Kreuzberg Castle (Rhineland-Palatinate)

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Kreuzberg Castle from the west

The castle Kreuzberg stands on a small rocky peak above the Altenahrer district in Kreuzberg . The facility is located on a triangular rock plateau that slopes steeply to the Ahr on one side , and thus belongs to the hill castle type .

The castle has been the residence of the von Boeselager family since 1820, making it the only inhabited castle in the Ahr Valley . With the exception of the castle chapel , the private property is not open to the public.

architecture

Kreuzberg Castle (Rhineland-Palatinate) from the east, aerial photo (2015)

The castle complex consists of the main castle and a chapel as well as farm buildings from the 18th century, which are located to the west of the main castle. The castle area is surrounded by a curtain wall, which encloses a garden in addition to the core castle and possibly also protected an outer castle in the past .

chapel

The late baroque style castle chapel, consecrated to the Catholic Church, is dedicated to Saint Anthony . The building with a polygonal choir is divided into three axes by windows on its longitudinal front. The southern front with the arched entrance portal has a risalit reaching into the gable . The interior is spanned by a barrel vault made of wood. On the west gallery is the coat of arms of the von der Heyden family, called Belderbusch, dating from 1783.

Core castle

Residential building of Kreuzberg Castle

The core castle rises on an almost triangular floor plan and thus follows the nature of the artificial castle plateau. The area is enclosed by the inner circular wall.

On the east side is the round, white plastered keep with a blunt cone helmet , which is crowned by a weather vane with the year 1781. Its task was to protect the immediately adjacent entrance gate to the inner courtyard. About half of the tower protrudes from the inner curtain wall. The keep is connected to the north by a short connecting tract to the residential building on the north side. Its floors are accessed via a hexagonal stair tower with a curved hood.

The baroque , two-storey residential building made of quarry stones stands on the north side of the main castle area . Its facade shows two kinks, which are probably due to the fact that the medieval curtain wall dictated the external shape of the building. Above the entrance door of the building there is a lava plate with dates and the coats of arms of the von Bernsau and von der Heyden families, which testifies to the building activities of the lords of the castle in the 18th century.

The residential building - although it was not built until the 18th century - certainly contains medieval buildings, which is also indicated by its great wall thickness.

In the south, the main castle is bounded by a circular wall at parapet height. It shows the beginnings of seven windows that belonged to a building that used to stand there. It is not yet known when this building was demolished.

history

Kreuzberg was first mentioned in a document as Cruceberg in 893 in the Prümer Urbar . Around 1100 the settlement came to the Counts of Are , who had a first house built for one of their administrators on the Kreuzberg. Archbishop Konrad von Are-Hochstaden enfeoffed Kuno von Vischenich (also Cuno / Cono / Conz von Fischenich), knight and donor of the Cologne Archbishopric , with Kreuzberg and allowed him to build a permanent castle on the mountain, the construction of which he supported financially.

After completion of the castle, Kuno and his wife Guda gave the castle to the Archdiocese of Cologne in April 1343 as a fief and were enfeoffed with it in return. In the following time, Kreuzberg Castle was an open house of the Archbishops of Cologne.

In the same year the fiefdom was transferred, Kuno von Vischenich died without leaving any descendants. The rule and castle went to his widow Guda, who married Konrad von Schöneck in 1346 and thus transferred the property to his family.

It is often stated in art historical literature that the keep of the castle was built during the 15th century. However, it is quite possible that this part of Kreuzberg Castle belongs to the oldest part of the complex and thus dates from the 14th century.

At the beginning of the 15th century, Kreuzberg Castle and Dominion were divided into two parts. The property was shared by Johann von Bachem and Nikolaus von Are in 1415 , so that the castle became an inheritance castle . Both shares often changed hands over the next 240 years or so. These included the von Gymnich , von Nesselrode , von Flodorf, von Peppenhoven , von Königsdorf and von der Leyen families .

In 1659 Johann Arnold Quadt von Wickrath , who owned half of the castle through his wife Anna von Flodorf, was able to reunite the property in one hand. He acquired the other part of the rule - and with it the castle - for 4444 Reichstaler from Hugo Ernst von der Leyen. But he couldn't enjoy his possessions for too long. In 1686 French troops destroyed the castle in the course of the Palatinate War of Succession .

Kreuzberg Castle on an ink drawing by Renier Rodikin 1725

Johann Arnold's son Vincenz died childless in 1697, so that Kurköln then gave the fiefdom to the governor of the archbishop's residence in Bonn , Philibert von Chabot, Count of St. Maurice. He sold the property in 1699 to the Electoral Cologne bailiff of Brühl , Baron Wilhelm Dietrich Wierich of Bernsau to Schweinheim. After he died in 1709 without male descendants, Kurköln withdrew the property as a settled male fief , but Wilhelm's widow successfully sued the Imperial Court of Justice and was awarded the castle. Through her eldest daughter Maria Anna, the facility passed to her husband, Count Carl Martin Ferdinand von Satzenhofen . In 1760 the couple had the castle's residential building rebuilt. At that time there was also a building on the south side of the inner castle, which can be clearly seen on an ink drawing by the Walloon artist Renier Roidkin from 1725.

Maria Anna's daughter Amalie was enfeoffed with Kreuzberg in 1769, but a few years later the fief was so indebted that it was foreclosed. Count Caspar Anton von der Heyden , known as Belderbusch, the partner of Amalie's sister Caroline , bought it in July 1780 for 13,900 Reichstaler . He not only had the old keep given a new roof (1781), but also initiated the construction of today's castle chapel at the western entrance of the castle ring in 1783. A chapel belonging to the castle has been documented since 1485. The Gothic church building stood at the foot of the castle hill on the Ahr and can be easily recognized in Roidkin's drawings.

Belderbusch's daughter was married to a Freiherr von Boeselager and brought the castle to this family in 1820, which used it primarily as a hunting lodge . Gottfried Kinkel described it in 1849 in his book Die Ahr as a "neat [s] white [s] castle", which means that the castle must have been completely plastered in white at that time.

During the Second World War , the cellars of the castle served the local population as an air raid shelter . The complex itself survived the turmoil of the war undamaged.

In the 1950s, the owners Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager and Rosa Maria, nee Countess von Westphalen zu Fürstenberg built a short connecting wing between the residential building and the keep in order to be able to use the tower for residential purposes. The interior of the keep was redesigned for this purpose before it received new plastering in 1982. The current lord of the castle is the Knight of Malta Albrecht Freiherr von Boeselager .

literature

Web links

Commons : Kreuzberg Castle

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ M. Losse: Theiss Burgenführer . P. 87.
  2. ↑ a b D. Holterman, H. Herzog: The Ahr cycle path . Bouvier, Bonn 2003, ISBN 3-416-02999-2 .
  3. ↑ a b Entry by Jens Friedhoff on Kreuzberg Castle in the scientific database " EBIDAT " of the European Castle Institute, accessed on August 20, 2016.
  4. ↑ M. Losse: Theiss Burgenführer . P. 86.
  5. ↑ a b c d J. Rausch: Schloss und Herrlichkeit Kreuzberg .
  6. ↑ quoted from M. Losse: Theiss Burgenführer . P. 86.

Coordinates: 50 ° 30 ′ 33.4 "  N , 6 ° 58 ′ 31.6"  E