Heyden house

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Heyden house in autumn 2004

The Heyden house is the ruin of a moated castle in Horbach , a north-western district of Aachen . According to historians, it is said to have been the most imposing complex of its kind in the Aachen area in the Middle Ages .

history

Model of Heyden House after it was built in 1303

Knight Arnold von dem Bongart , son of Gottfried von dem Bongart at Haus Bongart near Weisweiler , had Haus Heyden built at the beginning of the 14th century and made it available to Count von Jülich as an open house on January 21, 1304 . It was the seat of the feudal lords who gave the area north of Aachen around Richterich and Horbach the name Heydener Ländchen in 1361 . In 1370 the Bongart family was enfeoffed with subordinate rule for life . From 1375 this was first owned by the von Gronsfeld family and in 1406 changed to the von Merode - Rimburg family . The complex remained in their possession until 1452. In that year the Heyden family came to the von Schönrade family, whose hereditary property it became in 1500.

The ruin around 1840 (Ph. Van Gulpen)
Layout of the facility from 1911

From 1547 the von Bongart family was again the owner and remained so - at times together with the von Leerode and Hochsteden families - until the 20th century. In 1926 she sold it to General Manager Westermann, who leased the building from 1929.

The French Revolution ended the feudal rule in the Heydener Ländchen in 1786 , but the old name reappeared between 1815 and 1848 when the later municipality of Richterich was referred to as "Municipality" or "Mayor of Heyden".

The two outer castles of the moated castle were used by a farm until 2001 and their floor plan has not changed since the middle of the 17th century. Today we only find a remnant of the once wide trenches in the north of the complex. The core castle has been left to decay since the end of the Thirty Years War and has therefore remained almost original as a ruin.

The entire complex was painstakingly restored by its owner between 2001 and 2003 in compliance with monument preservation requirements and is now used as a private residential complex.

description

Ruins of the core castle

The complex was probably completed in 1303 and consisted of the core castle and initially only one outer castle. Both were surrounded by wide moats . The castle complex had an extension of about 94 meters in north-south and about 40 meters in east-west direction. It was named Zer Heiden after the heathland in which it was built at the time.

The core castle initially consisted of a residential tower, which was common for Rhenish moated castles at the time, and had a base area of ​​11.50 by 10 meters with a wall thickness of two meters in the lower area and a height of around 20 meters to the top of the roof. The residential tower was made of quarry stone and had four floors. The high entrance was on the south side of the first floor and could only be reached via a narrow ladder. From the south side a drawbridge led to the outer bailey.

The first outer bailey was fortified on its east, south and west sides by strong building walls with a battlement . In the north it remained open to the inner castle. On the west side a drawbridge led over the approximately 20 meter wide moat into the country.

Around a hundred years after completion, the core castle received a defense in the form of kennel walls with battlements and protruding wall towers at the four corners.

The introduction of powder weapons in the middle of the 16th century put an end to castle-like fortifications. Like many other castles, the Heyden house was also exposed to a number of destruction. The last damage at the beginning of the Thirty Years' War was so lasting that the ruins were not rebuilt. But the first outer bailey was always rebuilt. In 1656 another was added. This increased the size of the castle grounds to 78 meters in west-east and 107 meters in north-south. It is not known whether the expansion also involved relocating the moat around the new outer bailey.

Web links

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

literature

  • Gustav Grimme: Castles around Aachen. Volume 1: Palaces, castles and manors on the outskirts . Siemes, Aachen 1938, pp. 67-73.
  • Erhard Haak: The former Heyden moated castle. Seat of the gentlemen of the Heydener Ländchen . Self-published, Aachen 2004.
  • Karl Emerich Krämer : Castles in and around Aachen . 1st edition. Mercator, Duisburg 1984, ISBN 3-87463-113-3 , pp. 26-28.
  • Johann Jakob Michel: The Jülich subordination Heiden . In: Zeitschrift des Aachener Geschichtsverein (ZAGV), No. 5, 1883, pp. 241–264.
  • Edmund Renard: Rhenish water castles . Cohen, Bonn 1922.
  • Heribert Reiners : The art monuments of the district of Aachen . Volume 9, Section 2, reprint of the 1912 edition. Schwann, Düsseldorf 1981, ISBN 3-590-32111-3 , pp. 127-132.

Remarks

  1. ↑ Jens Friedhoff : Burg und Schloss Wijnandsrade , ownership and building history as reflected in the archival tradition, in: Burgen und Schlösser, Journal for Castle Research and Monument Preservation , 2/2012, 103

Coordinates: 50 ° 50 ′ 40.6 ″  N , 6 ° 3 ′ 28.6 ″  E