Ortsbeirat Ernsthofen, 2013, p. 18. Online (PDF file, 5674 kB), accessed on October 11, 2016
  5. ↑ See Fischbachtal - Bollwerkhistorie ( Memento from May 6, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ William Diehl: Hessian People's Books . Volume 2. Self-published, 1908, pp. 19, 55.
  7. ↑ Enders: Darmstadt-Dieburg district (monument topography of the Federal Republic of Germany - cultural monuments in Hesse) , pp. 328–329

Coordinates: 49 ° 46 ′ 20.2 "  N , 8 ° 44 ′ 22.4"  E