House Schloßberg (Birkesdorf)
Haus Schloßberg was in Birkesdorf , a district of Düren in North Rhine-Westphalia .
The village of Birkesdorf, although located directly at the transition between important trade routes, for example Cologne-Aachen over the Rur , was mentioned in documents very late. In 1365, a farm that was a Jülich fiefdom is mentioned in Birkesdorf. The owner was Gerhard von Erp . He sold it, with the Pannhaus , the fishing rights in the Rur, with 150 acres of arable land, 24 acres of Benden , to Philipp von Merode and his wife Swenolt, who purposefully expanded the property.
Her only son Werner was enfeoffed in 1402 by the Duke of Jülich with the so-called "Haus Schloßberg" for the first time. The actual Schloßberg house was probably built in the 15th century . In 1580 Schloßberg is restored after it was burned down by the troops of Emperor Charles V in 1543 in the great Jülich feud (the Third War of the Geldrian Succession ) .
At a strategically important place ( Rurfurt ), the Schloßberg house constantly suffered from war armies. Frequent arson and looting were the assets of Schloßberger line of men shrivel quickly Merode. With the gentlemen from Weworden zu Drove they got more and more into debt. After a long litigation, Schloßberg was awarded to Hans Werner von Weworden in 1673. Haus Schloßberg remained in the possession of the von Weworden family for a hundred years.
On October 2nd, 1794 after the Second Battle of Aldenhoven , the Austrian troops had to give way to the French revolutionary armies. On the Rur they try to offer resistance again, but the French general François Séverin Marceau forced the passage over the Rur under heavy artillery fire.
House Schlossberg was at the center of the fighting and went up in flames and was never rebuilt. Unfortunately, no contemporary representations are known of the old Schlossberg house. In a report from 1910 it says: “Of the former castle near the old cemetery, only a partially enclosed square can be seen today. Three sides of a simple, enclosed brick building (the so-called gravel cellar ) are still old; on the southwest side two cross-lattice windows, between them a renaissance door , on the lintel the inscription : Anno Domini 1580 and above a shell gable . "
swell
- Art monuments, p. 40/41, Domsta, Merode Volume 2,
- Meyers, pp. 163-165, castles, manors, courtyards in the city of Düren