Pleasure house

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So-called Wasserburg Seligenstadt , baroque pleasure house (approx. 1700–1705) of the Abbots of Seligenstadt with moat and drawbridge, Hesse
"Wasserburg Seligenstadt", old view from the 18th century

A summer house was in the court culture of the Renaissance and the Baroque period - usually in public parks in residential towns - a major event venue for parties, receptions and social events. Larger and smaller festivities were held here, feasts were held and people danced. These urban pleasure houses housed ballrooms, theaters and collections as a cabinet of curiosities; thus they were forerunners of the later court theaters .

A pavilion-like house built in a park is also referred to as a pleasure house, which is used to linger in and pass the time. These small pleasure houses are mostly located in aristocratic parks or in forests that were used as hunting grounds. Like pleasure palaces, they served as private retreats or hunting lodges.

The development of the pleasure houses in the Renaissance and Baroque periods

Pleasure houses, which were built near residential castles in the Holy Roman Empire , rarely did without corner towers in the 16th and 17th centuries . The Italian-influenced Belvedere in Prague (1537) is an exception.

In the pleasure houses in Stuttgart (1548), Gottesau (1587), Kassel (1570), and Saarbrücken (1575–1577), the round or polygonal corner towers have a decisive influence on the appearance.

The tower motif at the Stuttgart Lusthaus is given a special effect by a gallery pushed between the tower and the outer wall and supported by arcades. The previous building was content with bay windows at the corners of the building. ... A completely different solution is found for the Lusthaus in Berlin (1650), which is an axially symmetrical composition of four pavilions and two towers that approximates the central building. Even if Stern Castle near Prague (1555) is surrounded by bastions, there are no military considerations associated with it. The building is a pleasure palace and a hunting lodge at the same time. Its floor plan with six rhomboid corner rooms and a round central hall varies the theme of the bastion. The little turrets that are missing today at the corners of the building should also show the shape of the building as a "defense shape". "

Renaissance pleasure houses

  • Star -shaped summer house Schloss Stern (1556–1560) near Prague, Czech Republic

  • Tower-like pleasure house (1574) in front of Rochsburg Castle , today a unique complex in all of Saxony

  • First Dresden Renaissance pleasure house “Belvedere” (from 1590), destroyed after multiple renovations / new construction in 1945, Saxony

  • Mannerist New Lusthaus in Stuttgart (1584 to 1593) in 1616, only parts of it have been preserved, Baden-Württemberg

  • Ruin of the Mannerist "New Lusthaus" in Stuttgart in 2007, Baden-Württemberg

  • the pleasure house with two towers (left) at Behsen Castle, Merian around 1653, presumably gone, Halle (Saale), Saxony-Anhalt

  • Lusthaus Moritzaue (today Karlsaue ) with surrounding wall and four towers in the Moritzaue in the middle of the Renaissance Park Kassel , Merian around 1653

Baroque pleasure houses

Particularly noteworthy is the so-called "Wasserburg Seligenstadt" in Hesse, a high baroque pleasure house with a moat, drawbridge and corner turret on the surrounding wall. The popularity of pleasure houses in aristocratic parks reached its peak in the Baroque period.

Pleasure houses of classicism and historicism

Contemporary reports on pleasure houses

While hardly anything is known about the use of the two pleasure houses on the Saxon fortress Königstein , there are several reports on the use of the stylistically different - chronologically successive - pleasure houses on the Dresden Jungfernbastei , which prove that the Dresden pleasure house was used at tournaments and fireworks events . In 1629 Philipp Hainhofer reported in his diary: 

"Wie man den Kaiser Matthiam, König Ferdinandum und Herzogen Maximilianum auf der Mönchwiesen über der Elbe empfinge, da war die Bastei und das Lusthaus voll Geschütz und Feuerwerk welche herüberspielten".
Pheasant castle with pheasantry and pier with lighthouse in the large pond during maritime games around 1790

The well-known illustration of the "sea battles" of Moritzburg in front of the Pheasant Castle illustrates the importance of a baroque pleasure palace / pleasure house in connection with lordly celebrations.

See also

literature

  • W. Bachmann: Nossenis Lusthaus on the Jungfernbastei in Dresden. In: new archive for Saxon history 57 (1937), pp. 1–29
  • Wolfgang Götz: The pleasure house of the Saarbrücken Renaissance castle. In: Architecture of the Middle Ages in Europe. Hans Erich Kubach on his 75th birthday. Stuttgart 1988, pp. 587-604
  • Eva-Maria Höhle: The new building - a forgotten imperial pleasure palace in Simmering. In: Arx. 1988, pp. 408-410
  • Wilhelm H. Köhler: The Lusthaus Gottesau in Karlsruhe and the Friedrichsbau in Heidelberg. A contribution to the history of German Mannerist architecture around 1600. Dissertation, Heidelberg, 1961.
  • Friedrich Nette: Adeliche country and pleasure houses according to modern Gout ..., Augsburg, no year, around 1710
  • Michael Gosmann: From the castle to the pleasure palace. A floor plan of the Arnsberg Castle from 1633. In: Heimatblätter 3 (1982), pp. 58-62
  • Karl-Heinz Strothmann: The hunting and pleasure palace of the Elector Clemens August. Arnsberg. (City history series of publications on the city of Arnsberg, 4), Arnsberg 1969
  • Franz Vogt: The development of the hunting and pleasure palace buildings of Duke Ernst August von Sachsen-Weimar. A contribution to the history of Thuringian baroque architecture. (Special publications of the Academy of Charitable Sciences in Erfurt, 12). Erfurt 1938

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lusthaus in the Duden
  2. ↑ Excerpt from: Ulrich Schütte: The castle as a weir system, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt 1994, p. 242, ISBN 978-3-534-11692-8
  3. ↑ Ulrich Schütte: "The castle as a fortification, fortified castle buildings of the early modern era", Scientific Book Society Darmstadt, 1994, chap. "Schlösser der Wettiner", p. 64, ISBN 3-534-11692-5