Rettershof
The Rettershof (also Hof Retters or Röders ) is a farm estate and former Premonstratensian monastery northeast of Fischbach , a district of Kelkheim near Frankfurt am Main . From the 12th century to 1559 religious women lived in Retters, later various owners used the property as an estate. Today the Rettershof is a popular excursion destination in addition to its further agricultural use.
During the night of July 3rd to 4th, 2018, parts of the roof structure and part of the stables of the Rettershof were destroyed as a result of a major fire. The cause of the fire is still unknown.
location
The Rettershof is located in the Kelkheim district of Fischbach, around two kilometers northeast of the town center. It lies on the edge of the so-called Retterswald forest in the wide valley of the Krebsbach, which extends west of it, between Ruppertshain and Fischbach. The Rettersbach, a left tributary of the Krebsbach, runs in the immediate vicinity of the farm. To the west are now arable land, to the east are extensive forest areas. The Königstein district of Schneidhain begins about a kilometer northeast .
Infrastructure
Numerous hiking trails lead across the area, there is the "Zumjoylichen Landmann" inn and a large parking lot with access from the B 455 between Fischbach and Schneidhain. There is also a bus stop there that is served by lines 263 and 815 of the Rhein-Main transport association .
history
Foundation and economic prosperity of the monastery (1146 to 1369)
Around 1136, the first women choirs moved to Retters for economic reasons. The place name Retters means Council of God (= Latin Consilium Dei). The area was called Retters und Braubach - in reteresse et in brubach - and from then on also called the Valley of the Holy Cross - que nunc vallis sancte crucis apellatur . The women choir came from the Steinbach monastery in the Westerwald , which belonged to the Rommersdorf Abbey near Neuwied . The lands stretched as saviors over the meadows and pastures between Fischbach and Ruppertshain and Braubach as the valley of the Braubach running between Hornau and Schneidhain (the location can still be seen today from the Braubachweiher ) and was owned by Count Gerhard von Nürings . As the last representative of his aristocratic family, which predominantly owned lands in the Wetterau , he donated his lands from Retters in 1146 in order to have a monastery built on them. In a document from 1245 there is a record of a monastery belonging to the Augustinian order . What is certain, however, is that the Premonstratensians (an order that had developed in the 12th century as a reform of the Augustinian canons) lived in Retters at the latest from 1272 . Initially, Retters was a double monastery in which choir women and men were resident. From around 1200 there was only a pure nunnery, which mostly consisted of nuns from the lower nobility.
Later, the legend spread that Gerhard von Nüringen, who was captured by the Arabs during the Second Crusade near Edessa with 100 followers and was held prisoner for two years, founded the monastery out of gratitude for his liberation. However, this contradicts the date of the deed of donation from November 13, 1146, around a year before the start of the Second Crusade.
Since the completion of the abbey, the monastery church was consecrated to the Blessed Virgin Mary (first confirmed in a document in 1272). According to reports by the historian Petrus Diederichs , who lived in Retters in the 17th century , the church was also opened by the Archbishop of Mainz to St. Consecrated to Nicholas . From 1162 at the latest, Retters was also subordinate to the Rommersdorf Abbey, the oldest Premonstratensian abbey in the area of the Archdiocese of Trier .
During this time it was under the protection of the Archbishop of Mainz . It must have been a rather poor monastery cell, as can be seen from a record of the death of Burchard von Nürings, the brother of the monastery founder. The monastery soon gained influence through gifts and trade with the surrounding gentlemen, so that an economic upswing quickly began. In a letter from Archbishop Konrad I. von Wittelsbach of Mainz from 1191, 22 lands in the Vordertaunus, Taunus and Wetterau were already listed, which he guaranteed protection. In the following centuries the monastery concentrated its possessions on the Vordertaunus, more distant lands were sold or exchanged for surrounding areas.
Another letter of protection from Archbishop Siegfried II von Eppstein of Mainz dated December 30, 1221 shows that Retters owned lands in 40 towns between Wiesbaden , Frankfurt and Butzbach , including Münster , Hornau (both now Kelkheim districts) and Beidenau as the most important goods , Schneidhain and Liederbach . At that time, Retters had a total of 24 farms, two mills, 67 Hufen land (corresponds to around 407 hectares , mostly forest and meadows), 66 acres (around 13 hectares) of self-cultivated fields and 20 vineyards. In addition, there were farms subject to basic interest and patronage over the parish church of Dornheim (from 1191 to 1559, near Groß-Gerau ).
On September 13, 1275, the Roman-German King Rudolf I , who came from the House of Habsburg , placed saviors under the protection of the empire . During this period of economic prosperity, the number of women choirs had to be limited to a maximum of 50, as more women wanted admission to the monastery than it could provide.
During these years the mystic Christina von Retters (born 1269, died 1291 or 1292, later beatified) contributed to the fame of the monastery, although it is disputed whether she was ever active in Retters.
In the 13th century, the Lords of Eppstein tied the Retters monastery closely to themselves. In 1272 it received the Treisberg and Seelenberg lands from Gottfried (the Elder) von Eppstein as a gift. On May 13, 1297, Archbishop of Mainz, Gerhard II , who came from the Eppsteiner Haus, released the monastery from his duties. In the 14th century, the monastery became increasingly dependent on the Eppstein rulers and was soon viewed by them as their own monastery . The lords of Eppstein were henceforth the monastery lords of Retters, but the right to invest and the spiritual leadership continued to be the responsibility of the Rommershausen Abbey.
Decline and dissolution of the monastery (1369 to 1559)
A massive economic decline began in the middle of the 14th century, which was accompanied by the sale of goods. The plague, population decline and wars had a negative impact on trade and monastery operations. In addition, Retters repeatedly got between the fronts during various feuds, in 1374 it was looted by Reifenberger robber barons. In 1369, with the Treisberg estates, which were sold to Frank von Kronberg for 200 guilders, an essential part of the property had to be surrendered. Now the remaining lands in the area were mainly cultivated by Retters himself, with the exception of Beidenau there were no longer any farms dependent on the monastery. From 1350 to 1507 the rescuer of the Free Imperial City of Frankfurt was subject to military service and in the event of war he was involved in the defense of the city and the surrounding area.
In 1433, the Eppstein family split into the Eppstein-Münzenberg lines (formerly Falkenstein-Münzenberg, since it was based in Falkenstein ) and Eppstein-Königstein , which Retters managed from then on as joint property. Due to disputes between the two branches of the family, the monastery increasingly suffered economic hardship, and hunger and neglect spread. Around 1500 around 20 people were still living in Retters. When Eberhard IV, the last Eppstein count and patron of Retters, died in 1535 without leaving any descendants, the monastery and its lands fell to the Lords of Stolberg , as had been decided when his sister Anna married Botho von Stolberg .
After Botho died in 1538, his sons divided his property among themselves in an inheritance settlement on August 26, 1538. Retters was assigned to the new head of the family, Ludwig von Stolberg-Königstein (he resided in Königstein). Ludwig had been converted to Lutheran teaching by his brother Christoph zu Stolberg, the provost of Halberstadt .
From 1540 Ludwig introduced the Reformation in his entire county and began to dissolve monasteries and monasteries. In the years 1542 and 1544 the plague raged in the Vordertaunus, Retters was also affected, more than half of the nuns died. Bit by bit, the Lords of Stolberg freed the best lands from the possession of the monastery, which was increasingly in liquidation, which was so weakened by high debts, mismanagement and a large number of resignations that disease and hunger broke out again and again and money for urgently needed repairs was missing.
After disputes with the tenant of the Beidenau court, Konrad von Hattstein , who had complained about the poor conditions at Count Ludwig, the latter finally confiscated Beidenau and enfeoffed the previous tenant with this property. Thus, the monastery also lost its last major property.
After the death of the last abbess Anna von Riedesel on September 27, 1559, the women's monastery was dissolved in the name of Ludwig von Stolberg-Königstein. Immediately after the abbess's death, his Königstein bailiff , Christof von Hattstein, confiscated all seals and documents and urged the unsettled choir women to sign a deed of assignment to the House of Stolberg. While the Rommersdorf Abbey was still convening a commission to appoint a new abbess, the bailiff had the monastery vacated on October 23, 1559, despite the protests of the remaining nuns. The three remaining nuns finally had to leave Retters, but received an annuity of 25 guilders annually from Ludwig. As a result, the Rommersdorf Abbey tried several times without success, pointing to the illegality of the deed of assignment (the choir women were not authorized to sign such a contract) to regain their expropriated monastery.
Retters as a state estate (1559 to 1883)
Under the rule of the Lords of Stolberg, Retters was used as a leasehold. After Ludwig's death in 1574, his property fell to his younger brother Christoph. He bequeathed his possessions in the Vordertaunus, including Retters, to the Frankfurter Bartholomäusstift in 1581 , which shortly afterwards passed them on to Kurmainz for 1200 guilders . The newly acquired areas were administered by the Koenigstein Office, and Lutheran teaching was soon pushed back in the course of the Counter Reformation . During the Thirty Years War , imperial troops looted and burned the farm. As a result, the property was rebuilt and managed by various tenants. In 1792, French troops conquered Mainz during the First Coalition War and in 1797, after the Peace of Campo Formio, occupied the entire area on the left bank of the Rhine. In 1803, the occupiers dissolved the clerical electorate as part of secularization , and the estate and large parts of the Mainz property in the Vordertaunus were assigned to the principality of Nassau-Usingen . Nassau-Usingen and Nassau-Weilburg merged in 1806 to form the Duchy of Nassau . From then on, Retters, which was now often referred to in modified form as Röders , continued to exist as a state domain. After the Duchy of Nassau was dissolved in 1866, the Rettershof fell to Prussia .
Rettershof since 1884
In 1883, the German-English aristocrat Frederik Arnold Rodewald zu Feldheim acquired the Rettershof for 78,000 gold marks from the Prussian state and erased the right to inheritance. In 1885 he had a representative castle built in the Tudor style based on the English model on a hill north of the courtyard , which was to serve as the residence of his daughter Alice and her husband Oskar Freiherr von Dieskau. When he died in the same year, Alice married his brother Leopold and, after the death of her father in 1886, took over the management of the estate together with her new husband. However, the lands, which were greatly reduced in comparison to the possessions in the Middle Ages, were not enough to support the Rettershof as a luxury property with an attached castle, so that it was sold in 1903 for 210,000 Mk to the wealthy Baron von Vincke and his wife Sybille von Hessen had to.
In 1924, Felix von Richter acquired the farm and established it as the ancestral home of his family, which from then on was called Richter-Rettershof. In order to increase profitability, he looked for opportunities to work on the side. In 1928 a ladies riding school with an attached boarding school started operations, for which the riding arena, which is still in operation today, was created. In the 1930s, a restaurant that still exists today opened a little away from the courtyard. During the 1920s and 1930s, Felix von Richter-Rettershof and his wife Hertha had extensive renovations and conversions carried out on the estate. Hertha von Richter-Rettershof was born from the Rath , whose maternal grandfather, Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Meister , was one of the co-founders of the Hoechst paintworks, later Hoechst AG . Her sister Hanna was the wife of the conductor and art critic Paul Bekker and the founder of the Frankfurter Kunstkabinett; another sister, Eugenie vom Rath, was the mother of CDU politician Walther Leisler Kiep .
After the Second World War, the US Army confiscated the castle and used it as a representative office until 1953. After that , the Gehlen Organization , the predecessor organization of the Federal Intelligence Service , moved into the building for a short time . From the mid-1950s a private language school was located here. The estate was still managed by the Richter-Rettershof family, after the death of Felix von Richter-Rettershof by his daughter Felicitas Bienzle. 1973–1980 the German headquarters of the Hare Krishna movement ( ISKCON ) had its headquarters and a temple there as the tenant of the castle.
When the Richter-Rettershof family finally decided to sell the property at the end of the 1970s, the city of Kelkheim took over the entire property, including the castle and estate, as well as around 110 hectares of land for nine million DM on January 1, 1980 . As a result, the city of Kelkheim lavishly converted the listed castle into a hotel and financed the costly renovation of the aging estate. The city's own Gutsverwaltung Rettershof GmbH was founded to operate the estate . Since then, the Rettershof has been used as a riding stables and for cultural events. The plan, which emerged in the 1990s to build a golf course around the stud, failed in 1997 due to the veto of the Kelkheim citizens as part of a referendum. From the 1980s onwards, the expansion of federal highway 8 to relieve Kelkheim and Königsteins was under discussion; According to the plans, the route would have run in the immediate vicinity of the Rettershof. In December 2009 this project was buried by the regional assembly of South Hesse.
Edwin Graf von Rothkirch and Trach (1888–1980), a former general of the cavalry and show jumping rider, died at the Rettershof .
Architecture and artistic design
Savior monastery
At the time of the monastery there was a manor and a small chapel. The place where the chapel was located is believed to have been found during construction work from 1939 on the north side of today's riding arena opposite the courtyard gate. After the destruction during the Thirty Years' War, only the foundation walls of the original buildings remained, most of which were removed over the years and some of them were used to construct the new buildings. There is still a vaulted cellar below the courtyard, which could have come from the times of the monastery. In addition, the remains of an old wall were found in the forest east of the courtyard, the course of which coincides with the former monastery wall.
Hofgut Retters
The half-timbered farm estate as a four-sided courtyard was created in its current form in the style of historicism in the 1920s and 1930s under the leadership of the von Richter-Rettershof family. The gatehouse built in 1936 formed the end with rich decorations on the facade as well as the coats of arms of the various historical rulers and noble houses associated with rescuers, which are embedded in the wrought iron gate from 1932. Most of the decorations on the walls of the manor, mostly façade sayings on the subject of horses and cavalry, were made directly by Felix and Hertha von Richter-Rettershof, who began to decorate the courtyard with such decorations in the 1930s. The hunting trophies and other ornaments, including figures of saints and heraldic stones, also date from this period. In addition, a few, somewhat remote, functional buildings were subsequently built for management purposes. In 2000 a large riding hall was added to the east of the stud.
Castle
The castle was built in 1884 as the residence of the Barons von Dieskau in the English Tudor style on a hill north of the manor. Sandstone and stone from the Vordertaunus were used as building materials. After it was used by changing owners, the town of Kelkheim converted it into a hotel in the early 1980s. For this purpose, a bronze-clad hotel wing with 35 guest rooms was built on the south side of the slope, which is connected to the main building via a glass corridor. The new domicile was opened in 1984 as the Schlosshotel Rettershof . The castle has been on the list of cultural monuments of the State of Hesse since 1983 .
literature
- Albert Hardt: Document book of the monasteries Altenberg, Dorlar, Retters, Niederbreitbach-Wolfenacker 2000, pp. 782–840
- Dietrich Kleipa: Kelkheim / Taunus. A journey through the history of the city . Published by the Magistrate of the City of Kelkheim, 1968
- Bock, Dr. Hartmut / Kleipa, Dietrich / Zimmermann, Heinz: Kelkheim im Taunus. Contributions to the history of its neighborhoods. Published by the Magistrate of the City of Kelkheim, 1980 (pp. 34–80)
- Adolf Guba (Ed.): Kelkheim im Taunus. Printing house Blei & Guba, Kelkheim / Taunus 1995 (pp. 22-25) ISBN 3-00-000369-X .
- Jörg Brückner: Between imperial class and class rule. The Counts of Stolberg and their relationship with the Landgraves of Thuringia and later dukes, electors and kings of Saxony 1210–1815 . Verlag Janos Stekovics, 2005, ISBN 3-89923-119-8 . (Information about the Eppstein-Stolberg family)
Web links
- State Office for Monument Preservation Hessen (Ed.): Hofgut Retters In: DenkXweb, online edition of cultural monuments in Hessen
- Rettershof, Main-Taunus-Kreis. Historical local dictionary for Hessen. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
- Rettershof on www.kelkheim.de
References and comments
- ↑ a b certificate of donation from Gerhard von Nürings from 1146, Main State Archives Munich (Mainz documents: 23), line 5
- ↑ Main State Archives Munich (Mainz documents: 84)
- ↑ a b Main State Archives, Munich (Mainz documents: 157–159)
- ↑ Kelkheim in the Taunus. Contributions to the history of its neighborhoods. (P. 37)
- ↑ a b Kelkheim in the Taunus. Contributions to the history of its neighborhoods. (P. 51)
- ↑ see the records of Petrus Diederich, Landeshauptarchiv Koblenz
- ↑ On September 22, 1162, Retters and his goods were confirmed as the property of Rommersdorf Monastery by Pope Viktor IV ( Rethers cum appendis suis ). See the records of Petrus Diederich, State Main Archives Koblenz
- ↑ Drauth, Karl: The Counts of Nüring . In: Research on German History 23, 1883 (pp. 368–490)
- ↑ Main State Archives Munich (Mainz documents: 40)
- ↑ a b Kelkheim in the Taunus. Contributions to the history of its neighborhoods. P. 42
- ↑ Kopialbuch II, No. 58 fol. 22r in the Frankfurt City Archives (1350)
- ↑ Christoph zu Stolberg inherited the villages Kelkheim, Hornau and Eppstein
-
^ Petrus Diederich, State Main Archive Koblenz
Kelheim im Taunus. (P. 23) - ↑ Kelkheim in the Taunus. Contributions to the history of its neighborhoods. (P. 46)
- ↑ Between imperial class and class rule. The Counts of Stolberg and their relationship to the Landgraves of Thuringia and later dukes, electors and kings of Saxony (1210 to 1815).
- ↑ a b Kelheim im Taunus (p. 24)
- ^ Rettershof Palace becomes Prabhupada-Tirtha . In: ISKCON Germany . August 15, 2016 ( iskcon.de [accessed November 8, 2016]).
- ↑ Kelkheim in the Taunus. Contributions to the history of its neighborhoods. (P. 75)
- ↑ On the map by Sebastian Wolff from 1592, an oval wall with an estimated diameter of 250 meters can be seen southeast of the monastery.
Coordinates: 50 ° 10 ′ 8.8 ″ N , 8 ° 25 ′ 49.9 ″ E
