New Castle (Tettnang)

Painting in the hall of the New Palace (around 1760)

The New Castle is one of the three castles in Tettnang and is one of the most beautiful castles in Upper Swabia . Its stucco-decorated rooms and cabinets as well as the furniture of Upper Swabian and French cabinet makers provide a vivid impression of the princely lifestyle of the Montfort aristocratic family . The exterior has been influenced by the Renaissance, while the interior is more in the Baroque style.

Building history

New Tettnang Castle, entrance

New Tettnang Castle, park side

The initiator of the three-storey four-wing complex was Count Anton III. von Montfort (1670–1733). Today's Old Castle , which was built by Count Johann VIII of Montfort from 1667, no longer met the current requirements in the Baroque era . Today the old castle is the town hall of Tettnang. The New Palace was supposed to be a representative building, the precious furnishings of which should arouse admiration, and was built on the site where a castle stood from the 12th century, which had been destroyed in 1633. The rubble was first cleared to create the necessary building site. The builder and Benedictine friar Christoph Gessinger was commissioned with the new building . Mighty pilasters now organize the facade and diagonally placed corner towers with stairwells flank the four components. The interior decoration was carried out by high-ranking artists such as the frescos Johann Michael Rottmay, Johann Rudolf Byss and the plasterer Dominikus Zimmermann .

But the construction tore a huge hole in the count's cash register, and after fifteen years of construction he had work stopped in 1728. After Count Anton III. was relinquished by the government because of the immense debt burden, his son Ernst (1700–1755) only had the court chapel completed in 1731. In 1753 the castle burned down to the ground floor vaults.

Count Franz Xaver (1722–1780) had the castle rebuilt with financial support from Austria. The best artisans in the Lake Constance region were commissioned to furnish the stately rooms on the first floor. The work of Feuchtmayr , Dirr , Moosbrugger , Gigl (stucco), Kuen , Brugger (frescos) and JJ Kauffmann and his daughter Angelika Kauffmann created an extremely splendid first floor with staircases and chapel. To this day, the high artistic rank of the New Palace is justified by the interior fittings that were created at that time.

The work on the second floor was not carried out because the running costs plunged the Montforts into debt again. They were forced to cede the county to Austria in 1779. During the Napoleonic period, the county of Montfort belonged to Bavaria for a short time, then to Württemberg.

Stairwell
Bacchus Hall
Princely room
Red salon
White salon
Green room

Todays use

Court of honor

The princely rooms have been open to visitors since 1997. The fact that the New Tettnang Palace once again reflects princely luxury today is due to extensive restorations that were completed in 1997. The institution “ State Palaces and Gardens of Baden-Württemberg ” is responsible for the supervision . Rooms on the second floor and on the ground floor of the building are used by the Tettnang District Court , which is based there.

In 2012, the New Palace was used as a location for recordings of the television film Der Minister , a satire on the plagiarism affair of the former Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg . In 2013/2014, the state of Baden-Württemberg repaired the facades and roof of the south-east and south-west wings of the New Palace in a first construction phase.

literature

New Tettnang Castle - the southeast facade after renovation in 2014

Michael Wenger, Angelika Barth and Karin Stober, Tettnang, New Palace and City, Guide to State Palaces and Gardens of Baden-Württemberg, ISBN 978-3-422-03097-8 .

Web links

Commons : Neues Schloss - collection of images, videos and audio files

Official website for the New Tettnang Castle

Individual evidence

↑ Brief history of the New Palace in Tettnang. (PDF; 79 kB)
^ Tettnang District Court: Building. December 2, 2004, accessed March 26, 2018 .
↑ Martina Goerlich, Not an Easy Decision - New Colors for the Castle, The repair of the facades of the new Tettnang Castle, in: Denkmalpflege in Baden-Württemberg , Nachrichtenblatt der Landesdenkmalpflege, 3.2014, pp. 174-178, (PDF; 1.0 MB )

47.669988 9.584959Coordinates: 47 ° 40 ′ 12 " N , 9 ° 35 ′ 5.9" E

[1] Brief history of the New Palace in Tettnang. (PDF; 79 kB)

[2] Tettnang District Court: Building. December 2, 2004, accessed March 26, 2018 .

[3] Martina Goerlich, Not an Easy Decision - New Colors for the Castle, The repair of the facades of the new Tettnang Castle, in: Denkmalpflege in Baden-Württemberg , Nachrichtenblatt der Landesdenkmalpflege, 3.2014, pp. 174-178, (PDF; 1.0 MB )