Aurich castle district
The Aurich castle district is located in the former royal seat of Aurich in East Frisia . The area was initially the seat of the chiefs, then the residence of the East Frisian counts and princes and after their extinction from 1744 the seat of the Prussian , Dutch , French and Hanoverian administrative heads in East Frisia. It later became the seat of the district government. Today, in addition to the Lower Saxony State Office for Remuneration and Supply , the district court is also located here.
The present castle was built between 1851 and 1855 under the master builder Ernst Heinrich Blohm on the foundation walls of the castle built in 1448 by the East Frisian Count Ulrich Cirksena.
The individual buildings
The tom brooch castle
The tom Brok family built the first chief's castle in Aurich around 1380 . The approximately eight by eight meter brick wall was divided into several rooms with paved floors. It stood on the former post office area opposite the former Hotel Piqueurhof (since 2012: Hotel am Schloss ). Remnants of it were discovered in 2018. The remains of two buildings were found at a depth of about one meter. One of them was eight by 8.20 meters, another was 6.20 by 6.75 meters. In addition to foundations, floor coverings, entrances and a chimney area, there are numerous other details of the building. It got the name Nieburg (New Castle) in contrast to Oldeborg (old castle) of tom Brok in Brokmerland . The Aurich castle was probably a multi-storey residential tower made of brick , as was common with the East Frisian chiefs at the time. As a rule, these buildings had three floors, whereby the individual floors were not divided. The mostly windowless ground floor housed the storage rooms, while the living room was on the first floor if the guard was not housed there. The third floor was reserved for the chapel. Such systems were also secured by ramparts, wooden palisades and ditches. The stone house of Bunderhee or the Harderwykenburg in Leer give an impression of this .
Tom Brok's successor, Focko Ukena , had the town and castle surrounded by ramparts and moats and built bulwarks against possible attackers. Around 1430, in the struggle for supremacy in East Frisia, the castle was razed by the opponents of Focko Ukenas, the troops of the Freedom League of the Seven East Frisia . Today nothing is left of her.
During excavations in 1986 remains of trenches, masonry and stone paving were found. Iron equipment and slag were also found in a layer of fire, and an area that is interpreted as a bailey-like facility was exposed . The archaeologists involved in the excavation assume that the main castle was to the west of the excavation area.
An excavation was carried out in 2018 after a building was torn down at the presumed location of the chief's castle. Remnants of stone were found in the ground, which archaeologists consider to be a former chief's castle in the form of a stone house. They consist of about eight by eight meters of brick walls, which are divided into several rooms with paved floors. After the archaeological investigations, a new hotel is planned on the site, into which the historical castle ruins could be integrated.
The Averborg
The Cirksena followed Focko Ukena as rulers in East Frisia. The first Count Ulrich I had the so-called Averborg (possible name interpretations: opposite that of the old castle, on the other side of the Aa ) built opposite the old chief's castle in 1447 . Eggerik Beninga comments on this in his Cronica der Fresen : "(...) leet juncker Ulrick de overborch to Aurick int denied with the 4 gates an uptimmeren and a wall around it". The area on which the castle was built had previously been used for horse and cattle markets. Ulrich also bought four fighters from a Udo Riekena from Barstede.
The Averborg was a three-storey square complex on a square floor plan with four corner towers. It was also surrounded by a high wall and three ditches. The first led directly along the walls of the building, the second enclosed the ramparts and the third led around the Zingel in front of the second moat . Apparently usable material from the old castle was also used for the construction of this castle.
In 1568 the castle was badly damaged by a night fire. The subsequent restoration in the Renaissance style took ten years to complete. The coats of arms of Edzard II and his Swedish wife Katharina were added to the front wing and two of the four towers were torn down. Under Edzard II, Aurich was then the royal seat from 1595 until the Prussians came to power in 1744, after the count had been expelled from his old residence in Emden. At that time Aurich was a modest town which could not meet the demand of the court. The employees of the Count's House had the entire higher demand of the court delivered from Emden, where most of it was imported from the Netherlands.
From then on there was also a court chapel in Aurich Castle. The burial place of the Cirksena, however, was in the Aurich town church .
The renovations in 1731/32 under the penultimate East Frisian Prince Georg Albrecht Cirksena changed the Averborg again fundamentally. The Averborg underwent another change in 1811 under French rule, when the eastern wing of the castle was demolished, making the castle courtyard open to the east. However, under French, Prussian and Hanoverian rule, the castle deteriorated more and more over the next few years. In 1852 the Cirksena Castle was partly torn down under the rule of Hanover and replaced by a new building, the current castle.
The main guard
Under Georg Albrecht, the main guard at the entrance to the outer bailey was built in 1729. The Hauptwache was a two-storey building with a gate that had to be passed before entering the bridge to the outer bailey. The garrison church was housed on the upper floor of the building. In 1861 the main guard was demolished at the instigation of King George V.
The coat of arms of the counts and princes of East Frisia, which was originally set into the building, was preserved from the main guard. An elephant can be seen under the coat of arms, which is reminiscent of the Elephant Order . This is the highest and oldest Danish order. It was awarded by the Danish kings of the time to the last three princes to rule in East Frisia (Christian Eberhard (1682), Georg Albrecht (1722) and Karl Edzard (1734)). The coat of arms stone is now attached to the new building of the Research Institute of the East Frisian Landscape.
In addition, two reclining sandstone lions from 1729 on a pedestal decorated with ornaments have been preserved. Today you are in front of the castle portal.
The Aurich Castle
In 1851 the old Aurich Castle was to be renovated. However, it was now so ramshackle that it had to be largely demolished. The Hanoverian King Georg V commissioned the building officer Ernst Heinrich Blohm , who five years earlier had been responsible for the extension of the Estates Hall to the predecessor of today's House of the East Frisian Landscape . In a report to the Royal Domain Chamber in Hanover on May 14, 1851, Blohm wrote: “(1851) the old castle building was so totally dilapidated in all parts that it is impossible to understand how the building has not collapsed until now, And this was particularly evident in the broken western wing, in that not only were the beams so rotten that they fell down in several ends, but the walls were also so damaged when the wallpaper and other wall coverings were removed that the decrease in the basement was inevitable; the partitions collapsed in part. Furthermore, the south-western tower has now shown itself to be so damaged that the upper masonry has already had to be removed 20 feet, and it is to be feared that more will have to be demolished here ”.
A building in the English Tudor style of historicism was built on the castle grounds . The lower part of the south wing with the tower of the old Averborg was integrated into the new building. The castle was built in six partially parallel construction phases. In total, the Royal Domain Chamber of Hanover, which is responsible for financial management, had to invest around 60,000 Reichstaler.
From the beginning, the castle was not intended for residential and representative purposes, but served as the seat of the administration of the Hanoverian government. Later it became the seat of the district government. Today, in addition to the Lower Saxony State Office for Remuneration and Supply, the district court is also located here.
The stables
The Marstall is the oldest preserved building in the castle district. It is an elongated, two-story building. On the side facing the castle there is an arcade. The Marstall was built in 1588 by Count Edzard II when he expanded Aurich into a residential town. The courtly horse stable was on the first floor and six mansions were upstairs. In 1731/32 Prince Georg Albrecht had the upper floor redesigned in baroque form by his master builder Anton Heinrich Horst. The building received a balcony with a wrought iron parapet above the arcade. The client's initials G and A were incorporated into it. In the attic on the south side there is a gable triangle. It contains a crowned coat of arms.
The princely archive, rent chamber, chancellery and court court were housed on the renovated upper floor at that time. Since that time it has therefore also been referred to as the new law firm . According to plans by the castle district around 1740, part of the old office building was located at this point . The cultivation on the east side is more recent.
In Prussian times up to the end of the First World War, the building housed a barracks, later it was a tenement barracks for many years and then it was re-established as an administrative building.
Today the building is used by the Lower Saxony Regional Finance Directorate - state-wide payment and supply point Aurich and the Lower Saxony IT Center.
The princely pleasure gardens
The Julianenburg was a princely pleasure garden with pleasure palace west of the palace. Around 1640, in the midst of the turmoil of the Thirty Years' War, it was erected by Count Ulrich II in honor of his wife Juliane on the west side of the castle building. Under the reign of Princes Christian Eberhard and Georg Albrecht, the palace park was expanded based on the model of the palace grounds of Versailles . In 1765 the castle park was divided and in the following years it fell into disrepair.
Parts of the park in the immediate vicinity of the palace as well as the historic gate pillars, which were erected in 1708 under Prince Christian Eberhard at the entrance to the park, have been preserved. There are statues of the Roman goddess of war Bellona with the East Frisian coat of arms and the Greek goddess of peace and war Pallas Athene with the princely monogram CE on the shield on the gate pillars . Today they adorn the entrance to the pedestrian zone.
Another, smaller princely pleasure garden with pleasure palace, the Carolinenburg , was east of the palace.
The little castle
The so-called Schlösschen can be found in the southern palace garden. It was built in 1885-86 as part of the administrative reform as a representative residence for the first Prussian district president, Axel von Colmar-Meyenburg . The little castle is a two-story building with a hipped roof. A Prussian eagle, enthroned in a niche over a balcony on the north side, reminds of the establishment under Prussian rule. This building is also used by the Lower Saxony Regional Finance Directorate - state-wide payment and supply center Aurich and the Lower Saxony IT Center.
literature
- Ernst Andreas Friedrich : Die Auricher Burg , p. 100-101, in: If stones could talk , Volume II, Landbuch-Verlag, Hannover 1992, ISBN 3-7842-0479-1 .
Web links
- Entry by Frank Both on Aurich Castle District in the scientific database " EBIDAT " of the European Castle Institute
Individual evidence
- ↑ With chiefs in the parlor - Aurich district - Emder Zeitung. Retrieved August 27, 2019 .
- ^ Ostfriesische Nachrichten of October 13, 2012: The Piqueurhof becomes "Hotel am Schloss" . Retrieved October 18, 2014.
- ^ NDR: Castle remains discovered by Chief Ocko tom Brok. Retrieved August 27, 2019 .
- ↑ District Court Aurich- Castle History
- ^ Find history 1986 . East Frisian Landscape , accessed on November 18, 2017.
- ^ Find chronicle 1987 . East Frisian Landscape , accessed on November 18, 2017.
- ↑ Castle remains of Chief Ocko tom Brok discovered at ndr.de on November 23, 2018
- ↑ Hinrich Schoolmann: Our dear little town - A walk through the old Aurich. Verlag AHF Dunkmann KG, Aurich no year, no ISBN, p. 56.
- ^ A b c Walter Deeters: Aurich . On the website of the Residences Commission of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences . Accessed October 27, 2013.
- ↑ Hinrich Schoolmann: Our dear little town - A walk through the old Aurich. Verlag AHF Dunkmann KG, Aurich no year, pp. 58–59.
- ^ Christine Schneider-Berents: The castle in Aurich. A "new building" on a historical foundation . Retrieved on October 17, 2014. Originally published in 2002 in the General-Anzeiger .
- ↑ East Frisian landscape excavations in the stables
- ^ Regional court Aurich: Castle history
Coordinates: 53 ° 28 ′ 4.7 " N , 7 ° 28 ′ 40.1" E