Weilburg Castle (Baden)

Weilburg Castle
Weilburg Castle near Baden 1888
Creation time :	1820-1823
Conservation status:	destroyed
Place:	Baden , Austria
Geographical location	48 ° 0 '24 "  N , 16 ° 12' 32"  E Coordinates: 48 ° 0 '24 "  N , 16 ° 12' 32"  E
Height:	262  m above sea level A.

The Weilburg Castle , or in short: the Weilburg was a castle in Baden in Lower Austria , only a coat of arms stone reminiscent of the main building at Weilburgstraße in Baden.

Weilburg Castle near Baden (watercolor by Rudolf Schemel, 1933)

Weilburg Castle, elevation of the north front , in front of the Rauheneck castle ruins ( Joseph Kornhäusel , around 1820)

Weilburg Castle (in the background) (landscape by Tobias Raulino)

Model in the Rollett Museum

history

On September 17, 1815, the 44-year-old Archduke Karl , son of Emperor Leopold II , married the 18-year-old Princess Henriette von Nassau-Weilburg and shortly afterwards made the decision to build a palace as a summer residence and give it to his wife.

The selected property, at the foot of the Rauheneck castle hill opposite the Rauhenstein ruins , at the entrance to the Helenental , was the property of the Doblhoff family , who sold the desired property to the Archduke. In 1821 the purchase agreement was supplemented by a redemption agreement, by which the archducal estate was excluded from the authoritative rights of the Rauhenstein rule. The residents of the village of Leiten on the construction site were resettled and the community was compensated lump sum. The archduke did not want to establish a new manor with subjects; the outbuildings of the castle were intended for the lord's servants.

The foundation stone was laid on September 13, 1820, and Archduke Karl gave the Weilburg to his wife Henriette on December 24, 1821. The castle, designed by Joseph Kornhäusel , was ready to move into on June 4, 1823.

The building with a front length of 201 meters was one of the most important classical buildings in Austria. “A stone poem, an epic that a hero builds,” is how contemporary Moritz Gottlieb Saphir called it , referring to the client's war fame.

On the north side of the house, on the attic of the seven-axis portico, a heraldic stone was created by Josef Klieber (1773–1850) , in which the Nassau lion is heraldically merged with the heraldic animals of the House of Habsburg-Lothringen , the eagle and the lion .

Henriette von Nassau-Weilburg died in Vienna on the night of December 29th to 30th, 1829. In her will, she bequeathed the Weilburg to her eldest son, Albrecht, who was still a minor . The management of the property was transferred to his father, Archduke Karl , who died on April 30, 1847.

Archduke Albrecht stayed in Baden almost every summer and increased the property belonging to Weilburg by buying the forest area on the Rauhenecker Berg from the Doblhoff rulership. His wife had a viewing pavilion built there, which was named "Hildegardruhe".

In July 1840, the street leading to the Palais is described as being illuminated for summer nights to such an extent that “the area looks like the Vienna Glacis”.

In 1856, Archduke Albrecht was the builder of a chapel planned by the architect Anton Heft near the western wing of the Weilburg Park, which was consecrated on July 31, 1858.

Because of its beautiful location, Weilburg Castle was often a motif for painters such as Jakob Alt , Thomas Ender , Balthasar Wigand or Eduard Gurk .

Archduke Albrecht, honored as a respected military leader with an equestrian monument in front of the Albertina in Vienna, died on February 18, 1895, leaving no male heirs. In his will he named his nephew Friedrich von Österreich-Teschen , the eldest son of his brother Karl Ferdinand , as heir.

After the death of Emperor Franz Joseph I on November 21, 1916, his successor, Karl I , transferred the Austro-Hungarian High Command, led by Archduke Friedrich since 1914, very soon from Teschen ( Austrian Silesia ) to the Imperial House of Baden - with the intention of removing that of not only formally lead the army high command he took over on December 2, 1916; he himself usually resided in Laxenburg Castle in the immediate vicinity. Archduke Friedrich resigned completely from the Army High Command on February 11, 1917 and only devoted himself to his very extensive possessions (he was considered one of the richest men in the monarchy). The Army High Command was obsolete with Emperor Karl's renunciation of the throne on November 11, 1918, after Hungary had left the Real Union with Cisleithania on October 31, 1918 .

On April 10, 1919, the Habsburg Law and the Nobility Repeal Law came into force. Friedrich had to confess himself to be a loyal citizen of the republic or to leave the country. On April 14, 1919, Friedrich Habsburg-Lothringen, who had rejected both laws, left the Weilburg with his family to move to Switzerland. After the end of the experiment of the Soviet Republic in Hungary and the restoration of the monarchical constitution by Nikolaus von Horthy , Friedrich made Hungarian-Altenburg (Magyaróvár) his main residence near the Hungarian border with Austria and had a considerable part of the Weilburg's inventory brought there. He was not allowed to re-enter the Republic of Austria because he did not make the declaration required by the Habsburg Law. Weilburg Castle stood empty in the following years.

In 1928 the social democratic Viennese city ​​administration showed interest in acquiring the Weilburg as a “home for the accommodation of sickly children”, but was rejected by the former Archduke Friedrich, who is still the owner.

In 1930 the rooms were used for the exhibition 450 Years of the City of Baden , and the local council negotiated a land purchase to enlarge the lido . In 1934 the idea arose of setting up the planned Baden casino in the Weilburg. The idea was rejected because the castle was too far out of town.

Főherceg Friedrich died on December 30, 1936 . He left eight daughters and, as the youngest child, a son, Albrecht . The father made him the main heir, and he also received the Weilburg. The new owner appeared as Albrecht II as a pretender to the throne for Hungary, ideally supported primarily by his mother Isabella, a born Duchess of Croy-Dülmen . During the Second World War Albrecht lived in Budapest; before the Soviet troops marched in, he fled to Argentina, where he died in Buenos Aires on June 23, 1955.

Weilburg Castle was placed under monument protection by the Nazi regime on January 31, 1940 . On April 1, 1940, the Brandenburg teaching regiment was quartered there, followed by a mountain troop unit. On December 12, 1944, the Wehrmacht cleared the Weilburg, where a fire broke out on April 2, 1945, which destroyed large parts of the castle and destroyed the entire facility. The advancing Red Army had banned the fire brigade from extinguishing it. According to rumors, valuable military equipment and important documents were stored in the building, which could have caused a fire .

The Soviet occupation troops used the stables belonging to the Weilburg for several years, and the chapel in the castle park, which was not damaged by the fire, served them as a hay store. The ruined fire, with the walls still standing upright, fell into disrepair.

The inheritance treaty that followed Albrecht's death turned out to be difficult and ended in 1967 with the transfer of Weilburg and other properties to Paul Freiherr von Waldbott-Bassenheim . The lawyers of the new owner applied for the protection of the castle by the monument office to be lifted in order to be able to sell the property more cheaply. After a lengthy process, their endeavors were successful: the first and second instance, the Federal Monuments Office and the Federal Ministry of Education , decided to maintain the monument protection for at least part of the building, but the Administrative Court, as the third and final instance, overturned it with the strange reason that the protected building had perished and the remaining ruins were not to be regarded as identical to it.

The municipality bought the Rauhenecker Wald belonging to Weilburg Castle, as well as the park, parts of which were developed in 1933 for the lido built in 1926 . The palace area changed hands several times until it was used for the construction of a housing estate from 1964.

The coat of arms stone

Remains of Weilburg Castle before it was blown up in 1964

Rest of Weilburg Castle ( Wappenstein )

Inscription on the base of the portico

On August 19, 1964, the rest of the ruins were blown up. First the group of eagles was to be salvaged (and subsequently restored for 50,000 schillings ), after which it was planned to blow up the remains of the burned-out northern front of the Weilburg. In terms of pyrotechnics , the intention was to drop the 600- ton brick facade in the direction of the mountain slope and to catch the coat of arms stone with piled up straw bales. However, as the portico collapsed, the coat of arms stone fell on a vertical line, shattered and, after the state curator of Vienna, Lower Austria and Burgenland, Josef Zykan (1901–1971), had to be by the sculptor Josef Dobner ( 1898–1972) can be reconstructed in painstaking detail.

The coat of arms stone, which is popularly known as the "tombstone of the Weilburg", shows a jumping lion, as it is also included in the coat of arms of the city of Weilburg an der Lahn . It is framed by an eagle and a resting lion, as in the coat of arms of Habsburg-Lothringen . The stone came from Josef Klieber and was once enthroned on the attic of the gate.

literature

• Ant. Nowaky: Situation plan of the Weilburg castle near Baden. [Dedicated to:] His Imperial Highness the most noble Archduke Carl. S. l., S. a. [1820], OBV .
• Waltraud de Martin: The Weilburg in Baden near Vienna , 2nd, improved and expanded edition, Weilburg-Verlag, Wiener Neustadt 1987, ISBN 3-900100-57-8
• Johann Kräftner [Ed.]: In the shadow of the Weilburg. Bathing in Biedermeier. An exhibition by the municipality of Baden in Frauenbad from September 23, 1988–31. January 1989 , Grasl, Baden 1988, ISBN 3-85098-186-X
• Weilburg Castle, Baden near Vienna. Gift for a loved one. In: Edgard Haider: Lost splendor, stories of destroyed buildings. Gerstenberg-Verlag, Hildesheim 2006, ISBN 978-3-8067-2949-8
• Bettina Nezval, Stadtgemeinde Baden [ed.]: Weilburg Castle in Baden - a symbol of love , 2015, ISBN 978-3-99024-342-8

Web links

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

• Entry on the picture of Weilburg in the Austria Forum  (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon )
• Entry via Weilburg to Burgen-Austria
• Castle lore - Weilburg
• Contribution to the Lower Austrian State Museum

Remarks

1. ↑ A few years before 1900 the blind composer Béla von Ujj (1873–1942) took over the musical supervision of the band. - See: A (nna) Hottner-Grefe :  With the blind composer Béla Ujj. In:  Neues Wiener Journal. Impartial Tagblatt , No. 10.761 / 1923 (XXXIth year), November 2, 1923, p. 6, center left. (Online at ANNO ). .
2. ↑ ^{a b} According to a note dated July 2, 1964 on the on-site inspection that preceded the demolition of the Weilburg-Portikus "since 1959 the overall owner was architect Löschner, who sold to Austria-Kommerz the 100 condominium apartments there together with the trading company and society for apartment construction , 38 houses and a multi-storey 'Eurotel' or apartment block wants to build ”. - Viktor Wallner: From the headquarters to the congress casino. 50 years of bathing in data and images. 1945-1995 . New Badener Blätter , Volume 6.1. Publishing house of the Society of Friends of Baden and the Municipal Collections, Baden 1993, OBV , p. 28.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Entry on Weilburg Castle in the private database "Alle Burgen". Retrieved February 25, 2019.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Helmuth Feigl : manors and community in old Baden . In: Yearbook for Regional Studies of Lower Austria , New Series 66 - 68, 2000 - 2002, St. Pölten 2006, OBV  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , P. 240 ff. Passim.  
3. ^ ^{A b c} Walter Hermann: The area around Baden near Vienna. Reprint from the guide and home book "Die Kurstadt Baden bei Wien" by Professor Walter Hermann. Baden 1925, p. 289.
4. ↑ Weilburg . Humorous Ladies Library, Volume 2. Vienna & Leipzig 1862. Page 77 books.google
5. ↑ Drescher: Forays . P. 93 f.
6. ↑ From the diary of Matthäus Franz Perth (also: Matthias Franz Perth ) (1788-1856). - Theodor Stöhr: The diary of Matthäus Franz Perth (1788-1856). (…) [8th. July] 1840. The Weilburg . In: Theodor Stöhr, Johann Hagenauer: News from Baden's heyday. The diary of M.Fr.Perth and the ode "The Baths of Baden" by Giuseppe de Carpani . New Badener Blätter, Volume 7.2. Society of Friends of Baden and the Municipal Collections - Archive, Rollett Museum of the City of Baden, Baden 1996, OBV , p. 17.
7. ^ Arthur Graf Polzer-Hoditz, Kaiser Karl, From the secret folder of his cabeinet chief, Amalthea-Verlag, Zurich-Leipzig-Vienna, 1929.
8. ↑ Lawrence Sondhaus: The naval policy of Austria-Hungary, 1867-1918. [1]
9. ↑ Local news. (...) From the Weilburg .. In:  Badener Zeitung , April 16, 1919, p. 2, top left. (Online at ANNO ).
10. ↑ Weilburg Castle, a children's home. In:  Badener Zeitung , June 16, 1928, p. 3 (online at ANNO ).
11. ^ The purchase of the Weilburg. In:  Badener Zeitung , July 28, 1928, p. 3 (online at ANNO ).
12. ^ City anniversary exhibition - opening. In:  Badener Zeitung , September 24, 1930, pp. 1-6. (Online at ANNO ).
13. ↑ Baden 1480–1930. City anniversary exhibition Sept. 20-28 , exhibition guide , exhibition management of the municipality of Baden, Baden 1930, OBV
14. ↑ Weilburg ruins: only the eagle group will remain . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna August 19, 1964, p. 7 , middle right ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
15. ↑ Weilburg: Eagle badly damaged when detonated - renovation possible . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna August 20, 1964, p. 5 ( Arbeiter-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
16. ↑ Drescher: Forays . P. 94.