Rastatt Castle
_2.jpg)
The Rastatt Castle (also baroque residence ) in Rastatt is a former residential palace of the Margrave of Baden-Baden . The palace and the garden were built around 1700 by the Italian court architect Domenico Egidio Rossi on behalf of Margrave Ludwig Wilhelm von Baden-Baden .
history
After the residence of Margrave Ludwig Wilhelm in Baden-Baden was burned down by French troops in the Palatinate War of Succession in 1689, the construction of the New Palace there no longer met the representative requirements of the Baden ruler and he became a home for the Princess Franziska Sibylla Augusta von, who wed him in 1690 Saxony-Lauenburg needed, a new residence was built in the market town of Rastatt .
Master builder Domenico Egidio Rossi had built a hunting lodge in Rastatt on behalf of the margrave from 1697 . By autumn 1699 he had already completed the wing structure and started the main building ( Corps de Logis ) when the margrave ordered a residence to be built in place of the hunting lodge. While retaining the existing wing structures and parts of the main building of the hunting lodge, the shell of today's palace was built by 1702 . The village of Rastatt, located in the middle of the Rhine valley, was elevated to a town in 1700. Already in the winter of 1701/02 the margrave and his family moved into the wing buildings, in 1705 the court followed him to Rastatt.
The residence in Rastatt is considered to be the oldest baroque residence on the Upper Rhine and was built on the French model of Versailles , in which the godfather Ludwig Wilhelm, the sun king Louis XIV , ruled absolutistically .
All of Europe looked at the power of the French monarch and tried to emulate him. So it is also to be understood why Ludwig Wilhelm spent the sum of approx. 12 million guilders on the Rastatt Palace in order to impress the regents in the German lands. Ludwig Wilhelm always tried to gain the electoral dignity, and when he had not been given the desired honors after his military successes in the Turkish wars and on the Rhine and the Polish royal dignity was no longer to be hoped for, he tried his claims to power by building the magnificent Rastatt Palace to underpin.
Ludwig Wilhelm himself did not get much from his castle, as he was in the field most of the time and died of a war wound as early as 1707. During the French occupation of Rastatt, Margravine Franziska Sibylla Augusta left the castle and temporarily settled in Ettlingen . Master builder Rossi had also left Rastatt, so that the Bohemian master builder Johann Michael Ludwig Rohrer was entrusted with the further expansion of the Rastatt palace. During the further expansion, structural damage came to light mainly due to the construction timber used by Rossi and not enough stored, so that Rossi was arrested in Italy for the enforcement of damages. When the structural damage was repaired, there was an opportunity for numerous conversions. In 1722 the renovation of the middle section was completed, which from then on was crowned by a figure of Jupiter.
In 1714 the Peace of Rastatt was signed in the palace , ending the War of the Spanish Succession .
The building was further modified and expanded throughout the 18th century. One of the main problems of the building was the wooden flat roofs executed by master builder Rossi, which always remained leaky and were successively replaced with gable roofs and tin roofs. As a result of this roof work, the original roof landscape of the facility has changed significantly.
In the 19th century, Rastatt Castle served as the commandant's office for the Rastatt Fortress .
In the ancestral hall of the castle between 1946 and 1954 before the Tribunal Général of the French military administration on the basis of the Control Council Act No. 10, around 20 large criminal proceedings (the so-called Rastatt Trials ) took place against those responsible in the German Reich at the time of National Socialism , with a total of more than 2000 accused.
architecture
The rectangular three-storey main building is divided into 23 axes in length and five axes in depth. The central five axes of the main building emerge slightly as a central projection and also have an additional attic floor with a coupling roof and a column-supported balcony. On the city side, two two-storey side wings (library and congress building) with the main facade form a courtyard . A terrace crowned with balustrades closes the courtyard on the fourth side.
The center of the elongated main building is reached via two staircases at the end of the main courtyard. The rooms of the ancestral hall, state chambers and magnificent cabinets are intended to impress visitors. The entire palace complex was dimensioned in such a way that, in addition to the Ludwig Wilhelms family, the government , administration, guest rooms and all the servants found living space.
In the north of the castle the castle church was built , in the south the no longer preserved theater .
inside rooms
After climbing two impressive stairs full of stucco , you get to the first floor . The largest and most ornate hall is the ancestral hall , it is decorated with a variety of frescoes and shows many captured Ottomans in addition to pictures of ancestors . These frescoes and the captured Ottomans should show every visitor that the margrave can be seen as the victorious general of Christendom who saved Europe from the Ottomans.
The ceilings of the state rooms were covered with rococo stucco on behalf of Margrave Ludwig Georg . These works were carried out by the sculptor Johannes Schütz .
The farther you go from hall to hall in the bedroom, the more ornate and pompous the chambers become. Almost nothing of the furniture has survived, so you have to rely on auctions to complete the picture.
The floor ornamentation , which is laid out in different woods, is a testament to high craftsmanship .
Todays use
The castle, which was undamaged during World War II , now houses the Defense History Museum , the Rastatt District Court and, since 1974, the memorial for the freedom movements in German history . The memorial site was set up at the suggestion of Gustav Heinemann .
Rastatt Castle is open for tours. It is one of the state's own monuments and is looked after by the State Palaces and Gardens of Baden-Württemberg .
See also
literature
- Wolfgang Froese, Martin Walter (ed.): Rastatt Castle - Favorite Castle. People, history, architecture . Special publication of the Rastatt district archive, Volume 8, Casimir Katz Verlag, Gernsbach 2011, ISBN 978-3-938047-50-7 .
- Dietrich Rentsch: Rastatt Castle - A short guide . Ed .: Staatliches Liegenschaftsamt Karlsruhe in connection with the Oberfinanzdirektion Karlsruhe. Müller, Karlsruhe 1989, ISBN 3788097817 .
- Jan Schmidt, Peter Vogel: The high altar of the castle church in Rastatt . Ed .: Institute for Museum Studies at the State Academy of Fine Arts. Stuttgart 1991.
- Wolfgang E. Stopfel: The Rastatt Castle . In: Hugo Schneider (Ed.): Castles and palaces in central Baden . Verlag Historischer Verein für Mittelbaden, Offenburg 1984, pp. 41–53.
- Ulrike Grimm: The first Rastatt inventory. On the history of Rastatt Castle and its furnishings. In: Denkmalpflege in Baden-Württemberg , 29th year 2000, issue 3, pp. 138–143, doi: 10.11588 / nbdpfbw.2000.3.12854 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Historischer Verein Rastatt: Military Tribunal in Rastatt 1946 ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (with photographs; last checked on October 9, 2011)
- ↑ Federal Archives
Coordinates: 48 ° 51 ′ 32 " N , 8 ° 12 ′ 20" E