Niederwald hunting lodge

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Niederwald hunting lodge (south side)

The Niederwald hunting lodge near Rüdesheim am Rhein in the Rheingau-Taunus district in Hesse was built in 1764 on behalf of Count Johann Friedrich Karl Maximilian von Ostein . At the same time he began to transform the coppice forest into a landscape park. After several changes of ownership, the castle was converted into a hotel and restaurant. The Niederwald Conference took place here in 1948 , a conference of the eleven West German Prime Ministers of the states Schleswig-Holstein , Hamburg , Bremen , Lower Saxony , North Rhine-Westphalia , Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate , Bavaria , Baden , Württemberg-Baden and Württemberg-Hohenzollern in preparation for a new one Constitution after World War II .

Geographical location

The hunting lodge is located on a cleared island in the Niederwald forest in the northwest of the Rüdesheim district high above Assmannshausen , with which it is connected by a chairlift . A road connection with Assmannshausen and the federal road 42 in the Rhine Valley is provided by the state road L 3034 via the northeastern neighboring town of Aulhausen , from which the castle is only a few hundred meters away. The L 3034 then leads further southeast to the Niederwald monument and from there down to the core town of Rüdesheim. Thanks to the cable car station, a forest car park and its location on the Rheinsteig , the Niederwald hunting lodge is an ideal starting point or end point for hikes and walks. The Niederwald landscape park, which is largely under nature protection, and its surroundings are well developed for pedestrians by a network of paths.

history

Niederwald Hunting Lodge (north side)

In forest reports from the years 1587/88 it is attested that at that time the ownership rights to the Niederwald were at Ehrenfels Castle . Instead of the hunting lodge, there was a fiefdom , which was owned by the Counts of Stadion in 1693 . It was acquired in 1705 by the Prince Archbishop of Mainz for their chamberlains, the family of the Counts of Ostein, who were also wealthy in the nearby Geisenheim . There they resided in the Palais Ostein .

In 1764 Johann Friedrich Karl Maximilian Amor Maria Graf von Ostein built the hunting lodge as the new main building of the manor, a simple rectangular building with a slate-hipped roof . He began to transform the surrounding forest into a park and architecturally redesigned various viewpoints over the Rhine Valley . In 1805 the castle was inherited by the Counts of Bassenheim. It was bought by the Duke of Nassau in 1835 .

In 1866 the Duchy of Nassau was annexed by Prussia , which is why the hunting lodge also became Prussian. The castle burned down in 1926 and was rebuilt in a modified form as a tranquil holiday hotel by 1929. During World War II it served as a military hospital and then as a recreational home for American officers. The forest administration of the state of Hesse became the legal succession for the lost Prussia as owner of Niederwald and hunting lodge.

From July 1948, Konrad Adenauer and the eleven West German state leaders met three times on the Niederwald in order to lay the foundations for work on a German constitution in the green salon of the hunting lodge . They also basically agreed on the establishment of a German south-west state . This made the Niederwald hunting lodge an important place in German constitutional history.

In the mid-1960s, the agricultural land was leased. The state of Hesse has gradually modernized the hunting lodge as a hotel and restaurant.

literature

Web links

Commons : Jagdschloss Niederwald  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 49 ° 59 ′ 7.8 "  N , 7 ° 52 ′ 57.5"  E