Brombacher Castle

Brombach Castle seen from the west

The Brombacher Schloss is a new building of an originally medieval castle in the Lörrach district of Brombach , rebuilt in the historicizing style from 1880 to 1885 . A first description of the Brombacher Castle comes from a deed of ownership from 1294. In 1678 the castle was destroyed by French troops. The castle, which is now a listed building, has been owned by the municipality since 1962 and is used as a town hall after extensive renovation .

Location and description

The old moated castle

There is a description of the old moated castle, which the local pastor Johann Mulsow created in 1905 on the basis of the ruins that were recognizable at the time. Accordingly, it was a rectangular building with a side length of 42 meters and a width of 35 meters. In each corner there was a round tower with a clear width of 5 meters. The towers protruded about 2 to 3 meters above the building walls connecting them. The facility was surrounded by a moat with a side length of about 65 meters. It was 15 to 20 meters wide and about 2 meters deep. It is believed that there was an inner courtyard of around 200 square meters in the center of the complex. Due to the size of the facility, it will not only have been used as a fortification, but also contained stables and farm buildings.

The new building from 1885

Brombacher Castle with the ring road that surrounds it, which is easy to see from the air

The little castle is centrally located and slightly elevated at around 310 meters in the center of Brombach. The building is surrounded by a small park, which is lined with a ring-shaped street, although it is interrupted by buildings in the west. The difference in level between the castle and the sloping terrain towards the street can be seen in the location of the former moat . The moat served the Niederungsburg as protection and was fed by the nearby Dorfbach ( Tannengraben ).

The Brombacher Schlösschen has a round tower facing the north, which acts as the corner of the building. The tower, which is covered with a pointed pyramid roof, is 33 meters high, has a diameter of 7 meters and has a wall thickness of 1.70 meters in the substructure. At the foot of the round tower are the relics of the old surrounding wall. The remains that are still visible today are 15 meters long and 5 meters high. In the absence of precise reports on the structural changes, the age of the wall cannot be precisely determined. The wall probably dates from the 17th century. The four-wing building takes up a floor area of ​​23 by 17 meters.

A coat of arms stone with the coat of arms of Abbot Caspar II of St. Blasien is embedded above the entrance portal . However, the coat of arms has no reference to the original moated castle, but comes from the former monastery mill of the Weitenau monastery . The coat of arms stone was bought from the then miller by Moritz Großmann in 1900 and installed in his mansion - the sandstone surround was remade at that time.

history

Origins and Middle Ages

In 1113 Walcho von Waldeck handed over his possessions in Brombach to the St. Blasien monastery . In the 13th century, the founding of a castle by the Lords of Reichenstein is known . For over 500 years, Brombach belonged to this noble family who had their manor house in the center of Brombach. In 1294 Mathias Reich sold the moated castle and the village to his brother, the Basel Prince-Bishop Peter I. Matthias then received the village back from his brother as a fief. The year of construction and the owner of the castle complex have not been handed down in documents. A picture of the castle is also missing. A description by a pastor named Deisler from 1294 shows that it should have had round towers at the four corners as well as two-meter-thick foundation walls and catacomb-like cellar corridors. It is said to have measured 45 by 35 m in the square and had a 5 m wide tower at each corner. The location was on the site of today's Brombacher Schlösschen in the center of the village. Werner, Vogt von Brombach, was mayor of Kleinbasel around 1290 . He is the progenitor of the Lords of Bärenfels . Rudolf von Berne (or: Derne) was Vogt of Brombach in 1336.

At the end of the 13th or beginning of the 14th century, the lords of Rötteln seem to have come into possession of the village, possibly again in the form of a Basel fief. After the Röttler with Lüthold II. Became extinct in 1316, came as their heirs, the gentlemen of Krenkingen and the Marquis of Hachberg-Sausenberg possession Brombachs and closed in 1326 a truce . As a result, however, there were inheritance disputes. After an arbitration decision by Count Konrad von Freiburg in 1341, the Margraves were allowed to keep Brombach, while the also controversial Niedereggenen went to the von Krenkingen. Finally the goods and the castle were loaned back to the Reichenstein family. Like many castles, palaces and houses, the castle in Brombach also suffered damage from the Basel earthquake in 1356.

Since the 16th century

In 1549 there were inheritance disputes over the Brombacher Gut. Claims were made by the widow Clara-Else Kapplerin of the lord of the castle, Hans Heinrich Reich von Reichenstein, who died in 1544, her second husband Hans Heinreich von Landeck and Jakob Reich von Reichenstein, the brother of the late lord of the castle. Jakob let Clara-Else and her mother live in the castle “out of friendship” until Lent Sunday 1547. The dispute arose because the second husband, Hans Heinrich, had also lived at the castle since the wedding, but without Jacob's express consent. Hans Heinrich was asked to leave the castle, but refused. Like a lord of the castle, he used the labor service without having received the necessary authorizations from the margrave. The disputes were also fought in court, which decided on January 22nd, 1547 that Hans Heinreich had to leave the castle, but was allowed to take everything with him that did not hold "Nuet and Nagel".

During the Thirty Years' War the Brombach Castle was occupied several times. In 1636 it was the headquarters of Duke Bernhard von Weimar , who as commander-in-chief prepared from there the siege and storming of Rötteln Castle, which had fallen into the hands of the Habsburgs three years earlier . In 1642 the Brombach Castle was owned by the Habsburgs. The lords of the Reich von Reichenstein castle stayed in Basel at the time when they owned a house. In 1651, Max Jacob Reich von Reichenstein is mentioned as a resident in a church book. In 1676 the castle was a strategically important object of siege in the Dutch War for Lorraine troops. Due to the resistance of the castle residents, Brombach was set on fire by the French troops on October 23, 1676. The damage to the castle itself is not recorded. The castle was then destroyed by French troops on the night of June 29th to 30th, 1678.

The Reich von Reichenstein family got increasingly into financial difficulties as a result of the wars. Due to the debts, the Reichensteins had to sell more and more houses and goods. The now dilapidated Brombacher Castle was also sold. In a feudal letter dated June 22, 1845, Grand Duke Leopold von Baden confirmed the remaining tithe rights in Inzlingen and Brombach. In 1848 the property went to the Basel trader Isaak Dreyfus, who sold it to the farmer Johann Jakob Dietz. This failed in 1879 with his plan to expand the castle into an inn due to the high costs.

On April 9, 1880, the textile entrepreneur Moritz Großmann from the canton of Aargau / Switzerland took over the unfinished building that was under construction and five years later had a completely renovated and ready-to-move-in building built for his family. Descendants of the Großmann family lived in the house until 1960.

Todays use

In 1962 ownership was transferred to the then still independent municipality of Brombach, which had been using it as the town hall since October 31, 1966. Since 1972, the Brombacher Schlossgrabenfest has been held every September around the Brombacher Schloss . Since the municipality of Brombach became a district of Lörrach on January 1, 1975, the building has been the seat of the local administration of the district. Since January 1, 2005, the registry office of the city of Lörrach has been housed in the Brombach town hall.

literature

• Thomas Rotsch: Brombach (Loerrach) . In: The castles in medieval Breisgau II. Southern part, half-volume A – K, Jan Thorbecke Verlag 2009, ISBN 978-3-7995-7366-5 , pp. 115–122.
• Rudolf Dietsche: The former moated castle in Brombach - from the manor house to the town hall . In: Unser Lörrach 1988, pp. 62–82
• Fritz Schülin: The castle estate of the Lords of Reichenstein zu Brombach (1294 to 1859) . In: Brombach 786-1972, pp. 68-90

Web links

Commons : Brombacher Schlösschen  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Entry Brombach in the Baden-Wuerttemberg location database on Discover regional studies online (leobw)
• Entry on the homepage of the Grossmann family; accessed on December 1, 2013

Individual evidence

1. ^ Entry in the catalog of the Heidelberg University Library
2. ↑ s. Dietsche p. 68; on p. 69 there is a site plan on which the moated castle was entered according to the information provided by Mulsow.
3. ^ Rotsch: The castles in medieval Breisgau II , p. 116
4. ↑ s. Dietsche p. 78
5. ↑ For the certificate, see Joseph Trouillat: Monuments de l'histoire de l'ancien évêché de Bâle, Volume 2 , Porrentruy, 1854, pp. 566f. Available online on Google books
6. ↑ Schülin: Brombach , page 68
7. ↑ Old Basel: Mayor Konrad von Bärenfels
8. ↑ Marcel Clémence: von Bärenfels. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . January 5, 2002 , accessed June 13, 2019 .
9. ↑ Schülin: Brombach , page 479
10. ↑ Thomas Simon: manorial rule and bailiwick. A structural analysis of late medieval and early modern rule formation , Frankfurt, 1995, p. 414; For ownership see also Roller, Otto: The history of the noble lords of Rötteln , in Blätter aus der Margrafschaft, Schopfheim, 1927, p. 25
11. ↑ Regesten the Margrave of Baden and Hachberg 1050-1515, published by the Baden Historical Commission, edited by Richard Fester , Innsbruck 1892, Volume 1, certificate number H603 online
12. ↑ Regesten the Margrave of Baden and Hachberg 1050-1515, published by the Baden Historical Commission, edited by Richard Fester , Innsbruck 1892, Volume 1, certificate number H624 online
13. ^ Rotsch: The castles in the medieval Breisgau II , p. 120 u. 121
14. ↑ ^{a b} Rotsch: The castles in medieval Breisgau II , p. 121
15. ↑ s. Schülin p. 82
16. ^ Rotsch: The castles in medieval Breisgau II , p. 122
17. ↑ s. Dietsche p. 78
18. ↑ Brombacher Schloss on the website of the city of Lörrach, accessed on April 1, 2013
19. ↑ s. Homepage of the sponsoring association ( Memento of the original dated February 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 

Coordinates: 47 ° 38 ′ 4 "  N , 7 ° 41 ′ 37"  E