House Neersdonk

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House Neersdonk, view from the southeast

The Neersdonk house is a castle-like former aristocratic residence northwest of the Tönisvorst district of Vorst in the Hecke settlement. The Vorster residents also briefly call the property "the castle". It is one of four former mansions in the Vorster area and is one of the numerous mansions and castles that stand along the Niers in the lowlands.

The facility was lent to Wilhelm von Aldenrade in the 14th century and then came to the von der Port (z) en family via the Franzois von Neersdom family. This sold the property at the end of the 17th century to Rembert Bernhard von Aschenbroich, whose descendants sold it on to Count Johann Joseph Wilhelm von Efferen . In civil ownership from the end of the 19th century, Neersdonk has belonged to the Recken family since 1942.

The mansion was on 12 October 1981 as a monument under monument protection provided. On November 22, 1985, the outer bailey was added to the list of architectural monuments in Tönisvorst . On request, weddings can be carried out in Haus Neersdonk by the Tönisvorst registry office.

history

The Neersdonk house has been guaranteed since the 14th century. Erected on a mound in the swampy rift of the Niers lowlands, it belonged to the Electoral Cologne Office of Kempen and was an afterfief of the Genneper Hof, which was a fiefdom of Kurköln. In 1368 still called "Hof (f) zur Hegge (n)", the house was the farmstead of Wilhelm von Aldenrade, who was succeeded by a member of the Franzois van Neersdom family as a tenant. The property passed through his heir to the family of her husband Arnold von der Port (z) en. The property remained in the family's possession for several generations. Arnold's descendant Godhard no longer managed Haus Neersdonk himself, but fought as a soldier in the service of Elector Ernst von Bayern , including in the Truchsessian War . Godhard's son, the Junker Adolf, also seldom stayed at House Neersdonk. Under the pretext that the von der Port (z) en family had given up their property, and with reference to their previous feudal dependencies, the Quadt von Wickrath family , who owned the Genneper Hof at that time, tried to move in Neersdonk as a completed fiefdom. But this called the resistance of Johann Ludwig von der Portzens on the plan. Without further ado he bought the Genneper Hof and with it the feudal sovereignty over Neersdonk. In 1667 he had today's castle-like building erected there. However, he had to borrow 1,200 thalers for the construction in Cologne, which he could not repay, and so his son Arnold had to auction the complex and 65 acres of land three years after his father's death in 1690  .

House Neersdonk on the tranchot map from 1802

Rembert Bernhard von Aschenbroich became the new owner. His descendants sold the property together with the Genneper Hof in 1770/1775 to Count Johann Joseph Wilhelm von Efferen, the governor of Düsseldorf. After his death in January 1781, his daughter Elisabeth Auguste, who was just twelve years old, inherited the property, which was temporarily managed by her stepmother Maria Franziska von Bongart. It was she who took the robber Mathias Weber , later known as Fetzer , under her care and gave him a job on the estate . Weber, however, was ungrateful and attacked Neersdoonk and his gang on the night of May 2nd to 3rd, 1797. Elisabeth Auguste von Efferen married Anton Joseph d'Olne and brought the complex to his family. At the beginning of the 19th century, in addition to the Neersdonk house, she owned six other manors eligible for the state parliament on the territory of the Electoral Cologne region. Towards the end of the 19th century, the property was owned by a Venlo resident Mr. Berger.

In 1942 the Recken family bought the property from a community of heirs. The old mansion was in a desolate state at that time and was gradually being repaired by the new owners. A comprehensive restoration took place in 1963 . In 1992 there was repair work inside the mansion, while 1993 was marked by work on the outside. This included a new paint job and the renewal of the tower hoods . The roof of a stable from the 18th century, which was destroyed by lightning strike, was rebuilt. The grandson of the Recken family who bought the property at the time is now the lord of the castle on Neersdonk.

description

Farm building of the Neersdonk house

Neersdonk means something like "natural hill in the Niersbruch" and thus names the place where the house was built, although the property is relatively far away from the Niers. Initially it was called "Hoff zur Heggen" (1615), later documents are named "Nersdunck ahn der Heggen" (1657) and "Neersdunck" (1708). The property is a two-part complex consisting of a manor house partially surrounded by moats and an outer bailey to the east. This consists of modern farm buildings from 1940, 1908 and 1775. The tranchot map from 1802 shows that there was probably a baroque garden in the north of the complex , but this had already disappeared in the 19th century.

A stone bridge leads from the outer bailey to the double-winged entrance door of the two-story mansion. It is the successor to a drawbridge common in the Middle Ages . The main house rises above a high base floor, the vault of which indicates that it still belongs to the late Gothic structure of a previous building from the 16th century. Remnants of the former moat surround the simple, whitewashed building in the south and west. The mansion is a rectangular, plastered brick building with a hipped roof , the long sides of which have seven axes. The short sides of the house are divided into three axes by windows. Wall anchors in the form of the year 1667 indicate that it was erected in that year. At the northeast and southwest corners there are square towers with simple slits in the basement. Its three floors rise on a square floor plan and are closed off by a baroque tail hood . The hoods have closed lanterns that used to be open. They are crowned by weather vanes , one of which bears the year 1775 and thus indicates structural changes to the complex. Presumably that year the main house was repaired and the farm buildings were built.

Inside, Haus Neersdonk has relatively small rooms on both floors, but with a height of 4.2 meters. On the first floor there is the so-called knight's hall with a tiled fireplace, which is equipped with a decorated stove top. The chapel is located next door and makes Neersdonk house something special among the four permanent houses in Vorst, because it is the only one that has its own house chapel .

Legends and haunted stories

All sorts of legends and ghost stories are entwined around the property. There is said to be an underground secret passage to the nearby Raedt house , and a dungeon is suspected under one of the two corner towers . According to reports, two noble ladies dressed in white appear every year on New Year's Eve and sit by the fireplace in the knight's hall. One unrolls a ball of wool while the other unrolls it again. In addition, horrible singing can be heard until the apparition dissolves. In addition, a member of the von Aschenbroich family, who died under mysterious circumstances in a hunting accident, is said to haunt the house.

literature

Web links

Commons : Haus Neersdonk  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Heinz-Josef Köhler, Willi Schmidt: Vorster noble seats. Heimatverein Vorst, Tönisvorst o. J. ( PDF ; 1.4 MB).
  2. ↑ Description of the mansion from the monument authority , accessed on July 30, 2015.
  3. ↑ a b Description of the outer bailey by the monument authority , accessed on July 30, 2015.
  4. ↑ a b c d K. E. Krämer: Castles in and around Krefeld. 1981, p. 36.
  5. ^ Genealogy of Johann Joseph Wilhelms von Efferen , accessed on July 30, 2015.
  6. ^ Paul Clemen : Die Kunstdenkmäler des Kreis Kempen (= Die Kunstdenkmäler der Rheinprovinz . Volume 1, Section 1). L. Schwann, Düsseldorf 1891, p. 131 ( digitized version ).
  7. ↑ a b c B. Hit: Vorst: Life like in a castle. August 1, 2008 ( online ).
  8. ↑ a b c d Franz Dohr: Vorst. From the history of a community. Catholic parish of St. Godehard Vorst, Tönisvorst 1979 ( online ).
  9. ↑ a b c U. St .: Tönisvorst. In: Yearbook of the Rhenish Preservation of Monuments. Volume 39. Werner, Worms 1993, ISSN  0341-924X , p. 344.
  10. ↑ a b Entry by Jens Wroblweski about Haus Neersdonk in the scientific database " EBIDAT " of the European Castle Institute
  11. ↑ Jochen Hild: Park and garden near mansions and courtyards in a circle. In: Oberkreisdirektor Kempen-Krefeld (Hrsg.): Heimatbuch des Kreis Kempen-Krefeld. Volume 25. Kempen 1974, ISSN  0440-6168 , p. 28.
  12. ^ Georg Dehio: Rhineland (= Handbook of German Art Monuments. North Rhine-Westphalia ). Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 1967, p. 610.
  13. ^ S. Frankewitz: The Lower Rhine and its castles, palaces, mansions on the Niers. 2011, p. 209.
  14. ^ Theodor Wildemann: Rhenish moated castles and water-defended castle buildings. Rhenish Association for Monument Preservation and Heritage Protection , Bonn 1954, p. 104.

Coordinates: 51 ° 18 ′ 44.1 ″  N , 6 ° 24 ′ 59.6 ″  E