Princely residential palace in Detmold

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Princely residential palace in Detmold

The Princely Residential Castle Detmold is located in the city center of Detmold . The castle had its origins in an old castle , which was first mentioned in 1366. Some of the walls still date from this period.

history

Before the expansion into a castle, there was probably a farm yard of the Paderborn bishop , which was run by a mayor , in the late 8th or early 9th century . The expansion to a moated castle is likely with the takeover of rule by the noble lords of the Lippe around 1200, but at the latest with the founding of the city of Detmold by Bernhard III. in 1263. The walls of today's castle tower date from this time, while parts of the south and west wings were built in the 14th century. The castle was first mentioned in documents in 1366, when Count Simon III resided . occasionally in Detmold. His successors also temporarily left their headquarters in Lippstadt to live in the castles of Blomberg , Brake near Lemgo and Detmold, which were built after or around 1200 in the area of ​​today's Lippe district . In the course of the Soest feud in 1447, the Archbishop of Cologne had the castle and town of Detmold plundered and destroyed by Bohemian mercenaries . After that, Bernhard VII zu Lippe expanded the castle and town into a strong fortress and reinforced it with a mighty rampart. In 1468 Count Bernhard VII chose Detmold as his permanent residence . His successor, Bernhard VIII , summoned the master builder Jörg Unkair to Detmold in 1549 , who had made a name for himself with various Renaissance buildings in the Weser area. During the construction of the Neuhaus Castle near Paderborn , he implemented a four-wing complex and now transferred this concept to the Detmold Castle. His typical handwriting can be recognized by the two gables on the front and the two front stair towers. Unkair died in 1553 and his work was continued by the Flemish Johann Robyn (also: Jaspero Robijn) with the construction of the Renaissance gallery in the courtyard. Master builder Cord Tönnis completed the new building with the erection of the gate wing.

There were minor modifications at the beginning of the 17th century, the kitchen portal was built around 1620 and in 1673 Count Simon Heinrich had the rear wing expanded - the entire system was completed in its current size. Under Count Friedrich Adolf , the two long wings were rebuilt in 1715 and the interior was changed in accordance with the Baroque style . The rooms received ceilings and walls decorated with stucco, paintings and tapestries. Despite some renovations in the 18th and 19th centuries, the overall appearance of the castle has been preserved in the state of the early 18th century.

The Detmold Castle is a four-wing complex with stair towers in the four corners of the courtyard and thus corresponds to the model of Neuhaus Castle near Paderborn. This architectural style, characteristic of the so-called Weser Renaissance in Germany, developed from around 1560 and was widely used. The high bastions surrounding the castle for the positioning of cannons and wide moats that blocked the castle from intruders were typical.

Exterior view and courtyard

View of the inner courtyard with stair towers and stone entrance.
View of the inner courtyard. Two stairwells can be seen.

The main facade of the palace facing the palace park is, typical of the Weser Renaissance, structured asymmetrically. On the left rises the castle tower, which was changed in the 16th century, an indispensable part of a renaissance castle, which is intended to symbolically indicate the continuity of the rule.

The entrance wing between the tower and the gate was designed by the builder Cord Tönnis in 1553–1557, while the wing to the right of the gate, including the two gables, was built before 1553 under the direction of Jörg Unkair. Unkair and Tönnis preferred different shapes, which can be seen especially in the gables .

The fronts of the side wings to the inner courtyard were made simpler at the beginning of the 18th century. An exception is the gate wing, which has been preserved in its original state, which is provided with a protruding clad so-called stone entrance below the upper floor. The ground floor is divided in close succession by pilasters ending in consoles that support the walkway above. The parapet is decorated with a coat of arms frieze with the engraved date 1557. From left to right the parapet areas show a female bust, the coats of arms of Braunschweig , Schaumburg-Lippe , Mansfeld and Count Bernhard VIII. Zur Lippe, a relief of Justitia , the coat of arms of the wife of the Count, Katharina von Waldeck , also the coats of arms of Kleve-Mark , Solms and the Landgraves of Hesse .

Stair towers rise in the four corners of the courtyard. Before 1550, there were only locks of this type in Paderborn and Dresden, so the Detmold four-winged castle is an early example. Jörg Unkair built the two eastern stair towers towards the entrance and they bear the dates 1550 (right) and 1551 (left). The portals show a mixture of late Gothic and Renaissance forms typical of the 16th century . The same applies to the stair spindles, which are apparently a further development of Gothic stairs. The left stair tower contains a spindle, which is shown as a tree trunk with sawed off branches, with a branch fork belonging to each step.

The west wing opposite the gate bears the year 1673 and was built under the direction of the Lemgo master builder Hermann Arndt. Of the two stair towers, the right, northern tower, seen from the courtyard, dates back to Jörg Unkair's construction period (before 1653), while the left was not completed by Arndt until 1673, together with the wing. A corridor also runs between the two towers over profiled consoles, but it is much simpler than the stone entrance opposite. The wrought-iron grille in front of the corridor and the flat triangular gable, which gives the entire wing a classicistic appearance, date from 1845. The northwest wing contains the kitchen portal designed by the builder Hans Avenhaus in 1620, which stylistically contains Renaissance and Baroque elements.

Interior and facilities

With the exception of the rooms used privately by the royal family, the entire palace can be viewed on a guided tour.

Red salon

The red salon on the first floor of the north wing can be reached via the northeast stair tower. The reception room, decorated with stucco ornaments and ceiling paintings, was designed by the court painter Hans Hinrich Rundt between 1700 and 1710 . The paintings show mythological figures and motifs from antiquity, for example Bacchus , Venus , Apollo , Minerva , Parnassus and the nine muses .

Ancestral hall

The ancestral hall is located in the north wing and occupies the entire width of the wing. The hall, furnished by Count Friedrich Adolf in the 18th century, was redesigned in an elaborate new renaissance in 1882 by the Munich architect Lorenz Gedon . In doing so, he arranged for the contemporary paintings of the ruling Counts and Princes zur Lippe and their wives to be cut to a uniform size and embedded in the paneling. Portraits and ancestral galleries were very important in the feudal age and were found in numerous castles of the 16th century. The family tree was displayed in the ancestral galleries to prove the legitimacy of the rule. The ancestral hall of Detmold Castle also points to this tradition.

Elizabeth Hall and Empire Room

This is followed by the Elisabethsaal, furnished between 1905 and 1913, with two portraits of Princess Elisabeth, Princess of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, painted in 1853 by Joseph Karl Stieler, and one of Princess Pauline , created around 1790 by Karl Christian Kehrer . The lavish Neurokoko mirror comes from the Berlin porcelain factory and was originally intended to be installed in the court theater around 1920.

The two Empire rooms from the time of Princess Pauline around 1807 are furnished with original furniture and a table showcase including a Parisian tea service that was given to Pauline by Empress Josefine , the wife of Napoleon . In the adjoining small tapestry room hang two tapestries, which were made from 1700 to 1709 according to designs by Peter Paul Rubens in the Amsterdam workshop of Johan de Baen and show depictions from the history of the Roman consuls Decius Mus .

Hunting room and king room

In the hunting room, a corner room of the west wing, there is a collection of hunting weapons from the 17th to 19th centuries and hunting trophies, as well as a large-format portrait of Prince Leopold IV, painted by Fritz Mackensen . The king's rooms take up almost the entire west wing. From 1709–1710, on the initiative of Count Friedrich Adolf, they were equipped with chimneys, precious parquet floors and stucco framed ceilings by M. Camminata and Domenico Egidio Rossi and got their name from the visit of King Friedrich I of Prussia in 1711. On the walls eight tapestries over four meters high with scenes from the battles of Alexander the Great , which were made around 1670 in the workshop of the Brussels carpenter Jan Frans van der Hecke based on designs by Charles Le Brun , court painter to Louis XIV . The tapestries probably came to Detmold around 1680, were cleaned and restored in Munich from 1956 to 1964, and impress with their excellent colors and spatial composition. In the first king's room scenes of the battle of Hydaspes and the capture of king Porus by Alexander, as well as the reception of Alexander after the battle of Issus in the tent of the Persian queens can be seen. The second king's room shows Alexander's triumphant reception in Babylon after the battle of Arbela and scenes from the battle of Arbela.

Flag room

In the adjoining flag room is the last tapestry from this series, which shows the victory of the Macedonians at Arbela and the escape of Darius . The oldest Lippe flag from 1651 also hangs here. Three other tapestries from the first half of the 18th century depict the parks of the Palace of Versailles . A cigar or cabinet from 1886 and a large porcelain vase, made in 1893 by Leopold IV at the World Exhibition Acquired in Chicago are also part of the inventory of the flagroom. The name refers to the storage of flags of the Lippe garrison in this room in the 19th century. In the hallway there is a splendid Bohemian glass chandelier chandelier from 1730, portraits of members of the Lippe ruling house and prominent guests and a richly decorated English grandfather clock by Joshua Seddon from the early 19th century.

The palace square

City and Castle Detmold, copper engraving by Elias van Lennep, 1663.
City map of Detmold from 1660.
Palace square with a memorial to Count Ernst zu Lippe-Biesterfeld

About a quarter of Detmold's old town includes the castle with the associated moat and the castle square. An old engraving by the Dutch draftsman and engraver Elias van Lennep from 1663 shows very well how the castle and its surroundings looked in the middle of the 17th century. In addition to the castle itself with its bastions and moats, over which a drawbridge led in two places , the dairy can be seen above the castle square , where food for the castle residents was made. A narrow entrance, known as the Hasenpforte, connected the palace square with the Lange Straße, while access to the palace was secured by a drawbridge, the palace guard, the wall chamber and a covered corridor.

The castle fortifications with walls and corner washers are almost completely preserved today, as is the wide moat or moat on the south and west sides of the castle. The moat is fed by an artificial watercourse that runs as a canal around the old town and is directed to the castle.

Today's Schlossplatz was laid out in the second half of the 18th century on the site of the manorial dairy, which had to move to the outskirts of the city around 1736 to the newly established Johanettental dairy. From 1780 to 1800, elongated wing buildings with corner pavilions, enough space for the stables , a riding arena and carriage shed were built according to plans by the state master builder Christian Teudt . The existing dicastery building on the south side of the square was integrated into the new development. The new buildings also had to accommodate facilities of the Lippe regional administration, such as the chancellery, the regional archive, the court court and various apartments for employees. 1951–1953 the former riding arena was converted into the Detmold town hall.

The actual palace square was transformed into an English park in the first half of the 19th century . The late Baroque main portal on Langen Straße, with its alternation of pillars with stone vases and wrought iron bars, forms a stately end to the park. The large fountain with an illuminated fountain in front of the castle was created around 1900. The small octagonal fountain in the eastern part of the park probably comes from the Friedrichstaler Park.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the erection of monuments began. At the northwest entrance from the theater forecourt there is a bronze monument to Count Ernst zur Lippe-Biesterfeld (1897–1904). At the octagonal fountain there is a memorial that commemorates the Lipper who died in the war of 1866 , as well as the prisoners of war and those who were deported from the Second World War . A portrait bust of Johannes Brahms was placed near the main portal and to the side of the "church arch" at the passage to the market square is a bronze plaque reminding of Princess Pauline. Finally, in the passage to the Rosental there is a movable metal sculpture by the Berlin artist Hein Sinken from 1970 and the neo-Gothic bronze bell from the cruciform church of Detmold's Silesian twin town Sagan, which was erected in 1965 .

literature

  • Karl Baedeker: Detmold, short city guide. Freiburg 1974, DNB 740188933 .
  • G. Ulrich Großmann: Detmold, guide through town, castle and surroundings. Verlag Trautvetter & Fischer Nachf., Marburg an der Lahn 1981.
  • G. Ulrich Großmann: Detmold Castle. Schnell & Steiner publishing house, 2002, ISBN 3-7954-1481-4 .
  • Christian Kuhnke: Lippe Lexicon. Boken Verlag, Detmold 2000, ISBN 3-935454-00-7 .
  • Gerhard Peters, Armin zur Lippe: Princely residential palace Detmold. Topp + Möller, Detmold 2008, ISBN 978-3-936867-24-4 .
  • Heiner Borggrefe: The renaissance castle Detmold and Count Bernhard VIII. To Lippe. In: Detlev Hellfaier, Elke Treude (Ed.): Museum, Region, Research, Festschrift for Rainer Springhorn . Detmold 2011, ISBN 978-3-942537-00-1 , pp. 115-129.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Description of the inner courtyard on the official website of the castle
  2. ^ A b G. Ulrich Großmann: Detmold, guide through town, castle and surroundings . Verlag Trautvetter & Fischer Nachf., Marburg an der Lahn, 1981.
  3. ^ Herbert Stöwer: Copper engravings Lippe cities and landscapes - city and castle Detmold. in Heimatland Lippe, October 1992. Publisher: Lippischer Heimatbund eV
  4. ^ A b Karl Baedeker: Detmold, short city guide , Freiburg 1974.

Web links

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

Coordinates: 51 ° 56 ′ 11.3 "  N , 8 ° 52 ′ 37.5"  E