Bayreuth New Palace

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New castle on the former Residenzplatz (in the foreground the Markgrafenbrunnen) , seen from the district council room of the presidential building

The New Bayreuth Palace was built from 1753 after a fire in January 1753 had largely destroyed the previous residence - it is now known as the Old Palace . In 1758 it was essentially completed. In 1604 Bayreuth had become the seat of residence of the Principality of Bayreuth instead of Kulmbach .

Building history

City facade with margrave fountain
City facade around 1910
The south wing of the New Palace seen from the Hofgarten, on the left the “Italian Building”

main building

The building was built during the reign of the Margrave couple Friedrich III. and Wilhelmine of Prussia . Since the construction of the Opera House and the New Palace in the Hermitage had already cost a lot of money, the court architect Joseph Saint-Pierre was faced with the ungrateful task of building a new residence as quickly as possible and with the most economical means. Presumably, the proximity of the Hofgarten was the decisive factor in choosing the location at the “racetrack”, with the disadvantage that five existing buildings - including the half-finished building of the Reformed Church - had to be included in the planning.

Several existing or under construction buildings were therefore integrated into the structure of the palace. The middle wing with entrance, staircase and ballroom was created by converting the shell of the Reformed church. The resulting peculiarities in the building can be seen primarily in the seemingly walled-up entrances and the roof structures that have been shifted in places (only visible from the park). Wilhelmine took a very large part in the planning of the New Palace, as can be seen from the lively correspondence with her brother Friedrich II of Prussia . However, this should not have had a high opinion of the building. However, she died in the year of completion in 1758.

The New Palace is an example of the so-called Bayreuth Rococo , along with the other buildings of the margrave couple . Although the size and charisma of the New Palace cannot quite keep up with the Würzburg Residence, for example , it is still one of the main works of German architecture of the 18th century. In the confusing grouping of rooms in the north wing, Wilhelmine's capricious predilection to break through the strict courtly hierarchy of the apartments and to dissolve them into a flight of island-like apartments found expression . She herself designed the mirror shard cabinet and the old music room.

The rooms are remarkably preserved in their original condition, such as the stucco work, wall paneling, parquet, doors etc .; the furnishings and paintings are partly original, partly afterwards. Highlights are the lavish ballroom, which is furnished with the finest gold stucco and majestic pilasters , and the so-called palm room (possibly a meeting room of the Masonic Lodge) in the mansion of the palace. In the mirror shard cabinet, instead of symmetrically shaped mirrors, irregularly shaped mirror pieces were attached to the ceiling and walls. The walls of the so-called trellis rooms convey the impression of trellis frameworks with very naturalistically depicted plants through the raised stucco. The music room contains portraits of the actors, singers and instrumentalists working at court. The pictorial program in the apartments of the margrave couple testifies to the delicate diplomatic balancing act of the Franconian Hohenzollerns in the wars of the Prussian King Friedrich II against Maria Theresa and Franz I Stephan , whereby the margrave managed to maintain neutrality and avoid war involvement Wilhelmine's antechamber is furnished with portraits of her Prussian family circle, the Habsburg-Lorraine imperial couple hangs in the anteroom of the margrave.

Italian construction

Italian building, courtyard garden side
Connection of the south wing with the Italian building, before 1913

The "Italian Building" was erected after 1759 for the second wife of the margrave, Sophie Caroline Marie von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel , as a stand-alone building south of the palace and was only later structurally connected to the New Palace by a connecting wing. The architect was Rudolf Heinrich Richter , who, unlike Saint-Pierre, allowed the splendor of the interior decorations created by Giovanni Battista Pedrozzi to flow over onto the exterior walls. The young Carl von Gontard succeeded in combining the two fundamentally different structures through a discreetly protruding connecting link with a round balcony.

In the early 1990s, the facades of the Italian building were renovated and the courtyard area redesigned.

Kitchen construction

North wing of the main building (left) and kitchen building (middle right) on both sides of the Glasenappweg

To the north of the main building, on the other side of the Glasenappweg, is the former kitchen building, a single, two-story house with a hipped roof . From 1867 to 1908 the secondary school for daughters was housed there, and later the municipal auxiliary school . Today a shopping arcade leads through the building to Richard-Wagner-Straße .

More buildings

Preserved facade of the Komödienhaus, in the background the Italian building, on the right the former margravial riding hall

After the theater stage in the great hall of the Old Castle fell victim to the flames, the “Comedy House” was built at the same time as the New Castle. In contrast to the already completed Margravial Opera House , it was built in the immediate vicinity of the New Palace on the edge of the court garden. A wooden connecting corridor allowed visitors to get from the castle to the performances without getting their feet wet, even when it rains.

The theater was opened on January 24, 1754, the birthday of Wilhelmine's brother Friedrich II. After just eight years it was replaced by a small theater integrated into the margravial riding hall. The comedy house , which was presumably mostly half-timbered , was demolished due to the risk of fire. The stone facade on Ludwigstrasse has been preserved, the gate of which today provides access to the Hofgarten. There is a window on either side of the gate, of which the eastern one has since been an empty opening.

Later residents

Heinrich von Gagern was born in the north transverse wing of the palace in 1799 and became President of the first German National Assembly in Frankfurt's Paulskirche in 1848 . His father was a private councilor to the Prince of Nassau-Weilburg , who lived in asylum with his court in Bayreuth from 1796 to 1800 at the invitation of the Prussian king.

The later Bavarian King Maximilian I Joseph , Elector Maximilian IV of Pfalz-Zweibrücken , lived with his family in the right wing of the palace from September 11, 1800 to April 12, 1801 with the consent of the Prussian king. When the French occupied Munich in 1800, the royal family went into exile. She only returned to Munich after the Treaty of Lunéville and the withdrawal of the French from Bavaria.

The Prussian royal couple Friedrich Wilhelm III. and Luise von Mecklenburg-Strelitz lived in June 1799 and on another visit to Bayreuth in 1805 in the New Palace.

Napoleon Bonaparte spent the night of May 15-16, 1812 in the New Palace. He is said to have uttered “Ce maudit château!” (This cursed castle!) After the ghost “ White Lady of Himmelkron ” appeared to him there one night . Corresponding utensils such as chains, rattles and a white robe were later found in the castellan's estate . This event is mentioned by Theodor Fontane in the novel Effi Briest , who however moved the incident to a palace in the Hermitage .

Museums and exhibitions

  • The margravial state rooms
  • In three rooms on the ground floor of the south wing - they served as a picture gallery as early as the 18th century - a branch gallery of the Bavarian State Painting Collections has been housed after extensive renovation since August 2007 . It contains 80 works of Dutch and German painting from the late 17th and 18th centuries. One of the three rooms is dedicated to the Munich court painter Peter Jakob Horemans , who was born in Antwerp .
  • The Archaeological Museum of the Historical Association for Upper Franconia in parts of the first and second floors of the Italian building
  • "Gallant miniatures" collection (Löer Collection)
  • Museum "The Bayreuth of Wilhelmine" (free entry)
  • Bayreuth Faience Collection (free entry)

On the initiative of Eva Wagner-Pasquier , an exhibition with illustrations by Salvador Dalí for Richard Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde was opened in the New Palace in July 1969 . “I only know three geniuses: Salvador Dalí, Richard Wagner and - I've forgotten the third one,” Dalí once said.

Courtyard garden

View from New Castle to mail train the Hofgarten
The Hofgarten canal with the Swan Island, fed by a branch of the Tappert
Amphitrite fountain in the axis of the ornamental canal

To the east of the New Palace is the Hofgarten. There was already a kitchen garden there in 1580, which was later converted into a pleasure garden.

In 1679 the so-called Mailbahn was laid out, a straight oak avenue running in an east-west direction. It formed the axis of symmetry of the garden and began on the west side with a grand gate that was demolished in 1744 for the planned construction of the reformed church. Since plots north of this avenue have been severed several times over the centuries, the Mailbahn is almost on the northern edge of the park.

After the construction of the New Palace, the park received an ornamental canal with two small, round islands as the new main axis. Inspired by her brother Friedrich II's Neptune Fountain in the Potsdam Lustgarten , Wilhelmine commissioned a corresponding group of figures from the sculptor brothers Johann David Räntz and Lorenz Wilhelm Räntz for a fountain. The newly created canal was intended to stage the figures that were supposed to represent the triumphal procession of Neptune . When the Margravine died in October 1758, 31 of the 32 sculptures had been completed. Her husband Friedrich did not pursue the project any further; some of the figures - including Neptune - were later moved to the Fantaisie Palace Park . Above all, a fountain remained in the courtyard garden, in the middle of which Neptune's wife Amphitrite is enthroned alone.

The ornamental canal runs from southeast to northwest parallel to the main avenue. In the eastern part of the Hofgarten he has a dead arm facing southwest, which ended in a hook shape until the 1970s. When it was rebuilt, a third island was created there. It received its water from the canal system of the Tappert and is identical to it after the parallel branches have been removed. The canal is flanked by two narrower avenues. Between the canal and the avenues, as well as in front of the Italian building, there were bosketten .

At the end of the 18th century, the park was converted into an "Engelländischer Style" park with free plantations on the instructions of Margrave Karl Alexander . The baroque garden elements, which required particularly extensive maintenance, were removed, and the paths were partly laid out in a winding manner. In 1795, in honor of Queen Luise , a small round temple, a so-called Monopteros , was built on the southern edge with the Sun Temple .

The Hofgarten has been open to the public since 1790. The park currently covers around 13 hectares. Part of the baroque garden design, especially around the castle, was restored. The only resident of the Mailbahn can only be reached from the Hofgarten , the German Freemasons Museum , which opened in 1902 and has the address Im Hofgarten 1.

  • The courtyard garden in autumn

  • Ornamental canal in the courtyard garden

  • The Temple of the Sun (Monopteros)

  • Kitchen garden of the nursery, in the background the German Freemasons Museum

literature

  • Erich Bachmann, Alfred Digit: Bayreuth New Palace. Official leader of the Bavarian Administration of State Palaces, Gardens and Lakes. 6th, revised edition. Bavarian Palace Administration, Munich 1995.
  • Verena Friedrich: Castles and palaces in Franconia. 2nd Edition. Elmar Hahn Verlag, Veitshöchheim 2016, ISBN 978-3928645171 , pp. 86–91.

Web links

Commons : Neues Schloss Bayreuth  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Will von Poswik, Herbert Conrad: Bayreuth . Druckhaus Bayreuth, Bayreuth 1974, p. 16 f .
  2. ^ The New Palace in Bayreuth at bayreuth.de, accessed on June 2, 2019
  3. ↑ Stephan-H. Fuchs: Bayreuth Chronicle 1991 . 1st edition. Gondrom, Bindlach 1991, ISBN 3-8112-0782-2 , p. 142 .
  4. ↑ Bernd Mayer : Bayreuth à la carte . Ellwanger, Bayreuth 1987, ISBN 3-925361-03-0 , pp. 95 .
  5. ↑ Eva-Maria Bast, Heike Thissen: Bayreuth Secrets . 1st edition. Bast Medien Service, Überlingen 2014, ISBN 978-3-9816796-1-8 , p. 151 ff .
  6. ↑ Will of Poswik, Herbert Conrad: Bayreuth , p. 19
  7. ↑ Karl Müssel: The visit of the Bavarian King Ludwig I in the Upper Main Circle 1830 ; published in: Archive for the history of Upper Franconia; Bayreuth 2001; P. 53.
  8. ^ A b Wilhelm Rauh, Erich Rappl: Stage Bayreuth . Druckhaus Bayreuth, Bayreuth 1987, ISBN 3-922808-21-2 , p. 37 .
  9. ^ The enchanted castle: Napoleon in Bayreuth at: bayreuther-tagblatt.de, accessed on July 2, 2019
  10. ↑ Theodor Fontane: Effi Briest - Chapter 9 at projekt-gutenberg.org, accessed on June 25, 2020
  11. ↑ 50 years ago in: Nordbayerischer Kurier of July 29, 2019, p. 8.
  12. ↑ Kurt Herterich : In the east of Bayreuth , p. 102.
  13. ↑ Eva-Maria Bast, Heike Thissen: Bayreuth Secrets . 1st edition. Bast Medien Service, Überlingen 2014, ISBN 978-3-9816796-1-8 , p. 46 ff .
  14. ↑ Hofgarten Bayreuth at schloesser.bayern.de, accessed on February 18, 2019
  15. ↑ Karl Müssel: “A royal couple on the Sophienberg” in the home courier of the North Bavarian Courier, 2/2005, p. 18.
  16. ↑ Hofgarten in Bayreuth at bayreuth.bayern-online.de, accessed on July 2, 2019

Coordinates: 49 ° 56 ′ 30.9 ″  N , 11 ° 34 ′ 39.2 ″  E