Hofhaus (Langendernbach)
The courtyard house in Langendernbach in the Westerwald is a building that essentially dates back to the 16th century and consists of two parts placed at right angles to one another. One wing is made of solid stone, the other's ground floor is solid, the upper floor and roof gable are made of timber.
The designation "courtyard house" indicates that it was the main building of an aristocratic court, which also consisted of further farm and auxiliary buildings as well as a mill. “Hofhaus” can mean both the main building that is still standing today and the historic Hofgut as an ensemble of all buildings and adjacent properties.
The courtyard house achieved a certain fame because Christine von Diez lived here with her family between 1602 and 1636 . Christine was the illegitimate child of Princess Anna of Saxony , the second wife of William of Orange , and her lover Jan Rubens . Thus she was the half-sister of such important personalities as Moritz von Oranien and Peter Paul Rubens .
Until the 20th century, the courtyard house was called "Langendernbach House".
The courtyard house is often confused with the no longer existing Volenhof.
State of construction and renovations
The courtyard house is in very good condition despite the many internal changes, several fires and a very eventful history of ownership.
The half-timbered parts of the courtyard house were temporarily plastered, as can be seen on a drawing from the beginning of the 20th century. In 1912 a renovation was carried out with funds from the State of Prussia, during which half-timbering was freed from “grouting”, as can be seen in a photo published in 1921.
Another renovation took place from 1987 to 1990.
Building history
Origins and 16th century
On the property, in an advantageous location above the old town center, there was already a courtyard, the so-called Bonhof (or Bonenhof). It was probably originally a fief that the Counts of Sayn gave to those of Schönborn and withdrew in 1490.
The word “Bonhof” can be derived from “Schönbornhof”, as pointed out by the local researcher Günther Schopf.
There are different statements about the further building history of the courtyard house. Hellmuth Gensicke and Josef Hörle took from the archives of the Main State Archives in Wiesbaden that the half-timbered building was not built by the owner Bernkott until the beginning of the 17th century. In some cases, the view was also expressed that the stone wing of the building was built by owner Obentraut as an extension to the previously existing half-timbered house.
However, according to a finding taken on behalf of the Hessian Monument Office in 1987, there were the following three construction phases:
1. The massive north-west wing, formerly known as the “Stone House”, still comes at least in part from the original building, probably known as the Bonhof, and was built before 1556. The date "1477" on a beam on the ground floor is considered possible, but was added later.
2. The half-timbered extension was added to the stone house in 1556 by the new owners Oswald von Obentraut and his wife Magdalena von Reifenberg . The year of construction 1556 can still be seen today on a stone above the cellar door, also bearing the joint coat of arms of the couple.
The Obentraut (also: Obentraud) were, like the Reifenberg, an old Westerwald noble family from the region. They got their name from the village of Aventrothe (also: Abintrode), which later went out between Langendernbach and Wilsenroth or on the Dornburg. Several generations of the Obentraut served as Westerburger Burgmannen from the 14th to the 16th century . They probably got the estate from the Counts of Sayn in 1492.
The stair tower was added to the building between 1574 and 1577.
Oswald von Obentraut died childless in 1577 and bequeathed the house to the two sons of his brother, Johann Bartels and Conrad, who lived in the Palatinate. After Conrad died in 1595, Johann Bartels was the only owner and sold the entire property in 1602 to Johann Wilhelm von Welschenengsten called Bernkott and his wife Christine von Diez .
3. In 1614 the new owner Bernkott had the half-timbered bay window currently clad with slate added to the stone house. This would also explain Bernkott's construction activity shown in the files. The partially held view that the bay window was only removed from another house in 1728 and added to the courtyard house is probably outdated. Rather, the building report carried out in 1987 for the bay window confirmed the year of construction in 1614.
The courtyard house as a noble estate
In 1602 the courtyard house was described as follows:
“House Langendernbach including the existing barns , stables and closed courtyard . Item at the house the Mohl with a walk or run, located to the village, with a tree garden between the house and the mill. Item on the other side between the pond and the house is a tree and cabbage garden and three ponds in it. "
The court yard was protected like a moated castle with a flooded moat. There was an upper entrance, protected by a drawbridge, and a lower one to the mill.
The Obentraut had already increased their property in the court house considerably. When the estate was handed over to Bernkott, it was entitled to taxes from thirteen villages, usually tithing . Overall, even in Langendernbach itself, the property was severely fragmented, which made administration and control difficult. There were several conflicts when Bernkott bought additional property.
The courtyard house under Bernkott von Welschenengsten and Christine von Diez (1602–1637)
Johann Wilhelm von Welschenengsten called Bernkott and his wife Christine von Diez lived in the courtyard house between 1602 and 1637 with interruptions. Mainly because of Christine, the illegitimate daughter of Anna of Saxony , the second wife of Wilhelm von Orange , the Hofhaus has gained national importance and a certain fame to this day. After all, Christine's mother was a princess of Saxony, the most powerful German state at the time, and her father Jan Rubens , Anna's lover, had a world-famous painter as his son, Peter Paul Rubens , whose half-sister Christine was.
Bernkott was an officer and had varying engagements with various clients. That's why he was often out of the house.
During the turmoil of the Thirty Years War , Langendernbach was also badly hit. The courtyard house was looted by Swedish troops in 1631/32.
During this time Christine lived with the children most of the time in the "Haus Andernach" on the Rhine, which was owned by the Bernkotts, and between 1624 and 1636 in Schloss Bruch an der Wied , which Bernkott had leased from one of the Counts of Sayn-Wittgenstein.
Theis Hörlen
The rock in these years was the court administrator Matthias "Theis" Hörlen from Weißenberg in the High Westerwald, to whom his descendant Josef Hörle set a monument in the local history of Langendernbach which he wrote.
At a time when the Hofgut was lying there during the war without the rulers who had fled, without dismissed servants and sold animals, Hörlen sometimes plowed the fields himself with a single remaining farmhand.
The courtyard house under the control of Johann Ludwig von Hadamar (1636–1649)
The accusation against Bernkott that he had also served Swedish troops, which was never proven in a proper court case, led the Elector of Cologne and Johann Ludwig von Nassau-Hadamar , i.e. their own sovereign, to confiscate the entire property of Bernkott and Christine in 1636/37 .
Bernkott died during the trial in 1636, Christine fled to Alsace in the same year, where she also died around Christmas 1637.
The courtyard house was cleared out in 1636 by commissioners of the Hadamar count and agriculture continued under his control. Constant petitions from Christine and her relatives, who reclaimed their property, were unsuccessful, including threats from Christine's son-in-law Quernheim, who wrote to Johann Ludwig in 1638 as the commander of a Swedish fortress.
Christine and her family kept in touch with Theis Hörlen the whole time. However, the Count of Hadamar forbade him to receive any directives from Christine and her relatives.
Return of the courtyard house in 1649 and the owners Berstett and Quernheim
After the Peace of Westphalia and the "normal year" agreed there, all ownership and denominational relationships were to return to the status of 1624. Johann Ludwig did not adhere to other topics, but Christine's second daughter Catarina had another important argument in addition to the text of the contract: she had married Hugo Weirich zu Berstett, who was in imperial service, in her second marriage .
On March 8, 1649, the Berstett family came into possession of the courtyard house, which they ceded to Christoph Sittig zu Quernheim, the eldest grandson from Catarina's first marriage in 1657.
From 1657 to 1822
The Quernheim family managed the courtyard house until 1757. Then a lot of money changed hands again when the entire estate with all its properties became part of the agricultural domains of the House of Orange-Nassau . 25,000 guilders in five installments were paid from the Netherlands.
From then on, the courtyard house was regularly leased to farmers by the Oranien-Nassau court in The Hague, which had set up a provincial government in Dillenburg to manage the Westerwald ancestral lands. The lease fees were initially between 600 and 800 guilders.
Since 1806, the domain administration, now temporarily operated by the Grand Duchy of Berg , switched to leasing the courtyard house with the immediately adjacent properties on one side and the outside meadows and fields, which were divided into up to 27 lots, to citizens of Langendernbach. For the latter properties, the rent was raised in kind.
1822 until today
In 1822, the Nassau government in Wiesbaden finally auctioned the court house to a private owner, namely Johannes Heep.
Since then, there have been numerous changes of ownership and no one seems to be happy with the property. In Langendernbach the people said: "Whoever leases the courtyard house comes to the begging staff."
In the 1960s a hotel was operated in the courtyard house, and later a “gourmet restaurant” tried for a while. None of that lasted.
During these years, conversions inside the building that were not in line with listed buildings were carried out. The agricultural outbuildings gradually disappeared completely. Outward parts of the property were sold and privately built. The biggest change in the estate was the expansion and asphalting of the road to Irmtraut, which literally cut up the property, which was once considerable in size.
The courtyard house has been a listed building since 2009.
In 1987, the specialist restoration company Schlöder & Kassner from Wunstorf prepared an extensive building report on behalf of the Hessian State Office for Monument Preservation. A downright spectacular find was a wall on the ground floor, on which 96 paints could be detected and individually identified. Apparently harvest was stored here earlier. The oldest layer was a white lime paint, the newest a modern cork wallpaper.
Since 1996 the courtyard house has been used as a guest house by the local company Schmidt Tone.
The Volenhof
The courtyard house is often confused with the no longer existing Volenhof. This erroneous assumption goes back to Christian Daniel Vogel and his "Description of the Duchy of Nassau".
However, they are two completely different properties. The Volenhof initially belonged to the aristocratic family of the Folen (also Foilen) von Irmtraut . By marriage, the court went to the Nassau bailiff Meffert von Brambach (1485–1531) and was subsequently called Brambachshof. The same Meffert von Brambach owned the house in which Christine's father Jan Rubens lived during his time in Siegen. At the beginning of the 17th century, Bernkott came into the possession of the farm, initially as a tenant. The former Volenhof, like the Hofhaus, was confiscated by Johann Ludwig von Nassau-Hadamar and returned to the heirs of Bernkott and Christine in 1649.
The Volenhof / Brambachshof was in the village. Around 1600 there were nine other farms in Langendernbach in addition to these two. Besides the Hofhaus and the Volenhof, the Klosterhof (or Westerburger Hof) was the most important.
literature
- Christian Daniel Vogel : Description of the Duchy of Nassau. Wiesbaden 1843. Reprint 1982.
- The architectural and art monuments of the Wiesbaden administrative district. III. Tape. Ferdinand Luthmer : The architectural and art monuments of the Lahn area. Commission publisher by Heinrich Keller, Frankfurt a. M. 1907. pp. 178-179. Addendum in VI. Tape. Frankfurt a. M. 1921, p. 28.
- Josef Hörle: The courtyard house, the Volenhof and other courtyards in Langendernbach. In: Nassau homeland. Supplement to the Rheinische Volkszeitung. 1/1925. Pp. 4-6.
- Josef Hörle: Junker Bernkott zu Langen-Dernbach and his cellar M. Hörlen. In: Nassau homeland. Supplement to the Rheinische Volkszeitung. 9/1929.
- Josef Hörle: Langendernbach in good and bad days. History of a Westerwald village community. Langendernbach 1957.
- Hellmuth Gensicke : From the older story of Langendernbach. In: Festschrift for the 1100 year celebration in Dornburg-Langendernbach from 14.-16. September 1979. pp. 20-30.
- Schlöder & Kassner Atelier for restoration: Hofhaus Langendernbach. Restoration assessment. Wunstorf 1988.
- Hellmuth Gensicke: The Bernkott von Welschenengsten. In: Nassau Annals. 1991, pp. 225-236.
- Cultural monuments in Hessen. Limburg-Weilburg district. Volume I. State Office for the Preservation of Monuments. Wiesbaden 1994. pp. 196-197.
- Günther Schopf: Hofhaus Langendernbach. In: Yearbook for the Limburg-Weilburg district. 1994, pp. 118-121.
- Hanna Wippermann: Langendernbach between 1945 and 2000. Langendernbach approx. 2000, pp. 117, 145–147.
- Josef Quernheim: Of people and walls. The courtyard house in Langendernbach. Langendernbach 2002.
- Dehio . Handbook of German Art Monuments. Hessen I. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 2008. p. 536.
Online sources
- State Office for Monument Preservation Hessen: Hofhaus. Cultural monuments in Hessen. URL: https://denkxweb.denkmalpflege-hessen.de/50982/ .
- State historical information system Hesse: Hofhaus Langendernbach. URL: https://www.lagis-hessen.de/de/subjects/idrec/sn/bg/id/15419 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ However, with longer interruptions. Between 1624 and 1636 the family lived mainly in Schloss Bruch an der Wied.
- ↑ Hörle, courtyard house
- ↑ Luthmer 1907, p. 178.
- ↑ Luthmer 1921, p. 28.
- ↑ Vogel, p. 757; Gensicke, history, p. 25
- ↑ Schopf, p. 118. However, the Latin “bonum” also means “courtyard” in medieval documents, so that “Bonhof” could almost be called “Hofgut”, formulated in a similar generic way as “courtyard house”.
- ^ Gensicke, Bernkott, p. 235
- ↑ Hörle, Langendernbach, p. 46
- ↑ Main State Archive Wiesbaden 171 B 508
- ^ Dehio Hessen I, p. 536.
- ↑ Quoted from Schopf, pp. 118, 120
- ^ Schlöder & Kassner, p. 5
- ↑ The client was the uncle of the well-known "German Michel" Hans Michael Elias von Obentraut .
- ^ Hellmuth Gensicke: Westerburg. In: Nassauische Annalen 1988, pp. 191–214, here: p. 202.
- ↑ Gensicke, Geschichte, p. 25
- ↑ Schlöder & Kassner, pp. 2, 11
- ↑ likewise
- ↑ mill
- ↑ Hörle, Langendernbach, p. 46
- ↑ Hörle, Langendernbach, pp. 47–51; Hörle, Junker Bernkott; Gensicke, Bernkott, pp. 235-236.
- ↑ Hörle, Langendernbach, pp. 175, 184-185
- ↑ Hörle, Langendernbach, pp. 49–61; Hörle, Junker Bernkott.
- ↑ Hörle, Langendernbach, p. 57
- ↑ Hörle, Langendernbach, p. 61
- ↑ Otherwise his entire county, which he made into a center of the Catholic Counter-Reformation after his conversion in 1629, would have had to become Protestant again.
- ↑ Hörle, Langendernbach, pp. 61–63
- ↑ Hörle, Langendernbach, p. 66
- ↑ Hörle, Langendernbach, p. 67
- ↑ The list of owners can be found in Hörle, Langendernbach, p. 67 (until 1956), Schopf (until 1993) and Wippermann (until 2000).
- ↑ Hörle, Langendernbach, p. 69
- ↑ Kulturdenkmäler, pp. 196–197
- ↑ Schlöder & Kassner, p. 30; see also Schopf, p. 121
- ↑ Wippermann, p. 117, pp. 146–147
- ↑ So also to this day the Hessian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments and the Hessian State Historical Information System LAGIS. Dr. Hellmuth Gensicke, probably the most profound expert on the history of the Westerwald, complained in 1991 that this error “obviously cannot be suppressed” (Gensicke, Bernkott, p. 236).
- ↑ Vogel, p. 757
- ↑ Jens Friedhoff : Städtischer Adelshof and "solid castle". In: Siegerland Volume 76 Issue 1/1999. Pp. 49–66, here: p. 52.
- ↑ Hörle, Langendernbach, suspects the place where the Belzerhaus was demolished in 1956.
- ↑ Hörle, Langendernbach, pp. 32–39; Hörle, courtyard house; Gensicke, Bernkott, pp. 234/236.
- ↑ Hörle, Langendernbach, pp. 34–35
Coordinates: 50 ° 32 '24.3 " N , 8 ° 2' 55.6" E