Darmstadt Residence Palace

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The Darmstadt residential palace
Lion-rimmed coat of arms above the main portal of the new building by Louis Rémy de la Fosse
The west side of the castle around 1900
Reconstruction plans for the palace from 1728
Darmstadt city center around 1888 with the five marked castles and palaces

The Royal Palace Darmstadt , often Stadtschloss called, is in the center of the Hessian town of Darmstadt former residence and administrative headquarters location of the Landgrave and 1806-1919 of the Grand Dukes of Hesse-Darmstadt .

location

Today the castle is located in the center of the science city Darmstadt, at the eastern end of the Rheinstrasse, which leads into the city from the west.

history

The origins of the castle go back to the Katzenelnbogic period. In the middle of the 13th century the Counts of Katzenelnbogen built a moated castle in Darmstadt. Darmstadt received city rights in 1330, and the castle was first mentioned a year later. In the following two centuries the Counts von Katzenelnbogen continued to expand and remodel the castle. By the middle of the 15th century, the castle was transformed into a representative palace and Darmstadt became Katzenelnbogen's secondary residence. What remains of the moated castle are the shape of the central church courtyard and the outer walls of the mansion. When the last Count von Katzenelnbogen died in 1479, Darmstadt fell to Landgrave Heinrich III. of Hessen. When Philip the Magnanimous took over the government in 1518, the castle was destroyed for the first time in an attack by Franz von Sickingen . The castle was rebuilt in the following years, but with essentially the same defenses. In the Schmalkaldic War of 1547 it was destroyed again by imperial troops. Landgrave Georg I (the Pious) (1547 to 1596) extended the castle considerably from 1567 to a Renaissance complex and secured it with moats and bastions . From 1580 Jakob Kesselhuth directed the construction work. From 1594 the landgrave had orphans taught in the castle.

The Wallhäuschen, a gate building in the north of the palace complex, was built by Jakob Müller in 1627. The bell building was built from 1663 to 1671 according to plans by the architect Johann Wilhelm Pfannmüller. In 1693 Darmstadt was attacked by the French . The keep of the castle was destroyed. In 1715, after the chancellery had burned down, Landgrave Ernst Ludwig commissioned the French architect Louis Remy de la Fosse to plan a new baroque castle with four large wings. This should completely replace the old lock. Due to a lack of money, only two wings were completed by 1726. These should remain the last major structural changes to the castle. When Hessen-Darmstadt joined the Rhine Confederation in 1806 , the palace became the seat of the Grand Dukes of Darmstadt. This status lasted until 1918. However, the residence of the Grand Dukes was initially the Old Palais and, from 1866, the New Palais .

As a result of the November Revolution in 1918, the residential palace was taken over by the People's State of Hesse . The formal transfer of ownership was formally confirmed under the legislation on the compensation of Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig in the 1920s.

On the night of fire in Darmstadt from September 11 to 12, 1944, the castle burned down to the outer walls. In twenty years of work, the external condition of the prewar period has been restored to a large extent in detail.

Picture gallery

  • Pictures of parts of the old castle

  • The bell tower before 1901

  • The wall house in the north before 1901

  • The north portal around 1906

  • The west portal around 1910

  • North entrance to Darmstadt's residential palace

  • Monument at the Darmstadt Residenzschloss with a view of the Hessian State Archives and the congress hotel

  • View of the Residenzschloss Darmstadt, view from the south

  • The south portal

  • Darmstadt Royal Palace, view from the east

  • The bell tower around 2000

  • View through the north portal of the old theater

present

Floor plan of the palace complex

Today the castle consists of two vertically butting wings with an S-shaped floor plan under a mansard roof . The east wing has one storey, the west wing has two storeys. The bell tower is about 39 m high.

The castle currently houses:

The Darmstadt Madonna was in the castle museum until 2004 .

future

Schlossgraben, September 2014

Since the University and State Library (ULB) moved to a new building in October 2012, the former rooms and the castle museum have been renovated. The complete renovation should be completed in 2020/2021. The Presidium and parts of the Central Administration of the Technical University of Darmstadt will then be housed in the palace. In addition, the Department of History and Social Sciences and its book holdings will again find a place in the palace. The German Poland Institute was relocated from Mathildenhöhe to the castle in 2016.

Castle moat

The castle moat is being turned into a park again, in which works of art will also be displayed. The southern half and the northern part have already been implemented (as of 2018). The rest should follow in the coming years.

See also

literature

  • Thomas Biller: Castles and palaces in the Odenwald. A guide to history and architecture. Schnell and Steiner, Regensburg 2005, ISBN 3-7954-1711-2 , pp. 51–56.
  • Rolf Müller (Ed.): Palaces, castles, old walls. Published by the Hessendienst der Staatskanzlei, Wiesbaden 1990, ISBN 3-89214-017-0 , pp. 73f.

Web links

Commons : Residenzschloss Darmstadt  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Thomas Biller: Castles and palaces in the Odenwald . Regensburg 2005, p. 52
  2. ^ Magistrate of the City of Darmstadt, Press and Information Office
  3. ↑ See: Frank Aulbach: The redevelopment concept at the Darmstadt City Palace . In: State Office for Monument Preservation Hesse : Monument Preservation and Cultural History 4/2017. ISSN 1436-168X, pp. 48f.
  4. ↑ http://www.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/ulb/standorte/schloss/ulb_schloss.de.jsp

Coordinates: 49 ° 52 ′ 25 ″  N , 8 ° 39 ′ 19 ″  E