Bonfeld Upper Castle

Upper castle in Bonfeld, east facade

The upper castle in Bonfeld , a district of Bad Rappenau in the district of Heilbronn in northern Baden-Württemberg , is a castle built from 1748 by the barons of Gemmingen on the site of a medieval castle . It gets its name from its location, above the old castle built in the 16th century .

history

Castle and moated castle

The castles in Bonfeld around 1900. Blue the upper castle on the site of the former castle, green the dairy farm that emerged from the old castle, red the lower castle.

In Bonfeld, which has belonged to the Lords of Gemmingen since 1476, there was originally a medieval castle , about the formation and appearance of which nothing is known. To the south of the castle, Philip the Wise built a Renaissance moated castle from 1564 to 1568 . Above all in a travel description of Johann Christoph Wolfskehlen, Hofmeister von Wolff Greck von Kochendorf, kept in the Gemmingen archive at Hornberg Castle, the building and inventory of this moated castle are described in detail. After the moated castle was devastated in the Thirty Years' War , it was largely demolished in 1718 and a new building (later called the Old Castle ) was built in its place under Franz Reinhard von Gemmingen (1692–1751) . As a result of the palace construction, Franz Reinhard went into debt more than he already was and in 1736 had to sell part of his Bonfeld property to other members of the family. The old castle was meanwhile the official residence and residence of a bailiff, but it was probably already in decay due to wars and the ravages of time.

New castle construction from 1748

West facade of the upper castle

Dairy by the upper castle with a stair tower that still comes from the old castle

In 1748 Reinhard (1698–1773), Philipp von Gemmingen (1702–1785) and Karl Reinhard von Gemmingen began building the Upper Palace on the site of the medieval castle. The first plans for the new palace were made by Georg Philipp Wenger in 1746 and were very complex, so that they were probably not implemented due to the construction costs. Instead, the Baden-Durlach foreman Anton Schrotz from Emmendingen had new plans made, which then also formed the basis for the construction. Schrotz had expected construction costs of 8621 guilders, which ultimately turned out to be too low.

The construction of the new palace began in August 1748 with the demolition of the old castle. First, the walls and outbuildings were torn down in order to dig the construction pit for the cellar of the new castle; in August and September 1748 the residential building of the castle was completely demolished. If furnishings and building materials could not be used for the new building, they were auctioned off. Numerous notes about theft of building materials have also been preserved in the documents. Most of the demolition and excavation work had to be carried out by the Bonfeld subjects in slave labor . The masonry work was awarded to the Grombacher stone carver Johann Peter Moll , the carpentry work to the Rappenau carpenter brothers Korbacher, Kalk und Ziegel was carried out by the Bonfeld bricklayer Lorenz Kreb.

By the onset of winter 1748/49, the cellar was completely bricked and a thatched wooden roof was erected over it as a protective roof. Work was suspended over the winter, because due to the weather it was not possible to flood timber on the Neckar, nor to cart sand or stones from sand pits and quarries.

In April 1749, the construction work continued with stones left over from the previous year, but timber did not arrive in Wimpfen via the Neckar until the beginning of June . Philipp von Gemmingen, who had a garden house built near the new building to supervise the construction work, wanted the shell to be completed by the end of 1749. This created a logistical problem for the foremen in particular, as more than 700 loads of building material (400 loads Stein from Grombach, 300 loads of wood from Wimpfen) had to be approached, but the vehicles required for this were also needed in agriculture during harvest times and the client did not want to make the decision to provide his own wagon train for reasons of cost. The transport of stones and timber to the required extent was only possible with the commitment of the carters from numerous surrounding areas, so that the topping-out ceremony could finally be celebrated on November 6, 1749. The winter of 1749/50 began quite mildly, after all the roof was covered by the end of the year.

If the shell had been completed in a timely manner, the interior work took many years. One of the reasons for this was u. a. The poor quality of the carpentry work done by the carpenter Kirchgässner from Massenbachhausen, which quickly needed repairs and gave rise to years of disputes. In 1764 the construction costs were 9,000 guilders, but the final completion of the palace was probably not until later, as Philipp von Gemmingen reported further costs since then.

Plant nursery and nursery

Bonfelder Oberschloss-Areal 1783

In 1776 the upper castle fell to Karl Friedrich Reinhard von Gemmingen (1739–1822) as a result of an inheritance , who a little later had the old castle converted into a dairy and the whole area walled. At his arrangement, the garden areas of the upper castle area were designed by the gardener Johann Michael Trips from 1778.

In 1778 Trips first planted 54 oculated apple trees from Schweinfurt and Neubronn. In 1779 he planted further apple and pear trees as well as rose bushes from France, cherry trees from local wild growth as well as apple and pear trees, which he intended to refine. In 1781 Trips reported to the lord of the castle, who lived in Ansbach, that he had replaced the trees that had died due to drought and had exposed a further 70 trees that he had grown himself. At that time, the tree population already comprised 400 fertile trees as well as a stock of another 200 young trees in the nursery . In addition to its own cultivation and the surrounding areas, Trip obtained plants from Dominique Simon from Strasbourg and from the electoral tree nursery at Schwetzingen Castle . In addition to growing fruit trees, Trips also focused on growing asparagus in the palace nursery. In addition, black salsify, artichokes, melons, beans, cucumbers and other flourishes. A 20-shoe deep pump well was built in the lower garden to water the garden. Various day laborers were employed to set up the garden in 1778/79, and from 1779 Trips carried out the work with the help of a hired garden servant.

At about the same time as fruit growing in the upper castle began, Ludwig Eberhard von Gemmingen began building the adjacent lower castle .

Sale of the castle

The upper castle remained in the hands of Karl Friedrich Reinhard's heirs until his family line died out in 1940 with Hans von Gemmingen-Guttenberg (1878-1940) in the male line. The property fell to his sisters Marie Luise (1877–1945), married to Edgar von Rotberg (1898–1932), and Luise (1880–1955), married to Wilhelm von Saint-André. Their descendants, Hans von Rotberg (1899–1967) and Olga-Marie von Gemmingen-Guttenberg (1916–1990), sold the complex with the associated agricultural land to the Gebhard family, whose heirs still live in the castle to this day .

description

The upper castle is a long building in the rural Baroque style , which is structured by corner pilasters , risalits and cornices . The main portal is located on the central risalit on the east side, to the west a staircase adorned with balustrades leads into the associated walled castle park. The stairwell in the building is also expansive and has balustrades crowned with vases.

The dairy farm to the south originally formed a farmyard open to the castle and only developed into a self-contained courtyard with a more recent northern transverse building.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Anne and Helmut Schüssler: The barons of Gemmingen'sche tree nursery and nursery near the Upper Castle in Bonfeld . In: Bad Rappenauer Heimatbote 13 , 2002, pp. 69–72.

literature

• Rudolf Petzold: The Bonfeld castles . In: Bonfeld. Local history contributions from the past and present of a former imperial knighthood village . City of Bad Rappenau, Bad Rappenau 2000, ISBN 3-929295-62-8

Web links

Commons : Oberschloss Bonfeld  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 49 ° 12 '47.2 "  N , 9 ° 5' 32.9"  E