Good lime kiln

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South wing with gate tower of the Kalkhofen estate
View of the mansion from the courtyard around 1910

The Kalkofen estate used to be one of the most important manors in the Lower Rhine-Westphalian Empire . The facility is located in what is now the northern quarter of Aachen, surrounded by the Aachen nature reserve in the Wurm Valley .

The complex emerged from an estate that was first mentioned in a document at the beginning of the 14th century. Set on fire in 1582 and then rebuilt, Kalkofen came to the Aachen cloth manufacturer Johann von Wespien via the Ballhausen family and the Schardinel copper masters . From 1750 to 1753 he had the property converted into a pleasure palace by Johann Joseph Couven . After his death, it was rented out to well-off bathers several times before it came into the possession of the Zurhelle family in 1831, who are still the owners today.

In the course of its history, the magnificent complex has been visited by crowned European heads several times. For example, King Frederick IV of Denmark and Norway visited Kalkofen several times in 1724, and Napoleon's wife Joséphine lived there between 1800 and 1804 . By contrast, it is not certain whether the later Emperor Charles V in 1531 on the way to King's coronation of his brother Ferdinand I in Aachen Cathedral actually on Good lime kiln or not but maybe in another property on the present territory of hair has stayed.

description

Southwest corner tower and manor house

Gut Kalkofen is a formerly closed four-wing complex, the north side of which is now about half open. In essence, it dates from the 15th / 16th centuries. Century, of which defensive elements such as loopholes and the remains of the once closed and water-filled moat ring on the south and west side testify. Of the former four round corner towers, three have been preserved - albeit without the original helmets  . The most massive of them is on the west corner and has two meter thick walls.

A three-storey gate tower protruding from the wall , to which a two-arched stone bridge leads, provides access to the complex on its southwest side . It was installed in 1750 instead of a wooden drawbridge . The front walls of the tower are made of gray-blue limestone for the corner blocks and red bricks , the latter being painted pink. The side tower masonry , like the outer walls of the entire south-west wing, consists of roughly hewn gray-wacke and coal-sandstone blocks. Above the segmental arch of the gate entrance and on the sill of the tower window there is the alliance coat of arms Wespien-Schmitz and gives an indication of the builder of the gatehouse : the Aachen Mayor John of Wespien and his wife Anna Maria Schmitz. There is a now empty saint niche above the window. The original, baroque tower dome with a clock gable and lantern was replaced by a flat pyramid roof that was broken down after the Second World War . The high gate tower towers over the otherwise only two storeys south-west wing of the estate . This is where the tenant's apartment and stables used to be. The large arched windows of the wing have walls made of bluestone and give the facade an even division.

Alliance coat of arms in the tail gable of the manor house

The two-storey mansion with a mansard roof adjoins the large round tower on the west corner . It is kept in the late Baroque style of the Rococo and has brickwork. The above a high basement rises mezzanine floor . A six-step outside staircase leads to the portal with profiled walls and skylight , which is not in the central axis of the building, but is slightly offset to the left. Its arched lintel is supported on the side by two volute-adorned consoles . At the level of the attic, a curved gable shows the alliance coat of arms of the Wespien and Schmitz families carried by two lions. The manor house is adjoined at its north corner by a high wall that leads to the north corner tower and dates back to the 15th century.

The area of ​​the manorial house is separated from the farm buildings , which occupy the entire eastern area of ​​the complex, by a wrought iron gate between vase-crowned bluestone pillars . The utility buildings included a coach house , horse stables and a large brick barn with a hipped roof , behind which a baroque garden parterre was once connected in a north-easterly direction .

history

The beginnings

The estate was first mentioned in writing in 1305 when it was owned by the Aachen mayor Arnold von Kalkofen ( Arnoldus de Kalkofen ). His family came from the Duchy of Limburg from the Kalkofen house near Raboitrade. The history of the facility during the following 140 years is not documented. It was not until March 27, 1437 that the estate was mentioned again in the marriage contract of Adam (Daem) von Haren and his wife Agnes von dem Weyer. In this it is reported that the plant came from the property of Adam's mother Mechtildis von Holzappel zu Täsch, the wife of the mayor Gerhard von Haren . After Adam's death in 1453, the couple's eldest son, Gerhard, took over the property. In 1458 he married Benigna von Kaldenborn, called von dem Birnbaum, and in 1459 was appointed Jülich Vogt and Meier in Aachen. His only son Wilhelm died in 1484 without heirs, and so Agnes von Haren, a sister of Wilhelm, inherited the estate. Agnes was married to Fetschyn Colyn , Herr zu Linzenich , and had their daughter Anna with him, who married the Junker Werner von Merode-Houffalize and brought him the property. After Werner's death on December 20, 1520, Kalkofen came through Richard von Merode-Houffalize in 1569 to his eldest son from his second marriage, Baron Johann von Merode-Houffalize. As a universal heir to his ailing niece Anna von Merode-Frankenberg, who died at the young age of 15, he also became Vogt von Burtscheid and owner of Frankenberg Castle in 1583 .

Destruction

The time of the Aachen religious unrest did not leave Gut Kalkofen without a trace. The efforts of the Catholics to bring the majority of the Protestant council of the city of Aachen under their control, brought Spanish troops into the Aachen region. A large contingent of Spanish soldiers occupied Gut Kalkofen. From there, they attacked travelers on the major military road between Aachen and Cologne (today's Jülicher Strasse ). As their raids threatened to damage not only Aachen's trade but also its political relations , an Aachen militia besieged Gut Kalkofen on March 19, 1582 , shot it with three cannons and finally burned it down. The Aachen Chronicle of Johann Noppius from 1632 notes: "Anno 1582 Kalckoffen taken, pierced and burned". The entire Spanish occupation is said to have been killed. According to legend, only one soldier was able to escape through a secret passage that is said to have connected the Kalkofen with Schönforst Castle .

Siege of Kalkofen by Friedrich zu Solms, engraving from 1611

Landlord Johann and his wife were taken to Aachen as hostages . Two years later, in 1584, he sold the ruins to the St. Gallen merchant Bartholomäus Schopfinger. He rebuilt it and bought more land. However, he had taken over financially and went bankrupt . Schopfinger sold the estate on April 22, 1600 for 50,000  Brabant guilders to his three brothers-in-law Karl Billehé (Billaens) and Ludwig and Martin Perez de Varon. The Billehé family later became the sole owners of the estate.

In the course of the Jülich-Klevian succession dispute , Emperor Rudolf II had the manor take possession of the manor on March 25, 1609 by Archduke Leopold of Austria , Bishop of Strasbourg , and his mercenaries . In the following years imperial soldiers were stationed there. Thereupon, in the same year, the governor of Düren and Palatine general Count Friedrich zu Solms-Rödelheim advanced with over 1000 men and heavy artillery against Kalkofen, besieged it at the end of the year and was able to take it without much resistance.

Conversion to the pleasure palace

Karl Billehé's eldest daughter Charlotte had married Baron Johann Konrad von Ballhausen. Around 1666 the property came into his possession following an inheritance division, and he moved into his residence there. On February 20, 1671, he and his son sold it together with his son for 15,242  Pattakons to the copper master Gotthard Schardinel II. After the great fire in Aachen in 1656, he moved his copper yard to Stolberg , where he bought part of the crumbling Dollart hammer , but left his place of residence on the manor. He gave this to his son Gotthard Schardinel III in 1691. for his wedding to Beatrix von Slype. After her death, the property was for sale in 1748.

View of the Kalkofen estate on a watercolor from 1781

On March 27, 1749, the Aachen cloth manufacturer Johann von Wespien auctioned the building and the 170 acres of land belonging to it  for only 19,000  Reichstaler . In the spring of the following year, he had the complex partially torn down and commissioned Johann Joseph Couven with the design and construction of a pleasure palace. Couven had already planned and built the splendid Wespienhaus in Aachen's Kleinmarschierstrasse from 1734 to 1737 for Wespien, equipped with lavish luxury . During the renovation, he retained the almost square floor plan of the lime kiln and incorporated older parts such as towers and surrounding walls into the new building. Couven only had the northern part of the north-eastern curtain wall laid down to reveal a new garden ground floor from the manor house. A new addition was an orangery and a large barn, "which, in terms of its design, is more appropriate for drying cloths than a building for agriculture". The construction work lasted until 1753 and cost more than 100,000 Reichstalers. Because the farm buildings made such an elegant and elegant impression after Couven's renovation, this earned the complex the nickname “palace barn”.

The marriage of Johann Wespien and his wife Anna Maria Schmitz had remained childless, and so his widow appointed her cousin, the Aachen merchant and needle manufacturer Johann Kaspar Strauch, as heir. From his two marriages with two sisters from the von Collenbach family, he left behind several underage children who were placed under the guardianship of Johann Kaspar's father-in-law, Baron Franz Rudolf von Collenbach. He tried in vain to find a solvent buyer for the property. Instead, from June 1790, the lime kiln was rented to George Augustus Eliott, 1st Baron Heathfield , who wanted to cure his war ailments in the famous Aachen baths. However, he died on July 6 of the same year, possibly as a result of excessive consumption of the sulphurous Aachen thermal water , and was initially buried in the garden of the estate. Later his body was transferred to England and buried there with great ceremonies. Remains of his tomb are still standing in the Kalkofen garden today.

In the following two years, the pleasure palace was used as a domicile for distinguished spa guests several times during their stay in Aachen. During this time, however, nothing was done for the maintenance of the palace and its gardens. This only changed when the cloth manufacturer Christian Friedrich Claus purchased the property on August 23, 1792 for 56,000 Reichstaler and then made improvements and embellishments to the garden. After his death in March 1799, his widow continued these efforts.

Property of the Zurhelle family

Garden view from the beginning of the 20th century

After the death of Christian Friedrich Claus' wife, the Kalkofen was initially vacant because none of the sons wanted to take it over. Finally, the Prussian Kommerzienrat and deputy mayor of Aachen Wilhelm Zurhelle (also zur Helle) bought it on December 6, 1831 for 47,100 thalers and completely renewed it. His eldest son of the same name took over the property in 1849. When he died childless, Kalkofen was inherited by the nephew of the same name, whose family was based at Haus Schurzelt in Laurensberg .

At the beginning of the 20th century, the estate owned 570 acres. During the Second World War, its buildings were badly damaged in 1944 and burned down except for parts of the outer walls. Wilhelm's son and his wife Maria Louise - also baptized Wilhelm - took over the property after the war and began rebuilding it in simplified form together with his wife Elsbeth. This first step had been completed by 1956, with rental apartments being built in some buildings. The couple also began to gradually restore the baroque park . To this day, Gut Kalkofen is owned by Wilhelm Zurhelle's descendants, who had the last renovation and safety work carried out on the facility between 1983 and 1989 .

literature

Web links

Commons : Gut Kalkofen  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b H. F. Macco: Kalkofen Castle and its owners , p. 135.
  2. ↑ Schloss & Gut Kalkofen - owner since 1750 , accessed on June 3, 2018.
  3. ^ HF Macco: Kalkofen Castle and its Owners , pp. 139–140.
  4. ↑ a b G. Dehio: Handbook of German Art Monuments, North Rhine-Westphalia, Volume I: Rhineland , p. 48.
  5. ↑ HF Macco: Kalkofen Castle and its Owners , p. 134.
  6. ↑ P. Clemen: The profane monuments and the collections of the city of Aachen , p. 219.
  7. ↑ KE Krämer: Castles in and around Aachen , p. 72.
  8. ↑ D. Holtermann, HA Dux: The Aachener Burgenrunde , p. 90.
  9. ^ Bernhard Gondorf: The castles of the Eifel and their peripheral areas. A lexicon of the "permanent houses" . J. P. Bachem, Cologne 1984, ISBN 3-7616-0723-7 , p. 16 .
  10. ↑ P. Clemen: The profane monuments and the collections of the city of Aachen , p. 220.
  11. ↑ Schloss & Gut Kalkofen - Beginnings , accessed on June 3, 2018.
  12. ↑ HF Macco: Kalkofen Castle and its Owners , p. 138.
  13. ↑ a b c d e gutkalkofen.de ( Memento from August 30, 2017 in the Internet Archive )
  14. ↑ HF Macco: Kalkofen Castle and its Owners , p. 142.
  15. ↑ a b P. Clemen: The profane monuments and the collections of the city of Aachen , p. 218.
  16. ↑ HF Macco: Kalkofen Castle and its Owners , p. 142, note 2.
  17. ↑ HF Macco: Kalkofen Castle and its Owners , p. 146.
  18. ↑ a b H. F. Macco: Kalkofen Castle and its owners , p. 150.
  19. ↑ a b K. E. Krämer: Castles in and around Aachen , p. 74.
  20. ↑ a b Wolfgang Richter, Wolfgang Peukert: The most beautiful houses of Aachen . Westarp, Mülheim an der Ruhr 1986, ISBN 3-923456-35-2 , p. 150.
  21. ↑ a b H. F. Macco: Kalkofen Castle and its owners , p. 156.
  22. ^ Lutz-Henning Meyer: Johann Joseph Couven. In: Bert Kasties (Hrsg.), Manfred Sicking (Hrsg.): Aacheners make history . Volume 2. Shaker, Aachen 1999, ISBN 3-8265-6462-6 , p. 35 ( online ( memento of February 2, 2002 in the Internet Archive )).
  23. ↑ a b H. F. Macco: Kalkofen Castle and its Owners , p. 159.

Coordinates: 50 ° 47 ′ 2 "  N , 6 ° 7 ′ 0"  E