Alsdorf Castle

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Alsdorf Castle, southeast view

The Castle Alsdorf stands in the center of Alsdorf in the Aachen region . In the 15th century it was a typical Rhenish moated castle , which was expanded and rebuilt into a castle during the Renaissance and Baroque periods , making it the representative center of the great Alsdorf rule .

Four families have shaped the history of the complex since the 12th century: Starting with the von Lovenberg family, the complex was then owned by the von Hoemen and von Harff families and passed through them to the von Blanckarts , before the town of Alsdorf became the owner in 1935 . Today the main building, street and park and is, along with the two extant Vorburggebäuden since 17 October 1984 under monument protection . The park is open to the public free of charge.

description

Schematic site plan
The alliance coat of arms of Blanckart / Wachtendonk refers to the builders of the renovation and expansion of 1723/24

Alsdorf Castle is a two-winged complex made of brick with a dark red paint, which is surrounded by a small park . The two wings of the building, which adjoin each other at right angles, each have two storeys and are closed off by a slate roof. Of the former outer bailey, there are only two buildings left today: the coach house and the gate . The coach house from the early 18th century has a vaulted cellar , in whose prison cells twelve members of the notorious buck riders waited for their conviction by the lord of the castle in 1775 . The two floors of the building are closed off by a hipped roof.

The two-storey gate construction still shows the beginnings of the former curtain wall . It has low arched windows on the upper floor above its arched passage . A brick frieze and two stepped gables are its architectural decorations. The current gable roof replaced an earlier hipped roof .

The south and west wings of the original core castle are still preserved, and are surrounded by the remains of the drained moat . Their field-side facades are more decorative than the courtyard-side areas. The oldest part is the flanking round tower on the northeast corner of the east wing. It stands on a low quarry stone base and its core dates back to the 15th century. The tower wall is 1.72 meters thick at the bottom and tapers to 1.15 meters at the top. The three tower floors have a top end with a slate shingle -roofed octagonal dome closed lantern . The castle chapel was located on the ground floor of the 23-meter-high tower until 1925 , but none of its furnishings have survived. The tower was also used as an archive and dungeon .

The construction of the simple east wing in the Renaissance style can be dated to the year 1617 thanks to wall anchors on the courtyard side . On the field side, it is divided into four axes by rectangular windows with frames made of carved bluestone . At its southern end, a small half-tower juts out of the wall. Its masonry with surrounding brick friezes rises on a semicircular floor plan, but changes its shape on the upper floor to a polygon . On the courtyard side, the east wing shows six axes, with the two outer entrances at ground level. Above the southern door is the alliance coat of arms of Baron Alexander Adolf von Blanckart and his wife Maria Florentina von Wachtendonk -Germenseel (sister of the Electoral Palatinate Minister Hermann Arnold von Wachtendonk ) with the emblems of their families ( hammer and lily ) including the year 1723 thus the couple's reconstruction of the wing that year.

The south wing of the castle is more recent and dates from the Baroque period. The wing has two stepped gables and can be dated to 1724 thanks to wall anchors on the courtyard side. Like the east wing, it has large rectangular windows on the field side with house frames that divide it into six axes. On its eastern narrow side there is a small neo-Gothic bay window with a pointed arched window and quatrefoil ornament , which was added to the building around 1900. On the western narrow side, walled-in arched openings , stone consoles and buttresses testify that a no longer existent west wing was attached there until the 19th century, the basement rooms of which are still under today's paved path.

history

The beginnings

There is documentary evidence of a Gottfried von Lovenberg (also Laufenberg) as lord of Alsdorf for 1150. His family had their ancestral home on the Laufenburg and were among the vassals of the Duke of Limburg . Gottfried's descendants ruled Alsdorf for the next seven generations. At the beginning of the 14th century, the Lovenbergs gave their property to the Duke of Brabant as a fief . Since then, the Alsdorf castle has been an open house of the Brabant dukes, also in 1354, when Duke Johann III. by Brabant Harper von Lovenberg enfeoffed with Alsdorf. With the death of Hilger von Lovenberg in 1404, the male line of the family died out. The succession in the Alsdorf lordship was unclear for a long time because Hilger's only daughter Agnes was not yet of marriageable age, and so the Jülich Hereditary Marshal Frambach von Birgel withheld her inheritance for many years until she married Arnold von Hoemen in 1417 and gave him Burg and Glory.

New construction and expansion

When the couple's son, also named Arnold, died childless, disputes over his property eased. First, Heinrich von Reuschenberg and his nephew Wilhelm von Kintzweiler were enfeoffed with the Alsdorf castle as heirs of Hilger von Lovenberg and his daughter Agnes, but ownership changed to the deceased's nephew, Johann von Hoemen as early as 1468. His daughter Johanna married Gottschalk von Harff and brought the castle to her husband's rich family in 1478 after her brother Gerhard had renounced Alsdorf. For almost two centuries, those of Harff ruled Alsdorf. At the beginning of the 16th century they built a new castle, which replaced a previous building of unknown size. Possibly this was a permanent house that was no longer representative of von Harff's. The new castle chapel was inaugurated in 1503. Its predecessor was mentioned in a document as early as 1464.

The appearance of the main castle results from a renovation in the 18th century

Johann Wilhelm von Harff died childless in 1650, but during his lifetime he had appointed his wife Isabella Clara von Blanckart as sole heir. However, Johann Wilhelm's stepbrother and the heirs of his sister from the Beissel von Gymnich family tried to dispute Isabella Clara over the Alsdorf inheritance. But Wilhelm's widow managed to claim the property for her family by bequeathing it to her brother Otto Ludwig. Alsdorf Castle belonged to his descendants until the 20th century. Alexander Adolf von Blanckart and his wife Maria Florentina von Wachtendonk had the main house redesigned into a three-wing complex based on the model of French castles. In 1723 the east wing was redesigned in Baroque style and in 1724 the current south wing was built. The west wing adjoining it was slightly shorter than the east wing opposite and its round corner tower was also not as bulky as its eastern counterpart. The three wings enclosed a courtyard of honor , to which a bridge led over the moat. At the same time, a large, six-wing outer bailey was built, which housed stables and barns , utility buildings and a distillery . The latter was in operation until 1902. In addition, the entire castle area was surrounded by a wall . Under Karl Alexander von Blanckart, fundamental changes were made to the manor house again in 1847 : Due to major roof damage, the lord of the castle had the west wing and corner tower removed.

20th century

After a fire in July 1890 had largely destroyed the spacious outer bailey , Baron Friedrich von Blanckart stopped farming and leased the land belonging to the castle. In 1892 he also had the former moats leveled almost completely and the surrounding wall torn down. Of three of his sons, two died in the First World War , so that the youngest of them, Josef, became the sole heir of the property when his father died. He initially sold the system with “Park and ingredients” to the parish of Sankt Castor, from which it was sold to the city of Alsdorf on February 11, 1935 for 45,000  Reichstaler . The castle chapel had previously been profaned in 1925 . The altar structure and canteen were brought to the local history museum of what was then the Aachen district in the Kornelimünster Abbey , where they disappeared during the Second World War . The two bells in the tower, which were cast by Christian Wilhelm Voigt from Jülich in 1756 and 1757 , have been hanging in the Christ the King Church in Busch since 1930 .

After the city became the owner of the complex, apartments were first set up there and the castle park opened to the public. In the 1960s, the buildings were renovated and modernized , with considerable alterations to the historical fabric of the building. The remaining outer bailey buildings were demolished in 1965 except for the gate and the shed, work on the main building took place between 1967 and 1970. The remise was repaired from 2010 to early 2012. The buildings were then used as a day care center for senior citizens and as a cultural center. The municipal adult education center also found its home there.

Todays use

Some municipal facilities are now housed in the manor house of Alsdorf Castle. Those wishing to marry can have a civil marriage in the wedding room there. The Remise has been used as a meeting place for the Alsdorf-Burg workers' welfare since April 2012. Next to this building is the so-called music pavilion, which was built there in the 1950s and is a stone witness to the Burggarten concerts that have been taking place there regularly since 1950. In addition, the publicly accessible palace park is the venue for a Christmas market every year during Advent.

literature

Web links

Commons : Burg Alsdorf  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

References and comments

  1. ↑ a b c d Alsdorf Castle on alsdorfdamals.de , accessed on August 26, 2012.
  2. ↑ H. Reiners: Die Kunstdenkmäler des Kreis Aachen , p. 23.
  3. ↑ a b A. Kraemer: Alsdorf. History of a City , p. 85.
  4. ↑ a b c A. Kraemer: Alsdorf. History of a City , p. 89.
  5. ↑ a b D. Holtermann, H. Herzog: The Aachener Burgenrunde , p. 121.
  6. ↑ D. Holtermann, Holger A. Dux: The Aachener Burgenrunde , p. 51.
  7. ↑ a b A. Kraemer: Alsdorf. History of a City , p. 86.
  8. ↑ a b c d U. Coenen: Architectural Treasures in the Aachen District , p. 9.
  9. ^ H. Reiners: Die Kunstdenkmäler des Kreis Aachen , p. 21.
  10. ↑ KE Krämer: Castles in and around Aachen , p. 31.
  11. ^ H. Reiners: Die Kunstdenkmäler des Kreis Aachen , S. 21-22.
  12. ↑ a b H. Reiners: Die Kunstdenkmäler des Kreis Aachen , p. 22.
  13. ^ H. Reiners: Die Kunstdenkmäler des Kreis Aachen , p. 24.
  14. ^ A. Kraemer: Alsdorf. History of a City , p. 87.
  15. ^ A. Kraemer: Alsdorf. History of a City , p. 88. In some other publications 1889 is given as the year of the calamity.
  16. ↑ KE Krämer: Castles in and around Aachen , p. 34.
  17. ^ A. Kraemer: Alsdorf. History of a City , p. 88.

Coordinates: 50 ° 52 ′ 44 "  N , 6 ° 9 ′ 42"  E