Löwenburg (Kassel)

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The Löwenburg during the renovation work in 2019
Inside with the eponymous lions

The Löwenburg is a pleasure palace built from 1793 in Kassel's Wilhelmshöhe mountain park .

The castle, built as an artificial castle ruin , stands above Wilhelmshöhe Castle in the southern part of the mountain park and thus south of the Wilhelmshöhe- Herkules sightseeing axis at around 350 m above sea level. NN on the eastern edge of the High Habichtswald . The Löwenburg served its client Landgrave Wilhelm IX. von Hessen-Kassel as a private retreat and also became his grave in 1821. In terms of art history, the complex is considered to be groundbreaking, as one of the first significant neo-Gothic buildings in Germany.

history

The Löwenburg on a historical postcard. On the left the keep destroyed in the Second World War.

The castle, modeled on a hilltop castle, was designed by Heinrich Christoph Jussow between 1793 and 1801, centuries after the actual construction phase of castles in Germany. It is the imitation of a medieval knight's castle and, in a romantic historicizing way, was deliberately built as an artificial ruin. Initially only planned as a ruinous tower with an outbuilding, a complete castle complex was finally created, which is grouped around an inner courtyard. The complex served the landgrave as a residence for himself and his mistress Karoline von Schlotheim . In 1821, the Landgrave , who was elected Elector Wilhelm I in 1803, was buried in a crypt under the castle chapel. Right from the start, the Löwenburg was built from hawk forest tuff that was not very weather-resistant , which was available near the construction site and is easy to work on.

Second World War and the aftermath

Until 1945, the Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Forces carried out several attacks on Kassel. The city ​​experienced the heaviest attack on October 22, 1943. Due to the armaments industry and above all the dense development in the old town area with the easily fire-catching half-timbered houses, Kassel was early on in the list of cities in accordance with the Area Bombing Directive for which an incendiary attack was particularly important seemed suitable. In the process, the keep of the Löwenburg was largely destroyed (only the stair tower with some remains of the wall remained) and large parts of the complex, including the kitchen and connector construction, were badly damaged. The reconstruction took place in the post-war years and was characterized more by functionality than by attention to detail. In 1957, extensive renovation work was carried out in the women's building with the aim of being able to collect salvaged inventory from the destroyed keep. The work has not yet been completed. The keep is currently being reconstructed and is to be reopened in 2022 with a 25-meter viewing platform.

Furnishing

The interiors consist of four princely living apartments in baroque style. In an armory there are numerous historical weapons and plate armor from the 16th and 17th centuries. The castle chapel is equipped with numerous objects from medieval churches from the north Hessian area and has a crypt with the grave of the elector under the choir . Numerous items of equipment from the historical collection that were relocated during the war are still in depots or are exhibited at Friedrichstein Castle . You should not return until the castle has been rebuilt. The interiors can be viewed on guided tours.

Trivia

In 1922 Georg Jacoby shot parts of his film “ This is how men are ” in the castle. In this film Marlene Dietrich had her first small role.

In 2010, episode 19 of 22 of the TV series Pfarrer Braun was filmed in Löwenburg , which has since been broadcast several times on German-language television. Ottfried Fischer in the main role plays a priest who is active in criminal matters and who is on the trail of a murder. The Löwenburg serves as a rectory and crime scene.

The film Grand Budapest Hotel starts with the property of the main character Zéro Moustafa and, among other things, briefly fades in a picture of the Lion Castle showing it from the south.

January 2, 2016, was German Post AG , a stamp to 90 cents as part of its special stamp series Castles out that the Löwenburg shows in winter. The design comes from Nicole Elsenbach and Franc Fienbork.

literature

in alphabetical order by authors / editors

  • Christoph Behr: The Löwenburg in the Wilhelmshöhe Palace Park as a "casket" at the summer residence of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Reconstruction for handling the inventory of the Löwenburg in the Wilhelmine era . Unprinted diploma thesis at the University of Technology, Economy and Culture, Leipzig 2010.
  • Christoph Dittscheid: Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe and the crisis in palace construction at the end of the Ancien Régime: Charles De Wailly, Simon Louis Du Ry and Heinrich Christoph Jussow as architects of the palace and Löwenburg in Wilhelmshöhe (1785–1800) . Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft, Worms 1987, ISBN 978-3-88462-029-8
  • Anja Dötsch: The Löwenburg in the Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe Palace Park . Schnell und Steiner publishing house, Regensburg 2006, ISBN 3-7954-1891-7
  • Rolf Müller (Ed.): Palaces, castles, old walls. Published by the Hessendienst der Staatskanzlei, Wiesbaden 1990, ISBN 3-89214-017-0 , pp. 210–212.

Web links

Commons : Löwenburg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Wolf-Dieter Grimm: Pictorial Atlas of Important Monument Rocks of the Federal Republic of Germany , ed. from the Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments, Gesteins No. 049, Lipp-Verlag, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-87490-535-7 .
  2. The Löwenburg is currently being renovated for 30 million . In: https://www.hna.de . October 6, 2017 ( hna.de [accessed April 8, 2018]).
  3. The murderer and the Grimm legacy: detective comedy was shot in Kassel. In: Website HNA. Verlag Dierichs GmbH & Co KG, October 16, 2010, accessed on August 23, 2015 .
  4. NN: fairytale castle in the UNESCO park . In: mint. Das Philatelie-Journal 1/2016, p. 33.
  5. ^ NN: New editions . In: mint. Das Philatelie-Journal 1/2016, p. 16ff (20).

Coordinates: 51 ° 18 ′ 41 ″  N , 9 ° 24 ′ 31 ″  E