Frenz Castle

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The manor house of Frenz Castle around 1910

The Burg Frenz , also Frenzer Burg called, is the residue of a moated castle at the Inde in the district Frenz of the North Rhine-Westphalian municipality of Inden in Düren .

It was the ancestral seat of a noble family of the same name and came to a line of the von Merode family in the 14th century , which remained the owner until it died out in 1826. The Cockerill family owned the property from 1840 until the 20th century. She also owned the Palant house, about a kilometer northwest . After severe damage in the Second World War , the complex was closed with the exception of the southern outer bailey.

history

In a document from 1104, a Harpern defragenzo (Hartpern de Fraegenzo) was named as a witness for the Archbishop of Cologne Friedrich I von Schwarzenburg , which suggests that there was already a fortified structure at that time , according to which one Owner family called. This probably belonged to a sideline of the Dukes of Limburg , because it had the Limburg lion in the coat of arms. The castle itself was first mentioned only in 1226, when Henry IV. Of Limburg it on 31 July 1226 as Sühnetat of the Electorate of Cologne to feudal took. The castle was the ancestral seat of the noblemen of Frenz. However, it is not clear whether it is identical to the facility, the remodeling of which is still preserved today, or whether it was a predecessor facility elsewhere.

Inaccurate view of Frenz Castle from the Welser Codex , around 1720

Via Ricarda, the daughter of Wilhelm von Frenz, the castle and territory came to her husband, Kuno von Müllenark, in 1324 . In 1339 the property came to the Margrave Wilhelm V von Jülich , who pledged it to Hermann von Tomburg - Vernich before 1355 . In 1361 Richard I of Merode redeemed this pledge and thus became the new owner of Frenz Castle. His family then owned the facility for more than 450 years. Richard's grandson of the same name, the progenitor of the Merode-Houffalize sideline, had the castle renovated around the middle of the 15th century. However, his family did not live in the complex themselves, but resided at their Châtelineau castle in what is now Belgium and had the castle and rule of Schultheißen administered. Members of the Merode family only came to Frenz on hunting trips.

Because Richard V von Merode sided with Emperor Charles V and thus against his own liege lord, the Duke of Jülich, in the Third War of the Geldr Succession , Wilhelm the Rich moved in without further ado in the castle and rule of Frenz in 1543. Richard V got the fief back with the Peace of Venlo . When Philipp von Merode was killed in a duel in 1629, the male family who owned it died out with him . Frenz went by inheritance to his brother-in-law, Count Philippe Lamoral de Gand-Vilain, but members of other Merode lines also claimed the inheritance. They went to court and were successful: Frenz Castle finally came to the Count Franz von Merode-Oignies. After his childless death, dispute broke out again among the various family lines about the inheritance, which Gotthard (Goddart) from Merode-Houffalize zu Gödersheim was able to win. Renewals took place under him in 1688. His sons had further changes and repairs carried out, especially after a fire in 1719. In the process, the complex was given a new outer bailey, which was in front of the manor house and the previous farm buildings to the south. Gotthard's three grandchildren jointly owned the castle and had to rebuild many things after damage from the great earthquake near Düren in 1756. Gottfried Arnold Ignaz von Merode and his wife Regina von Waldbott-Bassenheim changed the manor house in 1757, as evidenced by their alliance coat of arms above the portal . In the same year, work began on building the old outer bailey, which was on an island with the manor house. In 1766 they were finished.

Frenz Castle on a lithograph , around 1875

Due to inheritance and the fact that all her siblings had died before her, Gotthard's great-granddaughter Regina Petronella von Merode became the sole owner of the castle complex. When she died in 1826, she bequeathed the property to her landlord JW Gräf, whose children sold Frenz Castle to Charles James Cockerill, son of the entrepreneur James Cockerill , in 1840 . He had the southern bailey completely redesigned in 1850 and - after a fire - again in 1888. A valuable gold coin discovery was made during his tenure as the owner in the early 1870s. A storm had damaged the roof of one of the corner turrets on the manor house. During the subsequent repair work, 64 gold coins from various European countries that had been minted between the 15th and 17th centuries were found in the rubble.

In 1916 the leather manufacturer Gustav Kreuder became the new owner of the property, which at the time included 560  acres of land. During the Second World War, in late November 1944, fierce fighting broke out over the castle between advancing US forces and German soldiers who had holed up in the castle. It was badly damaged in the fighting. After Rheinbraun took over the ruinous complex in 1956, the core castle was laid down in 1964 and the area, including a garden island, was converted into agricultural land. Only the outer bailey remained. Today it is privately owned and is inhabited by three families.

description

Site plan of the castle from the first half of the 19th century

Frenz Castle was a multi-part system that was spread over three islands. The focus was the manor house, which stood on a shared island with the farm buildings of an old outer bailey. To the north of it was a square garden island, while to the south was a new outer bailey with a farmyard from the 19th century. The islands were surrounded by a multi-part ditch system, the wide water ditches of which took up about 4.6  hectares and served not only as a defensive element, but also for fish farming. The core of the complex dates back to the 15th and 16th centuries. Century. However, the building fabric was changed, expanded and renewed several times in the following centuries.

The mansion was a rectangular two-story building and stood in the northeast corner of the island. Its masonry of bricks was limed and a high hip roof completed. At the two east corners it had polygonal corner observatories with curved domes . They framed the seven-axis east facade. The northern corner tower was from the 15th and 16th centuries. Century and stood on a console level with the first floor. Under his eaves a stud took fries . Its roof was crowned by a weather vane with the year 1719. Inside there was a ribbed vault from the 16th century with a keystone decorated with a coat of arms . The south corner tower started on the first floor and was an ingredient from the 18th century.

On the northern front side there was a narrow extension with a Renaissance gable and bay window on the eastern side. The castle chapel was located in it . The facade facing the courtyard on the west side was kept simple. A brick bridge led to the rococo portal in the middle , above which hung the alliance coat of arms of the Merode and Waldbott-Bassenheim families with the year 1757. Behind the entrance was a vestibule decorated in the style of the Empire . A staircase from the Baroque period led to the upper floor. The billiard room was equipped with a stucco ceiling from around 1760, while the kitchen rooms were still beamed ceilings from the 16th and 17th centuries. Century exhibited.

Gate construction of the old outer bailey

The design of the main house resulted from renovations around 1720 and 1757. At that time, the dividing ditch between the manor house and the old outer bailey to the west was also filled, so that from then on the buildings stood on a common island. The north wing of these farm buildings accommodated a barn or coach house and the gardener's apartment. The year of the weather vane on its mansard roof reminded of the almost complete new building up to 1766. The south wing with its gateway gave access to the manor island. The arched entrance with the house border was in a two-story gate tower with a slate mansard roof, which was crowned by two weather vanes. The coat of arms of the von Merode-Frenz family hung over the archway. On both sides of the tower there were two-storey but lower wings, the outer facades of which were windowless on the ground floor. There were window openings only on the upper floor. The west side of the Herrenhausinsel was almost completely undeveloped. Only in the middle was a simple garden pavilion from the second half of the 18th century.

Of the large complex, only the newer outer bailey in the south is preserved today. An access road leads to them from the west and passes a small chapel from the 17th / 18th century. Century. The three-winged farm yard has a U-shape that opens onto the former manor island and mostly dates from the last quarter of the 19th century.

literature

  • Paul Hartmann, Edmund Renard : The art monuments of the district of Düren (= The art monuments of the Rhine province . Volume 9, section 1). L. Schwann, Düsseldorf 1910, pp. 139-143, 358.
  • Harald Herzog: Rhenish palace buildings in the 19th century. Rheinland-Verlag, Cologne 1981, ISBN 3-7927-0585-0 , p. 63.
  • Dirk Holtermann, Holger A. Dux : The Aachen Castle Round. Cycling between Wurm and Inde. Walter Rau, Düsseldorf 2000, ISBN 3-7919-0749-2 , p. 109.
  • Theodor Wildeman : Rhenish moated castles and water-protected palace buildings. Rhenish Association for Monument Preservation and Heritage Protection, Bonn 1954, pp. 46, 84.

Web links

Commons : Burg Frenz  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Theodor Joseph Lacomblet : Document book for the history of the Lower Rhine. Volume 1. Wolf, Düsseldorf 1840, p. 171, no. 263 ( digitized version ).
  2. ↑ D. Holtermann, HA Dux: The Aachen Castle Round. Cycling between Wurm and Inde. 2000, p. 109.
  3. ^ Franz Cramer: Frenz Brigatium. At the same time an investigation into the names formed with other. In: Journal of the Aachen History Association (ZAGV). Volume 27. Cremersche Buchhandlung, Aachen 1905, p. 117 ( digitized version ).
  4. ↑ a b c Entry by Gabriele Rustemeyer on Burg Frenz in the scientific database " EBIDAT " of the European Castle Institute
  5. ↑ Walther Zimmermann , Hugo Borger (ed.): Handbook of the historical sites of Germany . Volume 3: North Rhine-Westphalia (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 273). Kröner, Stuttgart 1963, DNB 456882847 , p. 205.
  6. ↑ a b P. Hartmann, E. Renard: Die Kunstdenkmäler des Kreis Düren. 1910, p. 140.
  7. ↑ a b c d August Schumacher: A gold coin find at Frenz Castle. In: Rur flowers. Leaves for entertainment, edification and instruction, supplement to the Jülich Kreisblatt. Vol. 7, No. 8, 1927, no p.
  8. ↑ a b c Burchard Sielmann: Frenz Castle. Information board on site ( PDF ; 143 kB).
  9. ↑ a b c P. Hartmann, E. Renard: Die Kunstdenkmäler des Kreis Düren. 1910, p. 141.
  10. ^ P. Hartmann, E. Renard: Die Kunstdenkmäler des Kreis Düren. 1910, p. 142.
  11. ^ P. Hartmann, E. Renard: Die Kunstdenkmäler des Kreis Düren. 1910, p. 143.

Coordinates: 50 ° 49 ′ 46.6 ″  N , 6 ° 20 ′ 37 ″  E