Neuburg (Battenberg)

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The Neuburg, since 1971 seat of the city administration of Battenberg

The Neuburg , sometimes also referred to as Battenberg Castle , is a former hunting lodge built in 1732 in the town of Battenberg in the northern Hessian district of Waldeck-Frankenberg . After the old castle and the cellar castle, it was the third castle building in Battenberg and is called the Neuburg because of the formerly immediately northeastern neighboring and finally demolished old castle in 1779.

The building served the Hereditary Prince and later Landgrave Ludwig VIII of Hesse-Darmstadt from 1732 to 1768 as a hunting lodge and at the same time, until 1774, contained the apartment and offices of the Landgrave's chief forester. From 1821 to 1832, the district administrator of the Battenberg district had his official seat in the house. From 1835 to 1863, when a new courthouse was moved directly to the northwest, it was the seat of the grand ducal district court of Battenberg , and from 1839 to 1967 it also served as a forestry office . The building is a listed building , has been the seat of the city administration since 1971 (Hauptstrasse 58) and was last renovated in 2014.

The attachment

The two-story building, a plastered half-timbered building on a stone base floor in the simple style of the Hessian Baroque , located at 368 meters above mean sea level in the north of the old town of Battenberg on a northeastern spur of the Keller Berg , of Battenberg Castle Hill, just above the steep slope to the valley the Eder flowing north-east about 500 m away . With the Remisen , the former district court building, the former barn, which is now connected to the palace in the east, the courtyard and the baroque terraced gardens, it forms a remarkable ensemble. The north side of the courtyard is still bounded by part of the curtain wall of the old castle.

Adapted to the geographical situation, the building is aligned in its longitudinal axis in the direction from west-southwest to east-northeast. The courtyard and valley sides each have nine axes, and a stone, five-step flight of stairs leads to the simple portal on the courtyard side . The basement is made of red sandstone and is largely below the courtyard level, but extends over two floors towards the valley, is plastered there corresponding to the upper floors and five-axis on the upper level, without windows on the lower level. Today's lattice windows facing the courtyard and the valley on both upper floors each have eight panes and probably date back to the time after 1866, when the Hesse-Darmstadt hinterland had to be ceded to Prussia . The hipped roof has three gable dormers on the courtyard side, five on the valley side and two dormers on the two narrow sides . The outer walls are painted yellow ocher, the portal brown, and the folding shutters on both sides of each window are painted dark green.

Immediately to the west of the building is a single-storey, plastered, half-timbered building on a quarry stone base, which connects the main building from 1732 with the former district court building erected in 1863 along the western courtyard side with its half-hipped gable roof and narrow dwelling on the courtyard side. In the north-east of the former hunting lodge, a little set back, but on the valley side in alignment with the main building and today connected to it, is a half-timbered building with a half-hilted gable roof and also on a broken stone base, which originally - according to the site plan from 1800 - contained a barn and stables, but today , like the former courthouse, houses parts of the city administration. Only remnants of the base are left of another building further northeast.

In the east and south of the building, the approximately 2,700 m² baroque garden on the Neuburg , which is enclosed by a wall and which has been restored with a lot of voluntary work according to historical specifications, extends on the slope . It is divided into several terraces , which are connected by symmetrically arranged stairs and diagonal paths and bordered to the northeast by old walls reinforced with battlements.

history

Hunting lodge

The building was built in 1732 at the instigation of the then Hereditary Prince and later Landgrave Ludwig VIII by the forester Carl Johann Philipp Loener von Laurenburg as a residential and office building from his own resources. In order to make room for the new building, the former castle mansion of the Lords of Dersch was probably demolished. The prince's promise to pay the construction costs (24,000 guilders ) within five years was kept by the princely administration. Carl Loener von Laurenburg died in 1736 and the house was taken over by the Hesse-Darmstadt administration. It continued to serve as a forestry office and, until around 1770, as accommodation for the landgraves during their hunts in the Battenberg Forest, which are organized every three years during the rutting season . After the death of Chief Forester Wolf Christoph von Drechsel, who was officiating from 1736 and who apparently died in Battenberg in 1774, the Chief Forester's position was no longer occupied, and no more Landgraves came to the Neuburg. The castle and the stables were leased, in 1776 a group of police hussars were quartered there, and from the 1780s the upper floor was rented out for residential purposes.

Court and Forestry Office

When, on August 1, 1835, the places of the former Battenberg district were outsourced from the jurisdiction of the Biedenkopf district court and subordinated to the newly formed Battenberg district court , this court was quartered in the former hunting lodge and the district judge also moved into his apartment on the ground floor. Plans to build a separate regional court building on the Neuburg site began in 1844, but this was not implemented until 1863. The farm building on the western side of the courtyard, which contained the porter's office, the laundry room, the coachman's room, the coach stable, a forester's stables and a cowshed, was partially demolished and the stables in its northern part were replaced by a four-room district court section ( Vestibule, courtroom, actuary's office, assessor's room). The regional court was renamed the district court on September 1, 1867 in accordance with the Prussian court order. On June 15, 1943, it was downgraded to a branch of the Frankenberg District Court , and on July 1, 1970 that branch was also closed.

From 1839 the upper floor of the former hunting lodge was used again as the forester's apartment and part of the outbuildings as the forestry office or chief forester's office. This use only ended in 1967 with the dissolution of the Battenburg Forestry Office.

Todays use

After the forest office moved out in 1967 and in view of the imminent closure of the local court branch, the city of Battenberg began negotiations with the state of Hesse from June 1970 on to acquire the Neuburg to accommodate the city administration. For 200,000 DM the city bought the entire property, which already moved into in January 1971, but only officially became property of the city on July 1, 1971. Since then, various internal modernizations have been carried out and, in 2014, an extensive renovation, whereby the requirements of monument protection were observed.

literature

  • Klaus Böhme: Hunting and hunting lodges of the Landgraves of Hesse-Darmstadt in the former Battenberg office. (Battenberger Geschichtsblätter No. 39), Battenberg History Association, Battenberg, 2013
  • Jens Friedhoff : Castles, palaces and aristocratic residences in the Hessian hinterland. (Contributions to the history of the hinterland, Volume 12), Hinterländer Geschichtsverein, Biedenkopf, 2018, ISBN 3-0005-9480-9 , pp. 180-181
  • Roland Pieper, Antje Press, Reinhold Schneider (eds.): District Waldeck-Frankenberg II: Altkreis Frankenberg. (Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany - cultural monuments in Hessen, Volume 56), State Office for Monument Preservation Hessen, Wiesbaden, 2015, ISBN 978-3-8062-3054-3 , p. 129 ff.

Web links

Commons : Neuburg (Battenberg)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The district of Battenberg was a district in the Grand Duchy of Hesse , existed from 1821 to 1832 and was added to the Biedenkopf district in 1832 .
  2. ↑ Site plan of the Neuburg, 1800 .  Castles, palaces, mansions. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
  3. ^ Castle seat of Dersch in Battenberg, community Battenberg (Eder). Castles, palaces, mansions (as of October 1, 2018). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS). Hessian State Office for Historical Cultural Studies (HLGL), accessed on March 2, 2019 .
  4. ↑ The local business was transferred to the forestry accountant and forestry council in Battenberg.
  5. ↑ Mounted gendarmes, from 1804 called Landdragoner.
  6. ↑ Announcement concerning the constitution of a new regional court in Battenberg on July 3, 1835. In: Großherzoglich Hessisches Regierungsblatt No. 36 of July 18, 1836, p. 340.
  7. ↑ Floor plan and elevation of the new regional court building in the Neuburg zu Battenberg, 1845 .  Castles, palaces, mansions. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
  8. ↑ This was confirmed in 1947: Circular decree of the Hessian Minister of Justice of May 13, 1947 - 3210/1 - Ia 944 - Subject: Establishment of the Battenberg branch of the Frankenberg-Eder district court.
  9. ↑ Today's Revierförsterei Battenberg is located at Marburger Straße 3.
  10. ^ City Museum Battenberg: The Neuburg

Coordinates: 51 ° 1 ′ 6 "  N , 8 ° 38 ′ 43"  E