Kreuzau Castle
| Kreuzau Castle | ||
|---|---|---|
 |
||
| Creation time : | around 1330 | |
| Castle type : | Niederungsburg | |
| Conservation status: | Received or received substantial parts | |
| Standing position : | Noble | |
| Construction: | Quarry stone | |
| Place: | Kreuzau | |
| Geographical location | 50 ° 44 ′ 58 " N , 6 ° 29 ′ 7" E | |
| Height: | 146 m above sea level NN | |
|
||
The Burg Kreuzau is in Kreuzau above the Rur in Düren , North Rhine-Westphalia .
history
The moated castle was built not far from the crossing of an old Roman road over the Rur. A house may have stood on the site of the castle in Roman times.
The knight Dietrich Schinnemann, a powerful vassal of the Duke of Jülich, seems to have been a member of the von Ouwe family, known as the lords of the castle. He was the knight who, in the second half of the 13th century, called for a rebellion against Duke Wilhelm I of Jülich , because his authoritarian government restricted the rights of knighthood . Dietrich Schinnemann lost this feud after initial successes, and his Freialdenhoven Castle was razed.
In 1384 the Duke of Jülich allowed his feudal man Dietrich Schinnemann to sell the castle in Kreuzau with all rights to the monastery of St. John the Evangelist , which was then still in Nideggen, later in Jülich , for 2000 gold guilders .
After the Schinnemans, the von Walrave from Cologne owned the property until the end of the 16th century . The von Raesfeld family became owners through marriage . At the instigation of the German Order of Knights , Kreuzau Castle was judicially appraised in 1653. The property was estimated at around 4600 thalers . In 1658 the owners moved from Kreuzau.
Surprisingly, on February 23, 1668, Lieutenant Colonel Dietrich Adolf von Torck presented the Kreuzau lay judges personally with a deed of donation through which his relatives Anna Stephana von Raesfeld, who was the abbess of the Bocholtz monastery, granted him the right of inheritance to the castle.
Von Torck took ownership in July 1668. Then he leased the castle. The feudal lords in Jülich did not agree with this. They reclaimed the castle. Von Torck then had the entire main castle in Kreuzau destroyed. The officer proceeded so thoroughly that rebuilding this part of the castle did not seem worthwhile.
On the evening of October 10, von Torck attacked the castle together with three armed men. The dean and the waiter were slightly wounded. Now the chapter in Jülich broke the collar, and it sued the officer, who now also brought legal claims to the castle. However, when he found out the amount of the court costs he would face, he gave up.
The Jülich Abbey should not be happy about the possession of Kreuzau Castle for long. The eldest son of Dietrich Adolf von Torck, Kaspar Jadokus, filed a lawsuit with the court in Düsseldorf because of the castle, which was decided in his favor in 1701. Herbert Müller, the tenant employed by the Jülich Abbey, was allowed to continue to manage the property. The castle remained in the possession of the von Torck family until 1883. At that time the family with Maria Franziska Wilhelmina went out.
She bequeathed the property to her distant relative Wilhelm Jungbluth. After his death in 1889, his brother Joseph Jungbluth inherited the property, which he sold to Heinrich Arthur Hoesch in 1903 . In 1931 Wilhelm Schmitz acquired the castle. After the death of the Schmitzes in the air raid on Düren on November 16, 1944 , the two daughters, Dr. Trude Weis-Pfennig and Christel Jacobs share the property. Kreuzau Castle is used for agriculture today.
Kreuzau Castle is now a rectangular farmyard made of quarry stone , partly still enclosed by dry ditches . The house belongs to the 17th to 18th centuries. The farm buildings have been redesigned several times using the old walls. It is said that the north aisle of the parish church of St. Heribert was built on the foundations of the main castle , which was destroyed by Lieutenant Colonel von Torck, in 1906 and 1907.
The castle was damaged in the Second World War, then it was removed down to the first floor and only reconstructed in its current form in the early 1970s.
Web links
- Kreuzau Castle at www.kreuzau.de (PDF; 2.2 MB)