Berensberg Castle

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Quadrangular tower of Berensberg Castle

The Castle Berensberg , also home Berensberg and Good Berensberg called, is a former noble residence in Herzogenrath district Kohlscheid - Berensberg . Until the beginning of the 15th century the estate as was kurkölnisches fiefdom owned an eponymous, down aristocratic family. Then it came to the von Harff family, who had the moated castle , which had been damaged in the Eighty Years' War , rebuilt as a four-wing complex at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. Through the marriage of a Harff daughter, the complex came to the von Reuschenberg family , under whom a new mansion was built in 1714 . Other owners were the Peltzer and Cockerill families . Berensberg Castle has belonged to the city of Aachen since 1910 .

history

Berensberg Castle around 1790
Berensberg Castle in the Rhenish-Westphalian original cadastre

The time when the plant was founded is uncertain. It was very likely the high medieval ancestral seat of a family of the same name from the lower nobility. The first member of this family known by name was the Junker Goswin von Berensberg, mentioned in a document in 1250. The castle was a fiefdom of Kurköln, with which Matthias von Berensberg was enfeoffed in 1365. His successor made his " Weiherhaus ", so his moated castle, in 1387 the open house of the Archbishop of Cologne Friedrich III. from Saar Werden .

At the beginning of the 15th century, a third of Berensberg was owned by the von Harff zu Alsdorf family . In 1440 the knight Gottschalk von Hochkirchen sold the remaining part to her. In 1580 the property was besieged by Spanish troops for several weeks during the Eighty Years War . The castle residents were able to escape through an underground secret passage to the nearby Wolfsfurth before the complex was captured, looted and pillaged by the Spaniards . Shortly before the turn of the 17th century, a new four-wing complex was built on the foundation walls of the damaged previous castle. When the owner family died out in 1670 with Balduin von Harff in the male line, ownership first passed to Baldwin's son-in-law Johann Ernst von Fleuron and then to his nephew, Baron Balduin Friedrich von Reuschenberg. He was the son of Baldwin von Harff's daughter Margarethe, who had married Wilhelm von Reuschenberg. In 1714, Balduin von Reuschenberg and his wife Maria Anna von Brüninghausen built a new mansion in the simple Baroque style and added a square tower to the south-west corner. Your alliance coat of arms above the main entrance still bears witness to this today. Her sons Franz Karl and Johann Georg sold the property in 1747 to Johann Friedrich Peltzer (also written Pelser) (1702–1771), who a few years later also became the owner of Genhoes Castle near Valkenburg aan de Geul , and his wife Katharina Theresia von Thimus ( also written Thymus) (1715–1750). After his elevation to the imperial aristocracy on October 28, 1766, Johann Friedrich called himself from now on from Pelser-Berensberg .

His son Leonard Friedrich von Pelser-Berensberg (1740-1832) sold the facility around 1820 to the entrepreneur James Cockerill , who ran a stud there . Presumably his wife Caroline Elisabeth, a born pastor from Aachen, had given him the idea. James' father William , who fled the unrest of the Belgian Revolution from Spa , lived in the castle from 1828 and died there in 1832. After James Cockerill's death in 1837, his daughter Adele inherited it. At the end of the 19th century she had various modifications and additions made. For example, she had the ditch that was still in existence largely filled in and a flower garden laid out on the area that had been gained. The remaining ditch was transformed into a pond. To the west of the high corner tower she added a short, single-story wing in the neo-baroque style . She bequeathed the property to the city of Aachen when she died in 1910. In her will she had decreed that a women's monastery should be set up there. Today the buildings and lands belonging to the castle are rented and leased.

description

Berensberg Castle is located on Berensberger Straße and therefore in close proximity to the Aachener Landgraben , the medieval border of the Aachen Empire . The four-wing complex is mostly used for agriculture and has lost its feudal character due to renovations in the 19th and 20th centuries . The elongated mansion with a pan-covered gable roof forms the south wing . Its two floors consist of quarry stone masonry and are puddled white. The southern outer facade is divided into six axes by rectangular windows with house framing . Above the simple main entrance there is a stone tablet with the coat of arms of Baldwin von Reuschenberg and his wife Maria Anna von Brüninghausen as well as the inscription BALDUIN PHILIP FREYHERR VON REUSCHENBERG TU SILLIKUM TU BERNSBERG UND TRIPPART; MARIA ANNA FREYFRAW VON REUSCHENBERGH GEBOHRNE FREYINNE VON BRUNINGHAUSEN TUM HAMM AND SCHIMMELSKOPF FRAW TU BERNSBERG, 1714. On the side facing the inner courtyard there is a round arched entrance with stone walls , the keystone of which is the coat of arms of Anton von Harff and his wife Lutgard von Nesselrode 1599 shows.

Former gardener's house

The square, four-story tower on the south-west corner of the manor house has a flat pyramid roof . It probably replaced an earlier terrace with a balustrade . A portico is in front of the tower entrance on the ground floor , the entablature of which is supported by four Ionic columns . A short, single-storey wing from the end of the 19th century adjoins the tower on the west side. Its facade is structured vertically by pilasters .

To the east of the complex is the castle's former gardener's house , which is now a listed building . The brick building has a T-shaped floor plan: a two-storey west wing with a gable roof and arched windows on the ground floor is followed by a lower, single-storey wing with a central tower at right angles on the east side. Its three floors are closed off by a flat pyramid roof.

literature

Web links

Commons : Berensberg Castle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Entry by Jens Friedhoff on Berensberg Castle in the " EBIDAT " scientific database of the European Castle Institute
  2. ^ A b c K. E. Krämer: Castles in and around Aachen. 1984, p. 22.
  3. ↑ a b c H. Reiners: The art monuments of the district of Aachen. 1912, p. 162.
  4. ↑ a b c D. Holtermann, HA Dux: The Aachen Castle Round. Cycling between Wurm and Inde. 2000, p. 85.
  5. ^ Hermann Friedrich Macco : Aachen coat of arms and genealogies: A contribution to the heraldry and genealogy of Aachen, Limburg and Jülich families. Volume 2. Aachener Verlags- und Druckerei-Gesellschaft, Aachen 1908, p. 88.
  6. ^ Joseph Strange : Contributions to the genealogy of the noble families. Issue 5. JM Heberle, Cologne 1867, p. 89 ( online ).
  7. ^ Hermann Friedrich Macco: History and genealogy of the Peltzer families. Self-published, Aachen 1901, p. 26 ( digitized version ).
  8. ^ A b Hermann Friedrich Macco: History and genealogy of the Pastor family. Self-published, Aachen 1904, p. 164.
  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. 20 .
  10. ^ H. Reiners: The art monuments of the district of Aachen. 1912, p. 163.

Coordinates: 50 ° 48 ′ 39.1 ″  N , 6 ° 5 ′ 15.9 ″  E