House Doorn

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House Doorn, east side

Haus Doorn , Dutch Huis Doorn , is a small castle in Doorn, a place in the Dutch municipality of Utrechtse Heuvelrug . It was the exile of the former German Emperor Wilhelm II from 1920 onwards . Wilhelm died on June 4, 1941 in Doorn and was buried in a mausoleum in the park. Today Haus Doorn is a museum.

history

House Doorn (2015)
Wilhelm II and Hermine in the Doorn house (1933)
Mausoleum with the remains of Wilhelm II. Access only for family members and their guests

House Doorn is first mentioned in 1289. From that time until 1633 it served as the residence of the provosts of the Utrecht Cathedral . The original small moated castle was a rectangular fort castle of 27 × 37 m, consisting of a ring wall with round defensive towers on three sides, of which the southwestern one on the garden side was preserved, with a rectangular residential tower on the northeast corner. Before 1350 the gate was converted into a gate tower and a rectangular structure was added. After it was sold to Reinier von Goltstein in 1633, he had the ruined castle restored.

In the 18th century the house was given its current, castle-like shape. The three-winged house has five by six window axes and has a small courtyard . The entire building, surrounded by a rectangular moat, is made of brick . This also shows the courtyard side, while the garden facade is muddy white. The basic equipment of the interior is from the 19th century.

When Chancellor Max von Baden proclaimed the emperor's abdication on November 9, 1918 , Wilhelm II was in the Belgian Spa in the Hotel Britannique , the seat of the Grand Headquarters . Wilhelm accepted his dismissal and crossed the border into the neutral Netherlands on November 10th. At first he lived as a guest of Count Godard Bentinck at Amerongen Castle , from where he abdicated on November 28th . In 1919 Wilhelm bought the castle in neighboring Doorn from the Baroness Heemstra de Beaufort and had it prepared for himself and his family until 1920.

As part of the compensation for the prince , the House of Hohenzollern lost almost all of its 70 castles in Germany, but Wilhelm was able to bring the most important personal family property to Doorn; It is said to have been a total of 59 freight wagons with furniture, works of art and memories. In just a dozen rooms there are still works of art, mainly from the 18th century to the 19th century. Wilhelm rejected modern art.

Wilhelm had a neo-medieval gate building added to the Doorn house and a rose garden laid out. The house is surrounded by the 35 hectare castle park , which merges into the neighboring forest. The extensive gardens were the main reason for the imperial couple to buy Doorn. Wilhelm's favorite sporty pastime in Doorn was sawing and chopping wood . The wood was distributed to the poor people of Doorn at Christmas time.

The abdicated emperor spent the remaining 21 years of his life in exile in Doorn. Since Wilhelm neither wanted to be buried in foreign soil nor ever to return to a republican Germany, a mausoleum was built for him in the park.

After the end of the Second World War, the Dutch state moved in Haus Doorn as enemy possession of the Germans. In 1953 he transferred the building and inventory to the Dutch "Foundation for the Administration of House Doorn". The foundation is to preserve the museum and park “in the historical context of the imperial exile”. Only the mausoleum is still owned by the House of Hohenzollern to this day, which also regulates maintenance and access permits.

museum

Haus Doorn and the park are open to visitors; for the museum (in the actual Doorn house) you pay admission. You enter the park through a portal building. House Doorn itself contains works of art and everyday objects from Wilhelm and reports on the lordly residents.

House Doorn shows a court in the small, with separate wings for the prince and his wife, with dining room, audience room, adjutant's office and large kitchen, with palace gardens and mausoleum . The condition of the house largely corresponds to that it was in when Wilhelm's death in 1941. You can learn how the former emperor and his first and second wives lived there. You can see, among other things, the painting of the coronation of Elector Friedrich III. from Brandenburg to the first king in Prussia, paintings by the friends of Frederick the Great from Sanssouci , the snuffbox collection of the same, letters from Queen Victoria , watercolors from Norwegian fjords and other memories of the imperial era.

literature

  • Huis Doorn (Ed.): Imperial residence in exile - Huis Doorn. Doorn 2014, ISBN 978-9082183115 .
  • Jörg Michael Henneberg: The death of Kaiser Wilhelm II on June 4, 1941 in Huis Doorn. (= Wilhelmine Studies. Volume 7). Society for Wilhelmshaven 2008, DNB 99185442X .
  • Sigurd von Ilsemann : The emperor in Holland. Records from the years 1918 - 1941. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1951, ISBN 3-423-00791-5 .
  • Ben Olde Meierink: Castles of provosts and canons in the Netherlands. In: Burgen und Schlösser, Journal for Castle Research and Monument Preservation , 1/2014, p. 28 ff.
  • Friedhild den Toom: Wilhelm II in Doorn. 3rd revised edition. Doorn 2013, ISBN 90-90157484 .
  • Andreas Felmeden: An eyewitness report about the funeral of the former Emperor and King Wilhelm II in Haus Doorn on June 9, 1941. In: Order and Decoration No. 82, December 2012, pages 355-340, magazine of the German Society for Ordenskunde eV ( DGO eV) .

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ S. Muller Fzn./K. Heringa / F. Ketner, Oorkondenboek van het Sticht Utrecht tot 1301, IV, 1, Utrecht 1954, no.2389
  2. ↑ Wood distribution

Coordinates: 52 ° 1 ′ 53.2 ″  N , 5 ° 20 ′ 19 ″  E