Aschhausen Castle

Aschhausen Castle
	View from the west
Alternative name (s):	Aschhausen Castle
Creation time :	13./14. century
Castle type :	Location
Conservation status:	Castle inhabited by the von Zeppelin family
Standing position :	2nd estate: county
Place:	Schöntal- Aschhausen
Geographical location	49 ° 22 '9 " N , 9 ° 32' 36.3" E Coordinates: 49 ° 22 '9 " N , 9 ° 32' 36.3" E

The castle Aschhausen is an old manor house in Schöntaler district Aschhausen in Hohenlohe in Baden-Wuerttemberg . The builders of the castle , the lords of Aschhausen , died out in the 17th century. The facility was then owned by the abbots and the convent of the Schöntal monastery . After its abolition, it has been owned by the von Zeppelin family since 1803 , who have been running the farm themselves since the 1950s and have set up a museum in part of the complex with exhibits from the family treasure. Today the castle is mainly used as an event location.

description

Today's palace complex south of the Erlenbach and the village of Aschhausen has a roughly rectangular floor plan, with the various buildings surrounding a common inner courtyard. The entrance to the complex is on the north side, where the elongated old castle building with two towers also forms the gatehouse to the inner courtyard. In the east of the complex are the keep , the granary and a round tower, the oldest parts of the complex, which can be reached via a bridge from the inner courtyard. The south side of the younger part is built on with the estate administration building (“people's apartment”) and the distillery, to the west a farm building complex closes the inner courtyard. In the northwest corner between the farm buildings and the old castle building is the youngest part, the castle extension from 1912/14, which also serves as a residence for the owners. To the west, there was a small castle park, which was once used to grow flowers and vegetables, later mainly comprised only lawns and today contains a swimming pool.

history

Early history

As early as 1165 a "Theodoric de Askehusen" was mentioned. The oldest part of the castle is the keep , which was built in the 13th and 14th centuries. Century was built. Since 1315 the castle was Mainz fief.

Destruction 1523

Older part of today's facility

In the first half of the 16th century, Hans Georg von Aschhausen supported the robber baron Hans Thomas von Absberg , who kidnapped merchants from imperial cities in Franconia and Swabia on their trade trips and collected a large ransom for their release. Hans Georg von Aschhausen hoped to increase his dwindling wealth a little. In 1523, however , the Swabian Confederation sent its troops under Georg Truchsess von Waldburg to level a total of 23 " predatory nests " to the ground. The federal troops of 10,000 foot soldiers and 1,000 horsemen carried 100 cannons and 30 rifles with 900 quintals of black powder as armament. On June 14th they reached Aschhausen Castle and blew it up.

The destruction of the castle in 1523

A woodcut from 1523 by Hans Wandereisen shows the destruction of Aschhausen Castle. You can see the burning castle complex. An inner wall, interspersed with defensive towers, follows an outer enclosure. Behind it are several buildings and two larger towers. Smaller buildings and upper floors are made of timber framing. A coat of arms can be seen on the main building above the door frame and a protruding entrance area. Parts of the troops of the Swabian Federation can be seen on the right and left of the picture.

Reconstruction in the 16th century

The reconstruction of the castle under the widow and sons of Hans Georg von Aschhausen took several decades, various inscriptions tell of the construction activities in the further course of the 16th century. In 1537 a round tower was built in the south of the keep, and in 1568 the keep was rebuilt. In 1579 a new building was added below the original castle district. The Lords of Aschhausen provided their highest-ranking representative with the Bamberg and Würzburg Prince-Bishop Johann Gottfried von Aschhausen (1575–1622). The family died a little later with the eponymous Johann Gottfried von Aschhausen (1628–1657), who was married to Maria Magdalena Zobel . Then the fiefdom in Aschhausen fell back to Kurmainz.

Property of the abbots of Schöntal

Abbot and convent of Schöntal Monastery acquired the Aschhauser fief and the Aschhauser allodial property in 1671 . Under the art-loving abbots Christoph Haan , Benedikt Knittel and Angelus Münch , the castle was essentially given its current form with the two towers and the elongated main building in the early 18th century. Münch's coat of arms still adorns the passage to the castle courtyard. The establishment of a castle chapel, which was consecrated by Auxiliary Bishop von Gebsattel in 1748, also dates back to the time of the Schöntal ownership. The castle shared the fortunes of Schöntal Monastery, which passed to Württemberg in the early 19th century. The last Schöntal abbot, Maurus Schreiner , was allowed to take up residence in Aschhausen after the Schöntal monastery was abolished and died there in 1811.

Property of the Counts of Zeppelin

Duke Friedrich II gave the castle in 1803 as a fiefdom to Johann Friedrich Karl Graf von Zeppelin (1789–1836), the son of the deceased Oberhofmeister Johann Karl Graf von Zeppelin (1767–1801), with whom a branch of the family moved from Mecklenburg to Württemberg had come and made a contribution to the Württemberg court. His descendants still own the facility today. The castle mill of Aschhausen, which was sold in 1960, also belonged to the property. From 1894 electricity was generated there and on November 16, 1894, Aschhausen was the first village to have electric light.

1912–1914, under Count Johann Friedrich Alexander Fürchtegott von Zeppelin, the residential wing in the west was built according to a design by the architect Ernst Haiger . The round tower from 1537 burned down in 1945 and was erected again soon afterwards.

In the 1950s, the plant went through a change. While the Counts of Zeppelin had previously given the property to tenants, Count Ludolf von Zeppelin began to manage the farm himself in 1958. In 1953, the von Zeppelin family also made parts of their family treasure, including a valuable collection of coins and stove tiles, a collection of hunting weapons and many trophies, accessible to the public in a museum set up within the palace complex.

The total size of the farm in the 1960s was 248 hectares, of which 114 hectares were arable land and 128 hectares were forest. The operating areas were at heights of 230 to 260 meters above sea level, the soils were predominantly made of shell limestone or clay. The castle's agriculture included the cultivation of cereals (wheat, barley, oats), sugar beets, grain maize and rape. The maize was only partly grown as fodder for animal husbandry and partly needed for the agricultural distillery . Grass seed propagation was also devoted to a few hectares of arable land. In terms of animal husbandry, there was traditionally pig fattening with 120 fattening pigs and cattle fattening with 120 fattening bulls in 1967. From 1963 turkey fattening was added. In 1967 there were 900 fattening turkeys. The previous farming of dairy cows was abandoned in 1967/68 and the milk needed on the farm was then obtained from dairy farmers in the village. In 1967/68 the company had ten permanent employees for housekeeping and livestock farming, plus three apprentices and nine temporary workers.

In the 1960s, the lord of the castle occasionally organized driven hunts, and the castle also served as quarters during the autumn maneuvers of the German armed forces. Animal husbandry was given up in later years. Automation in agriculture has led to the fact that hardly any workers are needed to manage the agricultural land in addition to the lord of the castle Johann Graf von Zeppelin. The utility rooms that became free in the castle were mainly converted for festivities. The granary, which dates back to the 16th century, is now used as a ballroom for up to 200 people with an associated kitchen and sanitary wing in the adjacent buildings. A concert and seminar room for around 60 people was set up in the old castle, and the 17th century castle chapel and the malt cellar can also be used for events.

literature

Description of the Oberamt Künzelsau. 1883, pp. 355-369 ( Wikisource ).
Georg Himmelträger : The art monuments of the former Oberamt Künzelsau. Frankfurt 1983.
Carlheinz Gräter and Jörg Lusin: Castles in Hohenlohe, history and stories. Tübingen 2005.
Jutta Sigel: Notebook of the rural housekeeping apprentice: Zeppelin'sche Gutsverwaltung Aschhausen. Aschhausen 1967/68.

Web links

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

Homepage of Aschhausen Castle