House De Esch

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East view of the De Esch house

The house De Esch ( Dutch Huis de Esch ) is a former country estate and later Kamillianerkloster in the South Limburg municipality of Vaals , near the border with Germany and Belgium. The property is located west of the town center on the old road to Vijlen and at the same time around two kilometers from the triangle on the Vaalserberg . The mansion stands as Rijksmonument since January 23, 1967, listed building . The former monastery chapel , in which the Vaals Museum is now located, was also protected on January 15, 1995.

history

New building as an estate and conversion in the Baroque style

Floor plan of the house by Laurenz Mefferdatis

The first known owner of the estate was Johann Hendrik Heupgens, who owned De Esch in the 1730s. The property came from the estate of the Aachen red dyer Conrad Meven, the grandfather of Heupgen's wife Maria Aldegonda. However, it is not certain whether Meven or Heupgens first had the estate built in the Baroque style. All that is known is that this was done in the first half of the 18th century according to plans by the Aachen builder Laurenz Mefferdatis . It was a closed four-wing complex, the east wing of which was used for living. Then the estate came into the possession of the Burtscheider needle manufacturer Jacob Coenen (also written Kuhnen), who had it extensively changed and redesigned in 1767. The plans for this were presumably provided by the baroque architect Joseph Moretti . The redesign was possibly related to Coenen's wedding on September 25, 1767, when he married Sarah Katharina Prym . At the end of the construction work, the eastern residential wing had a representative exterior facade and interior decoration in the Rococo style . In front of it was a large formal garden , which the poet Johann Georg Jacobi described in a letter from 1774 as extremely magnificent. It contained sculptures and a Chinese pavilion . He also had an ornamental pond and sophisticated water features .

Monastery time

After Coenen's death, his widow sold the property to Baron Georg Sternbach in 1784 or 1785 . Joseph Ruland from Aachen is recorded as the owner for the year 1841. In his day there was a large orchard north of the building area. In 1880 German Redemptorists rented Haus De Esch because their order had been banned during the Kulturkampf and they had to leave Germany. After the religious were allowed to return to Germany in 1894, the owner at that time, Pastor Hennus van Naustadt, sold the facility in 1896, 1897 or 1898 to the German order of the Camillians , who set up the scholastic facility there for their German order province . In 1908 they had a neo-Romanesque monastery chapel added to the east wing of the property at the southern end at an almost right angle, based on plans by the Dutch architect Jan Jorna .

During the Second World War , Haus De Esch was hit by a German aerial bomb on November 16, 1944 and most of it was destroyed. After the end of the war, the reconstruction of the partially preserved east wing and the adjoining chapel began with the help of the local population. The architect Frits Peutz accompanied this work, which was completed in 1947. The bell of the church was confiscated by the German occupying forces for war purposes during the Second World War, but was found again in Roermond after the end of the war and brought back to Vaals. Afterwards, Haus Esch served not only as a monastery , but also as a hotel-restaurant and a children's home.

Task of the monastery and today's use

Statues of saints in the former monastery chapel

The Redemptorist Monastery in Vaals was closed due to a decline in membership, and the remaining brothers went to the nearby monastery of the order in Roermond. On March 25, 2007, the last Holy Mass was read in the monastery chapel . Then it was de-dedicated.

In April 2009, the Vaals Museum celebrated its opening in the former monastery chapel in the presence of the Roermond auxiliary bishop Everard de Jong . It shows a unique collection of over 200 neo-Gothic statues of saints, whose height is between one meter and 3.5 meters. It is complemented by other neo-Gothic art objects from Catholic churches and monasteries. Since it opened, the museum has been supported by a foundation established in April 2008 .

description

Mansion

The mansion is an elongated brick building with a slate mansard roof . Its elongated shape results from the fact that it used to be the east wing of a closed four-wing complex. The east facade of the two-storey building on the garden side is divided into 15  axes by segmented arched windows with a frame made of Namur bluestone . The five central axes are closer together than the other ten. The middle three axes are crowned at roof level by a triangular gable, in the gable of which there is a semicircular window. The centrally located, two-winged entrance door has a skylight. Above the door and in front of the window on the first floor there is a small balcony with a wrought-iron railing in the Louis-quinze style . The entrance leads to a vestibule with the stairwell on the south side. Behind the entrance hall there is a corridor that may have originated from the renovation under Jacob Coenen. The manor house has a cellar in some places. The basement rooms all have a barrel vault with belt arches .

Former monastery chapel

The manor house is connected to the former monastery chapel via a connecting building with a slate mansard roof. This was built on a cross-shaped plan along the street. Its masonry consists of red and brown bricks and is thus similar to the parish church of St. Katharina in Lemiers , which was also built according to Jan Jorna's designs. The nave is of a gabled roof closed, on the one unused as a belfry ridge turret stands. The low apse with side chapels forms the eastern end . The two long sides of the church building are designed almost identically. They are by pilasters divided vertically and corner pilaster strips and eaves height of a masonry arch fries completed. The openings of the coupled arched windows are framed by light red bricks. Its central pillars are made of the same red stone. The wide arched portal has a stepped wall and a column pillar . According to the Romanesque tradition, his archivolts are without figurative decoration.

The interior design of the chapel results from the reconstruction after the end of the Second World War. The nave has a ribbed vault which in Vierungsbereich a ceiling painting has. Like the painting in the apse, it comes from the Dutch artist Frans Griesenbrock . In 1949 and 1950 he also made the chapel's glass windows. On the gallery at the west end there is a single-manual organ with ten stops , which the Dutch organ builder Johan Frederik Kruse made as early as 1888. Their front was changed in later years.

  • Former monastery chapel

  • Interior view with a view of the apse

  • Interior view with a view of the west gallery

Garden and park

400-year-old copper beech in the park

Nothing is left of the former baroque garden from the 18th century. The garden houses and the Chinese pavilion have disappeared, the former ornamental pond has been filled. The orchard north of the building also no longer exists. The former monastery garden now consists of a small, mostly wooded park and has a size of around two hectares. It is home to the oldest tree in Vaals, a 400-year-old copper beech . A small circular path leads past sacred sculptures and 14  stations of the cross .

literature

  • JF van Agt: South Limburg. Vaals, Wittem en Slenaken (= De Nederlandse Monuments van Geschiedenis en Kunst ). Staatsuitgeverij, 's-Gravenhage 1983, ISBN 90-12-04096-5 , pp. 144-147 ( digitized version ).
  • Marcel Bauer et al .: On the way in Couven's footsteps. Grenz-Echo Verlag, Eupen 2005, ISBN 90-5433-187-9 , pp. 205-206.
  • Wim Hupperetz, Ben Olde Meierink, Ronald Rommes (eds.): Kastelen in Limburg. Burchten en landhuizen (1000-1800). Matrijs, Utrecht 2005, ISBN 90-5345-269-9 , p. 455.
  • Ronald Stenvert et al .: Monuments in Nederland. Limburg. Uitgeverij Waanders, Zwolle 2003, ISBN 90-400-9623-6 , p. 374 ( digitized version ).

Web links

Commons : Haus De Esch  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Entry of the mansion in the national monument list of the Netherlands , accessed on October 19, 2016.
  2. ^ Entry of the palace chapel in the national list of monuments of the Netherlands , accessed on October 19, 2016.
  3. ↑ a b M. Bauer et al .: On the way in Couven's footsteps. 2005, p. 206.
  4. ^ R. Stenvert et al .: Monuments in Nederland. Limburg. 2003, p. 374.
  5. ^ JF van Agt: Zuid-Limburg. Vaals, Wittem en Slenaken. 1983, pp. 144, 147.
  6. ^ JF van Agt: Zuid-Limburg. Vaals, Wittem en Slenaken. 1983, p. 144.
  7. ↑ a b W. Hupperetz, B. Olde Meierink, R. Rommes: Kastelen in Limburg. Burchten en landhuizen (1000-1800). 2005, p. 455.
  8. ↑ a b c d e f JF van Agt: Zuid-Limburg. Vaals, Wittem en Slenaken. 1983, p. 147.
  9. ↑ a b c Information on the former monastery chapel on the Haus de Esch website , accessed on October 19, 2016.
  10. ↑ a b c Information on Haus Esch's website , accessed on October 19, 2016.
  11. ↑ Information on the foundation on the Haus Esch website , accessed on October 19, 2016.
  12. ↑ Information on the chapel windows on the website of the Research Center for 20th Century Glass Painting , accessed on October 19, 2016.
  13. ↑ Information on the organ on orgbase.nl , accessed on October 19, 2016.
  14. ^ Haus De Esch and the former monastery chapel on kerkgebouwen-in-limburg.nl , accessed October 19, 2016.

Coordinates: 50 ° 46 ′ 9.6 ″  N , 6 ° 0 ′ 10.9 ″  E