Neudenau Castle

New construction of Neudenau Castle

Neudenau Castle , on a hill northeast of the town center of Neudenau in the Heilbronn district in northern Baden-Württemberg , dates back to a medieval castle belonging to the Lords of Dürn and was the seat of an Electoral Mainz office from the late 14th to the early 19th century . After secularization as a result of the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss , the complex came to the Counts of Leiningen , who used it for two generations up to the middle of the 19th century and who carried out numerous modifications to the castlereceived its present form. In 1871 the city of Neudenau acquired the castle. From 1872 to 1961 the main building of the palace, the new building , served as a school. From the 1930s, the Josefine Weihrauch Heimatmuseum Neudenau developed there , which today uses the entire facility, which was extensively renovated from 1988 to 1990.

history

In the Middle Ages, the Amorbach monastery owned various properties in the Neudenau area. Under Konrad von Dürn, whose family were the patrons of the monastery, a castle was built in the 13th century on the ridge north of the Jagst and the town of Neudenau was founded. There are different opinions about the exact date of foundation. Adolf von Oechelhäuser writes that the castle was laid out in 1216 and the town was granted town charter in 1236 , but the local historian Fridolin Mayer was only able to make the earliest mention of the castle and place in 1251 in the will of Conrad I of Dürn. Structural evidence also only dates the castle to the time around 1250.

Due to financial problems, the city and the castle were sold several times from the 14th century. In 1327 Konrad von Weinsberg sold the castle and town of Neudenau to Konrad von Heinriet , who did not hold the property for long. In 1364 the castle and town came from Burkhard Sturmfeder to Bishop Gerlach of Mainz . Within Kurmainz , the seat of the bailiff of the Oberamt Neudenau was housed in the castle.

From 1496 onwards, the first documented alterations to the castle took place, which were led by Hans Seipoll (also Sypoll, Sippoll) and lasted about five years. Archbishop Berthold von Henneberg was in Neudenau in 1497 , perhaps to get an idea of the construction progress. The documents do not reveal the nature of the work carried out at that time. However, the old building shows structural traces of that time. The further structural development can only be traced back fragmentarily based on the existing structural remains, which document a number of other building measures for the 16th century.

In an old city view of Neudenau (which is incorrectly dated “around 1800”, but is probably older), the palace complex is shown in its greatest extent. In addition to the tower, the old building , which was still tall at the time, and the new building , which was still shorter at the time , the complex also comprised at least two other large buildings, which were densely packed in front of the tower, as well as some smaller buildings.

A city tower near the castle was demolished in the late 18th century because it was in disrepair. However, the castle must also have been in a ruinous condition, as after the secularization, as a result of the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss , through which the castle came into the possession of Count Wenzel von Leiningen-Heidesheim, high building costs are occupied, over which there is a dispute with the subjects in Herbolzheim gave. In addition, Count Wenzel complained that Kurmainz only had a very modest apartment for the civil servant, and a massive stone building for the registry and storage facility , but neither garden, barn, nor stables . The count had the castle redesigned for his residential purposes and a garden laid out, after which he lived in Neudenau for a few years.

The oldest floor plan of the facility has been handed down from 1805. At that time, the complex was still bounded to the north and west by the city wall. In the southwest was the new building , which was later extended to its present size after the demolition of the city wall and which at that time contained a gardener's apartment, a servant's room and a study. Behind the new building, a laundry room was built into the corner between the tower and the city wall . To the east of the tower was the old building , as it is today , which was then used as a pantry. This was followed by a larger building to the southeast, the remains of which are now preserved as a barn. The building had about twice the floor space of today's barn and contained a kitchen, servants' rooms and a living room. Adjacent to this to the east was another elongated building, which contained a hall and another living room. To the south of this entire complex, today's terracing of the site can already be seen on the plan from 1805, so there were no more buildings there at that time.

Count Wenzel certainly had numerous changes made to the castle, but these can no longer be traced today. He lived in the complex until 1815, when a famine and an outbreak of nervous fever struck Neudenau. The count then moved to Heidelberg , where a more pleasant city life beckoned. Until his death in 1825, he accumulated a debt of 1,483 guilders for champagne and wines in Heidelberg . The Neudenau Castle was meanwhile administered by the officials Schätz and Wilhelmi.

Neudenau around 1840. The keep does not yet have its current shape and to the east of the keep you can see even higher buildings than today.

From the years after Count Wenzel's death in 1825 there are no records of the use of the castle. His son Clemens August von Leiningen-Neudenau only moved into the castle after his wedding in 1842 and then had extensive renovations carried out. The new building had been widened by 1847 and the rear annex was added by 1851. Subsequently, the old building and the building wing attached to it were partially demolished and converted into farm buildings, probably a stable and wash house. Oechelhäuser erroneously dates the demolition to 1830. The keep was also given its present shape at that time.

Count Clemens August did not live in the castle for long either and moved with his family to Heidelberg in 1854. In 1867 the Countess von Leiningen sold the castle to Wilhelm Nägele, whose heirs sold it to the city of Neudenau in 1871.

Neudenau Castle 1983: on the left the new building , in the center of the picture the barn , behind it the keep and on the right behind the gable of the old building . The facility was extensively renovated in 1988-90.

The city converted the new building into a school and put it into operation in 1872. In 1881, due to changes in the Mosbach district office, several structural changes had to be carried out in the entire complex. At the same time, the wash house, the last remnant of the extremely western house, was probably demolished and the stable remaining from the intermediate building was converted into a barn. The old building received a half-timbered extension and an animal trough on the ground floor.

In 1937 there were considerations to use the knight's hall of the old building for the nascent museum of local history , but this was not realized for the time being. The new building was used as a school building until 1961, after which the local history museum moved into the building.

From 1988 to 1990 the castle was extensively renovated. In the process, historical fittings in the old building in particular were exposed. The tower and old building were connected to the new building with a new wooden walkway and included in the Josefine Weirauch Heimatmuseum .

Todays use

The Josefine Weihrauch Heimatmuseum Neudenau has been located in the castle since 1961 , showing exhibits from local and regional history and changing exhibitions in summer.

The museum goes back to a folklore collection that was started in the 1920s by the Neudenau teacher Josefine Weihrauch (1890–1981). The first attempts to run a museum on the premises of the school were made as early as the 1930s, but showrooms were not open to the population until 1951. After Josefine Weihrauch retired in 1953 for health reasons, she was able to significantly expand the collection and, after the school moved out, use the entire new building for the museum. She transferred her collection to the city of Neudenau as early as the 1960s. She was made an honorary citizen of Neudenau in 1964 and received the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon in 1981.

description

Local view of the castle, on the left the new building , in the middle the keep and on the right the barn in front of the old building

The Neudenauer palace complex consists of four buildings. The free-standing, square keep forms the core of the complex . East, d. H. Seen from the place to the right of the keep is the old building with a sloping barn . The new building is located to the west or to the left of the keep . The actual main building of the castle and its fortifications have not been preserved, nor are the gates near the castle that formed the upper entrance to the city.

The keep has a square base with an edge length of approximately 7 meters. Its base area goes back to the old castle. The original high entrance to the tower is elevated and was once only accessible via ladders. In the base area, which probably served as a dungeon , the tower has a wall thickness of about 2.30 meters, which decreases by about 30 centimeters with each floor above. The beamed ceilings of the floors once rested on the ledges. The tower probably once had a crenellated crown and a smaller tower top with a pointed roof. The current tower structure with a final gable roof comes from the last renovation period around 1850.

The old building , which is dated 1550 on its portal, is also still a high-medieval residential building. Like the tower of the same age, the old building was once attached to the city wall facing north and east. The old building was once higher, possibly with a half-timbered structure , but was then partially demolished in the 19th century and converted into a farm building. In 1906, Oechelhäuser noted the poor condition of the building, knew about preserved wall paintings, but only dated the building to the 15th century. The current condition of the building goes back to the restoration from 1988 to 1990. The most splendid room in the old building is the knight's hall on the upper floor. To the south it has a large window niche in which there are two groups of three windows. The niche has a flat arched top. To the east is a narrower, also arched window niche. The room has layers of plaster from the Gothic and Renaissance periods , as well as painted fittings from 1590. To the left of the large niche, an ogival Gothic passage was exposed, which presumably led via an intermediate building to Pallas, which no longer exists today. This intermediate building was also partially demolished and reduced to the south and is in the front of the old building located barn risen. Romanesque plaster layers have been preserved on the south wall of the floor below the knight's hall . In addition, a niche on this floor has wall pots . Such walled-up pots were used to improve the acoustics in early medieval church buildings, so that the space under the knight's hall could once have been the castle chapel . From the 15th century, when the room was probably rebuilt and no longer used as a chapel, a wall painting depicting a castle has been preserved in a niche in the room. Remains of paintings were also found on the outer facade of the old building . In particular, the reveal of the great window of the knight's hall was once richly decorated.

The western half of the new building probably stands on the foundations of a medieval building, as the wide barrel vault of the cellar and the wall thicknesses are medieval . The western half of the new building was erected in the 18th century, the building was expanded to its present size around 1850 and converted to use as a school in 1871 and again in 1881.

literature

Adolf von Oechelhäuser : The art monuments of the Grand Duchy of Baden. Fourth volume, Mosbach district. Tübingen 1906, pp. 136-138. ( Digitized version )
Fridolin Mayer: History of the city of Neudenau an der Jagst , Neudenau 1937.
Andrea Göldner: From fortification to museum. The building history of the Neudenau Palace . In: Neudenauer Museumshefte 2, Neudenau 1991, pp. 7–44.
Julius Fekete : Art and cultural monuments in the city and district of Heilbronn. 2nd Edition. Theiss, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-8062-1662-2 , p. 248.

Individual evidence

↑ Oechelhäuser 1906, p. 136.
↑ Mayer 1937, pp. 40f.
↑ Göldner 1991, p. 11.
^ Josefine Weihrauch Heimatmuseum Neudenau, Inv. No. 90/2222
^ Stadtarchiv Neudenau, Dept. K, No. 20. The plan is on loan from the Josefine Weihrauch Heimatmuseum Neudenau, Inv. No. 90/2223.
↑ General State Archives Karlsruhe, Dept. 246, No. 508.
↑ Göldner 1991, p. 30.
↑ Oechelhäuser 1906, p. 138.
^ The museum: history / founder at heimatmuseum-neudenau.de
↑ Göldner 1991, p. 14.