Château de Pourtalès
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The Château de Pourtalès (Eng .: Castle Pourtalès ) is a castle in Strasbourg . It has been under monument protection as Monument historique since 1984 .
history
The original estate in the north of the Robertsau district was built in 1750 by the royal fortress builder Joseph Guérault , who also directed the expansion of the city fortifications in Strasbourg in the 18th century.
In 1784 the Baron de Coehorn bought the Robertsau estate. In 1802 the banker Athanase Paul Renouard de Bussière bought the country estate. His son Baron Alfred Renouard de Bussière (1804-1887) was married to Sophie Mélanie de Coehoorn. Around 1840 he had a park laid out in the English horticultural style, in 1844 the building was rebuilt and furnished in the Lois XVI style. They were followed as sole heir by their daughter Mélanie Renouard de Bussière . She was married since 1857 to the banker Count Edmond de Pourtalès (1828-1895), son of James Alexander de Pourtalès-Gorgier , a financier from the Swiss Neuchâtel , where the originally southern French family de Pourtalès had fled as Huguenots under Louis XIV . The park was expanded by Countess Mélanie and Count Edmond, who also gave the castle its current name. They decided to have the building rebuilt again and modernize it on a large scale. So from 1887 onwards they had the palace redesigned by the architect Charles-Jules Breffendille and the outbuildings built. The interior was partly in the Louis XVI. and Napoleon III style. In 1907, the Strasbourg architects Gustave Krafft and Jules Berninger built extensions, in whose rooms a wood-paneled library was set up. Comtesse Mélanie regularly invited to social events, the so-called salons. The castle soon became a popular meeting place for the European nobility, politics and society. Visitors to the palace included King Ludwig II of Bavaria, Kaiser Wilhelm II , King Leopold II of Belgium and Queen Marie Henriette , the Prince of Wales Albert Eduard (later King Edward VII), Prince Napoléon , and Prince Klemens von Metternich , Franz Liszt , Albert Schweitzer and Léon Bakst . After Countess Melanié's death in 1914, her daughter Agnès continued to run these salons. From 1939 the castle was only vacant and was used as a hospital, soldiers' quarters and refugee home during the Second World War.
From 1951 onwards, the castle served as a training center for an Eastern European university, but the “Free Europe College” soon had to be closed because of the dense Iron Curtain. The castle was forgotten and left to decay. At the proverbial last minute, Walter Leibrecht and his wife Lydia Leibrecht acquired the dilapidated building complex in 1972, extensively renovated it and thus saved this historic and historically valuable property. Leibrecht housed the French campus of the Schiller International University he founded in the castle . The city acquired part of the park and made it accessible to the public. Harald Leibrecht, the youngest son of Walter Leibrecht and his family, is now the owner of the castle. The castle also houses international students. A hotel was also built in the château and the outbuilding. From October 2019, further hotel rooms and conference rooms will be available to guests in a new building. Concerts and symposia take place regularly in the castle.
architecture
The oldest part of the small castle is a two-story baroque mansion Mansardwalmdach , projections and two iron pavilions. On the narrow west side there are two square, four-storey cantilevers and in between there is an octagonal one with three storeys. A square tower sits on the eastern narrow side. To the east of it stands the Napoleon III style pavilion with a flat roof. This is followed by a farm yard with outbuildings and a pavilion. In the large park there are several outbuildings, fountains, sculptures, a pigeon house, a water tower and ponds.
literature
Claudine Martz: Le château de Pourtalès: deux siècles d'histoire . Dernières Nouvelles d'Alsace, Strasbourg 1986, ISBN 2-7165-0098-3
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Entry no. PA00085018 in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
Coordinates: 48 ° 36 ′ 30 ″ N , 7 ° 48 ′ 0 ″ E