Brunswick Castle

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
View of the Brunswick residential palace around 1840
Braunschweig 1899: Braunschweig Castle ("37") in the center of the map

The Braunschweiger Schloss , also known as the Braunschweiger Residenzschloss , is part of a hybrid building on Bohlweg in the center of the city of Braunschweig . Its predecessor buildings were from 1753 to November 8, 1918 the residence of the Brunswick dukes from the house of the Welfs .

The first building was built from 1717 under the direction of the Brunswick master builder Hermann Korb , but could not be completed until 1791. After this building burned down on the night of September 7th to 8th, 1830, a second building was erected under Carl Theodor Ottmer by 1841. This in turn was badly damaged by heavy air raids during the Second World War and finally demolished in 1960.

This demolition was a unique process in West Germany , which in the German post-war period only has its parallels in various castle ruins demolished by the GDR government. From 1961 to 1963, the castle park was laid out on the fallow land .

From 2005 to 2007 a new building was erected at this point, combining the “Schloss-Arkaden” shopping center with the optical reconstruction of the outer facade of the Braunschweig residential palace, whose three-winged shape with five main facades largely corresponds to the Ottmer palace. Only in the covered inner courtyard and half of the ground floor does the shopping center protrude into the palace. As an independent structure, it continues to the north in a modern commercial building. 80 percent of the area of ​​the palace reconstruction is rented by the city and is used culturally, including as a city ​​library and palace museum .

history

The "gray court"

Excerpt from the “Plan of the City of Braunschweig” by Albrecht Heinrich Carl Conradi from around 1755. You can see: (from left to right) “auf dem Schilde” (today Ackerhof ), “A” (= Grauer Hof ). " Der Bohlweg ", "gray Hoffs Garten" (= palace gardens ). "The knight = Brunen " and "the stone path ".

Since the Middle Ages, the town and farm yard, the inner-city settlement of the Cistercian monks from the Riddagshausen monastery east of the gates of Brunswick, has been located at the place where the master builder Hermann Korb had the first castle built from 1717 . The buildings were located directly on Bohlweg in the middle and extended over courtyards into the terrain. The name "Grauer Hof" was later given to the castle hall by the citizens of Brunswick because of the gray color of the Riddagshaus monk's robes. For the construction of the palace, additional space had to be acquired from the neighboring owners to the north.

Until 1671, when the city of Braunschweig lost its independence, the farm yard served as quarters for the Guelph dukes when they were visiting Braunschweig. Until 1754 their residence was in Wolfenbüttel . The first plans for the new construction of the inner-city secondary residence of the dukes began on the instructions of Duke August Wilhelm von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel under master builder Korb around 1715.

The castle in the 18th century

The first Braunschweig palace of Hermann Korb built

Finally, in 1717, extensive new construction work began on the site of the Gray Court. The old monastery buildings were demolished and gradually the first residence of the dukes in Braunschweig was built. The facades of the side wings were built from half-timbering (which was typical for Hermann Korb), the facade of the younger central wing from 1783/1791 probably made of Hilssandstein , also called Lutter sandstone because it comes from the immediate vicinity of Lutter am Barenberge . The central building ( Corps de Logis ) had two floors with a mezzanine , the ground floor had the arched arcades typical of Korb . The inner side wings ( Cour d'Honneur ) were arranged around the U-shaped courtyard, the outer wings widened outwards like a trapezoid. The side wings were about 100 meters long and the head building with the state halls about 50 meters. With the outer wings, the castle opened to the city. This typically French design ended right on Bohlweg, it did not actually have an associated courtyard opposite. It was only Peter Joseph Krahe who tried - in vain - in 1811, when the "Graue Hof" was a secondary residence of the King of Westphalia , to have such a court of honor built.

During the reign of Duke August Wilhelm, the inner wings with the chapel were completed in 1724 . In the 1730s, work on the inner south wing was finished. The work on the central section was not yet finished. The building first had to be protected by an emergency roof. Under the new construction manager Martin Peltier de Belfort , the outer north wing was built from 1752 to 1754 according to the plans of Korb, who died in 1735.

Although the palace was not yet completed in 1753, the residence was moved to Braunschweig. It was not completed until 1790, during the reign of Duke Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand , with the massive central building under the direction of court builders Christian Gottlob Langwagen and Wilhelm von Gebhardi in pure classicism between 1783 and 1791.

During the occupation and annexation of the city and duchy of Braunschweig by Napoléon I's troops between 1806 and 1813 (see Département Oker ), Peter Joseph Krahe finally designed the building for Jérôme Bonaparte , Napoléon's brother and king of the newly created Kingdom of Westphalia , to become Braunschweig belonged to the royal winter residence in Empire style since 1807 .

The castle experienced both its heyday and its downfall under Duke Charles II .

The Brunswick uprising of 1830

lili rere
Castle fire and castle ruins during the uprising in 1830.
Painting by Karl Schröder (1760–1844)

On September 7, 1830 there was a revolution in Braunschweig. Citizens and estates of the city and the duchy rebelled against Duke Charles II , whom they later called "Diamond Duke" because of his fabulous wealth acquired through speculation. In the course of this revolution an angry crowd stormed first the splendidly fenced grounds of the residence and then the castle, in order to loot it and finally set it on fire. Without the guards intervening and without affecting the nearby residential building, the castle burned down to the foundation walls in the area of ​​the north wing and central wing, the south wing was only damaged. Duke Charles II fled Braunschweig that evening and never returned. At the request of the Braunschweiger Magistrate, which acted instead of the inactive State Ministry, his brother Wilhelm followed him two days later as regent. Karl sanctioned this on September 20th in the hope of being able to return. After the German Bundestag recognized Wilhelm on December 2nd and Karl was declared incapable of governing in February 1831 , the provincial estates paid homage to Wilhelm as Duke of Braunschweig on April 25, 1831. He ruled until his death on October 18, 1884.

New construction of the castle

Parade in front of the Residenzschloss, oil painting around 1855

The Brunswick court builder Carl Theodor Ottmer , who had been trained in the environment of Karl Friedrich Schinkel in Berlin, now received the order to plan and build a new palace. The construction plans were approved on May 15, 1831, and the groundbreaking ceremony took place on June 23 of the same year. The foundation stone for this new building was laid on March 26, 1833 . The three-winged, U-shaped building, facing west with the front, was first completed in December 1837 with the completion of the ducal private rooms in the north wing. The representative rooms in the main and south wings were completed between 1838 and 1841, so that the entire building was completed on March 21, 1841 and inaugurated with a theater performance in the south wing. As a whole, however, the palace remained a torso, since Duke Wilhelm prohibited further expansion in 1839. The three-row colonnades in the form of two quarter arches on the side of the large castle square as a connection with Bohlweg, and the small two-row colonnades around the castle garden to the east, were eliminated. Many parts of the architectural ornamentation on the west side and the quadriga on the castle were also no longer implemented. In memory of its builder, who died in 1843, the Braunschweig Castle is also called "Ottmer Castle". In 1855, however, the Braunschweiger Quadriga was commissioned and installed above the portico in 1863.

Another fire on the night of February 24, 1865, caused by a technical defect, destroyed the north wing and the north-western part of the main building. The Quadriga was also destroyed. Until 1868, master builder Carl Wolf reconstructed the palace building with the support of Constantin Uhde , whereby the Quadriga came back to its original place in a somewhat smaller form.

In 1874 equestrian statues of the dukes Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand and Friedrich Wilhelm were erected on the Schlossplatz .

The Brunswick Quadriga

The 2nd Brunonia with Quadriga around 1899
Middle wing of the palace with triumphal gate, portico, gable field and equestrian statue of Duke Carl Wilhelm Ferdinand around 1900

The Quadriga with Brunonia , which was built from 1855 onwards according to a design by Ernst Rietschel and crowns the central wing of the palace , was made by the Brunswick ore caster and copper driver Georg Howaldt . The first group with a height of 9.80 m only existed from November 21 to February 23, the second quadriga with a height of 8.30 m and thus lower than the first group was more durable. It existed from the fall of 1868 until the early 1950s. It was the only Quadriga in Germany that survived the Second World War almost unscathed, although no measures were taken to protect it during the war. It was only destroyed by non-ferrous metal thieves after the end of the war. Its remains - the iron skeleton frames that indicate all forms - were scrapped when the castle was demolished in 1960. In the course of the construction of the castle arcades and the extensive reconstruction of the residential castle, the Quadriga was built for the third time from 2006 to 2008 on the basis of an original Rietschel model, which was preserved in Dresden's Albertinum on a scale of 1: 3. This was erected on October 23, 2008 on the middle part of the new castle.

The residence between 1884 and 1913

When Wilhelm , the Brunswick Duke of Guelph, died on October 18, 1884 without a legitimate heir, the government of Brunswick fell to the representative throne council of three leading ministers of the State Ministry and from October 21, 1885 to a foreign regent. Since the German Empire and Prussia did not see the “federal loyalty” of the rightful heir, Crown Prince Ernst-August of Hanover , guaranteed, he was to inherit the branch line in Braunschweig. Because Ernst August maintained his claim to the former Kingdom of Hanover , which had been annexed by Prussia in 1866 after the lost Austro-Prussian war. Hanover had stood on Austria's side. Albrecht of Prussia resided in the castle as regent until his death on September 13, 1906 and then from May 28, 1907 to Johann Albrecht zu Mecklenburg until November 1, 1913.

It was only through the marriage of Duke Ernst August III. With Princess Viktoria Luise von Prussia , daughter of Kaiser Wilhelm II. , and through the reconciliation between Hohenzollern and Welfen that came with it , another Welf ascended the Brunswick throne on November 1, 1913 and moved into the Brunswick residential palace.

The castle in the 20th century

The building itself remained unchanged during this time and was the seat of the House of Braunschweig-Lüneburg until November 8, 1918 . As the November Revolution spread in Braunschweig, Duke Ernst-August was forced to abdicate that day . He handed over the business of government to the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council headed by the Spartacist August Merges and shortly afterwards left Braunschweig with his family to first go to Karlsruhe and from there to Austrian exile in Gmunden .

The former residential palace then became the headquarters of the workers 'and soldiers' council. From the spring of 1919, the furnishings and furnishings that were deemed useless and of little value were sold until the summer of 1922. Submission to the state offices in Braunschweig up to the "legation in Berlin" dragged on until the end of 1919. Some things had also been stolen during the time of the headquarters of the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council. On March 7, 1920 the first museum was set up in the castle, in which the most valuable pieces of equipment from the former ducal rule were to be kept. By balancing from 1925 to the former ducal house 1,926 additional precious furniture and almost all the paintings went to the Richmond Palace and after Schloss Blankenburg over and thus the property of Guelph.

In addition to the use of the 1st northwest floor as a palace museum, the building also contained the "Small House" of the Braunschweig State Theater in the large ballroom, the Natural History Museum in the garden hall, the institutes of the Technical University of Braunschweig on the 2nd floor, in the south wing, probably on the 2nd floor , a gallery for modern art (founded by Otto Ralfs ), parts of the public library and the state tax office.

In front of the castle in 1931 the marches at the large Gau meeting of the National Socialists and their combat units SA and SS took place in front of their leader Adolf Hitler .

The castle as an SS junker school

Parade of the National Socialists in front of the palace (1931)
Arm band for members of the SS Junkerschule Braunschweig from 1935

After these regional functions were outsourced from the summer of 1934 and the corresponding interior renovations, the building housed one of the two SS Junker schools established in National Socialist Germany for military and ideological training and the training of future SS officers from June 29, 1935 . During the Second World War , the castle was badly damaged several times in Allied bombing raids.

Demolition of the castle

Demolition work in 1960

After the end of the war, the building was not secured against weather influences, only the area was fenced. In 1955 , the newly founded state of Lower Saxony, as the legal successor to the state of Braunschweig, transferred the castle ruins to the city of Braunschweig, with the condition that they either repair them within five years or have them torn down.

Large parts of the Braunschweig population were in favor of rebuilding; there were already quite detailed plans to convert the castle into a town hall with cinemas and restaurants. Due to the situation in post-war Braunschweig (clearing of rubble not yet completed, limited financial resources, missing apartments, relocation and new construction of the main station ), only security measures were carried out on the building structure of the palace, but no further measures were initiated with reference to lack of money. On December 21, 1959, the SPD , ruling with an absolute majority in Braunschweig, and led by the then Lord Mayor Martha Fuchs , finally succeeded in bringing about the decision of the Braunschweig City Council to demolish the Braunschweig Palace with a majority of two votes.

A citizens' initiative collected signatures against the demolition. Monument conservationists ( Kurt Seeleke , Oskar Karpa ), the Braunschweigische Landesverein, the Faculty of Building at the Technical University of Braunschweig , the Art History Society from Hanover, the Koldewey Society , the GDR Academy of Arts and numerous personalities, including Viktoria Luise , protested against the demolition of Prussia . However, these protests were unsuccessful.

The demolition work began on March 18, 1960, despite ongoing protests from the population. The high point of the protests was a demonstration initiated by Richard Borek on April 23, 1960. At the end of July 1960, the demolition was complete. The removal of the rubble was delayed until mid-August due to the quality of the masonry. Expert opinions were thus confirmed, which had indicated a good two thirds of the building structure of the castle ruins that could be rebuilt. On the site of the demolished building, the palace park was expanded from 1961 to 1963 .

During the demolition work, as a sign of goodwill towards the opponents of the demolition, the portico , the triumphal gate and the column quartets of the corner projections - in contrast to the other palace wings - were not torn down and shredded, but rather rel Outstanding parts such as the figures of the gable field were kept in the municipal building yard on Ludwigsstraße, in the former Heinrich-der-Löwe ​​barracks and later also on the area of ​​the Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum Hinter Egidien. Four column capitals were erected in 1974 in a water basin in what would later become the palace park. The rest of the portico was transported by truck to the later site of the allotment garden association Holzenkamp on Madamenweg , which was set up here from 1967 , and tipped there, where it was buried in a 45 by 30 meter clay pit from 1960 to 2004. The exact location could be found again during the planned reconstruction with the help of two drawings made by the city. Many perceived the demolition of the castle as a loss of Brunswick identity.

Proponents of the demolition, such as Martha Fuchs, saw a show of force in the castle by the former ruling Guelphs, who, after several failed attempts, had conquered the city in 1671 against stubborn resistance from the citizens and had a dominant building erected as a central residence. Last but not least, the use of the castle as an SS Junk School also contributed to declaring this era ended and eliminated through the demolition. Under no circumstances wanted the palace any more, but rather the “green lung” in the city center, surrounded on three sides by multi-lane streets, and a new town hall near the main train station.

The time after the demolition

After the demolition work was completed, the palace park was laid out on the grounds of the palace and the adjacent palace garden, which was used as a public park from 1963. In its southern half there was a large parking lot and with the ruins of the castle shed the last part of the castle area. In 1967 this remnant was also eliminated. The palace park was expanded to almost four hectares in 1973/1974 and was given its typical floor plan in 1976 with the construction of the Horten underground car park and the Georg-Eckert-Strasse opening.

In addition to children's playgrounds, the palace park also offered a small reading room, later used as an ice cream parlor, an outdoor chess area and the opportunity to be in the middle of the city center in the countryside. In the decade before its removal, a growing drug scene emerged in some parts of the park .

Reconstruction, new building and "castle arcades"

New construction of the castle in June 2006

Planning and protests against the castle and arcade construction

On July 5, 2004, the City Council of Braunschweig decided with a majority of one vote to sell the approximately 25,000 square meter property to major Hamburg investor ECE Projektmanagement . The aim was to build a shopping center , the “Schloss-Arkaden”, on the grounds of the castle park, to largely reconstruct the facade of the Ottmer building using the preserved original stones and to set up culturally usable rooms as part of the new castle building. ECE Projektmanagement paid the city of Braunschweig around 35 million euros for the property, of which the city spent around eleven million euros on building the facade.

As before the demolition of the castle, there were numerous protests by sections of the population, citizens' groups and retailers, both in the run-up to this decision and after it, who criticized the imminent destruction of the castle park on the one hand and the desolation of the city center at the expense of local companies on the other feared. The project was also viewed rather critically by the national press and the architectural trade press; there was even talk of “Disneylandization” in view of the external facade and the atypical use.

Accompanied by protests, construction work began on May 18, 2005 by felling trees and clearing all of the park's greenery. The night before, a site fence had been drawn around the entire site.

The new Building

Facade front with equestrian statues in August 2007
Transition from the reconstructed to the modern facade part of the castle arcades

The groundbreaking ceremony took place on July 13, 2005. The foundation stone was laid on November 2, 2005. The topping-out ceremony was on June 27, 2006. On August 26, 2006, the portico and west facade were inaugurated with great public participation. On March 29, 2007 the “Schloss-Arkaden” shopping center was opened. On May 6, 2007, the residential palace and its cultural facilities were opened to the public with a folk festival.

The new castle was built on the historic site, but it had to be moved a few meters from the original location to the north because otherwise a corner of the castle would have been too close to Georg-Eckert-Straße. The differences between the original and the new building are greater in the interior of the palace, which is now largely used as a shopping center. The former inner courtyard of the Ottmer building was provided with a glass roof and is part of the shopping center. The modern new “Schloss-Arkaden” building is adjacent to the new residential palace to the north-west. Its volume is around three times the size of the palace. A connection of the building takes place in the inner courtyard of the palace, where half of the three-sided shop zone is pushed into the palace building. The original dimensions of the inner courtyard and the entanglement of the building can be seen above the glass roof of the inner courtyard. The palace and palace arcades are connected on the east side of the palace side wings by short transitional facades. The former back of the castle with the characteristic rotunda is missing . On the east side at the interface to the center, the north and south wings were supplemented by two narrow, suggested east facades in order to emphasize the independence of the castle building from the center.

The basis of the planning work was about 60 plans of the palace construction from 1833/1835 from the construction office Carl Theodor Ottmer as well as numerous historical photos and palace view cards. 650 old stones that had been stored in various places in the city, some of them by private individuals, were rebuilt according to demolition plans from 1960. In the central wing with portico and triumphal gate, the proportion of old stone is around 90 percent, in the corner projections around 50 percent. Like the old one, the new castle facade was built up as a self-supporting structure in front of a core: now in front of a concrete core, in 1833 it was a brick wall core; like back then with iron anchors - today made of stainless steel - connected to the core against tipping. Numerous old stones could not be built because they were damaged. They were brought to Querum during the construction period , where they are still stored today.

The new palace will continue to be called "Palace" or "Residenzschloss". In total, it offers 16,500 square meters of floor space, 13,300 square meters of which are used by the city for cultural purposes. The lettable area of ​​the entire building is 55,481 square meters, the retail area of ​​the shopping center 34,491 square meters. There are also 7,263 square meters of lettable ancillary space in the shopping center area. The retail shops and restaurants are located in the vestibule of the castle, in the former roofed-over inner courtyard and in the modern extension. The shopping center has around 150 shops and 20 restaurants on three levels. The castle facade measures 116 meters in width and 20.9 meters in height (higher in the middle part), the two side wings are each 60 meters long. The new ashlar consists of Reinhardtsdorfer sandstone from Saxony and partly from Hohenzollernpark sandstone from Poland. The portico and the corner projections , on the other hand, largely consist of original elements from the Ottmer building. As the main entrance, the portico provides access to the shopping center, while the corner projections lead to the cultural center.

The new Quadriga

History of the castle since 2005

13,300 square meters of the building were rented by the city for cultural purposes for 1.2 million euros annually for 30 years. As in the 1920s and 1930s, the Braunschweig City Library and the Braunschweig City Archives as well as the cultural administration and cultural institute and the palace museum are located in the palace . On May 6, 2007, the residential palace was officially opened to the public. The final furnishing of the rooms and the relocation of the municipal institutions took place on May 14, 2007. On June 23, 2007 the official opening of the cultural institutions took place.

The equestrian statues from the years 1869/74, which were erected in front of the palace, damaged in the war and restored several times , showing the dukes Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand and Friedrich Wilhelm - near the southern library entrance - were on Kurt-Schumacher-Straße at the beginning of the 1970s Been moved to the south end of the Lion Wall . Since July 3, 2007, they have been back in their original location in front of the Residenzschloss.

On October 23, 2008, the third version of the Braunschweiger Quadriga with the Brunonia - the city and state patroness of the Duchy and State of Braunschweig - found its place above the portico according to the plans of Carl Theodor Ottmer. It was cast in the DBA Emil Kosicki foundry in Komorniki near Posen and is 9.5 meters high. A staircase richly illustrated on the history of the Quadriga and the castle on the right of the portico enables a visit to the Quadriga on the platform and the view of the city. With the Quadriga, the castle reaches a height of around 37 meters. In 2010 the castle and the castle arcades were sold by Credit Suisse to Deka Immobilien for around 250 million euros .

In April 2011, the palace museum in the left side wing was opened to the public in the presence of Heinrich Prince of Hanover . It shows original furnishings from the old residence in ten rooms, which reflect the court apartments from the time of the palace builder Duke Wilhelm von Braunschweig between 1840 and 1870. The cost of setting up the museum was just under three million euros. The sponsor of the museum is the "Braunschweig Residenzschloss Foundation" founded in July 2010.

Awards

  • 2009: Peter Joseph Krahe Prize

literature

  • The ducal residence palace in Braunschweig . In: Illustrirte Zeitung . No. 29 . J. J. Weber, Leipzig January 13, 1844, p. 43-44 ( books.google.de ).
  • Bernd Wedemeyer: The former residential palace in Braunschweig. Documentation about the building and its demolition in 1960. 3rd, expanded and revised edition. Borek, Braunschweig 1993, ISBN 3-87091-000-3 .

Web links

Commons : Braunschweiger Schloss  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b The history of the Braunschweig Castle. on: braunschweig.de
  2. ↑ Klaus-Dieter Wille (ed.): The fire of the Braunschweig castle on February 23, 1865. An eyewitness report. In: The Herald. Quarterly for heraldry, genealogy, and allied sciences. New series Volume 19, Vol. 58, Issue 3–4, 2015, ISSN  0018-0793 , pp. 230–238.
  3. ^ Elmar Arnhold, Sándor Kotyrba: Classicism in Braunschweig. Arnhold & Kotyrba, Braunschweig 2010, ISBN 978-3-942712-09-5 , p. 51.
  4. ↑ Bernd Wedemeyer, Helena Horn: On detours into the castle. Findings and their story (s). Braunschweig Castle Museum, Weidmann / Post, Braunschweig May 2012, introductory text.
  5. ↑ Drinking, smoking weed, coke - Braunschweig drug scene. ( Memento from May 30, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) In: Subway. 04, 2004.
  6. ↑ a b c Michael Zajonz: Fake and Facade. In: Der Tagesspiegel . January 13, 2007, accessed August 8, 2012.
  7. ↑ Schlossparkfreunde Braunschweig
  8. ↑ With one vote majority. (PDF; 6.3 MB). In: Construction World. January 9, 2004.
  9. ↑ Urban staging. (PDF; 1.1 MB). In: Deutsche Bau Zeitung. 4, 2004, pp. 52-57.
  10. ^ Lawsuits against Disneylandization. on: taz.de , February 17, 2004.
  11. ↑ Historical-synoptic comparison of the old and the new castle location 1938/2010
  12. ↑ Floor plan , accessed on August 8, 2012.
  13. ↑ Henning Noske: Castle - the puzzling trace of the stones. In: Wolfsburger Nachrichten . June 3, 2017, no page number
  14. ↑ a b Report on the 2010 transaction ( memento of February 4, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (report on the transaction) at retail real estate.wordpress.com
  15. ↑ Submission of the Council decision (PDF file; 2.1 MB). Retrieved August 9, 2012.
  16. ↑ Gerda Schirrmeister, Dietmar Reinsch: Braunschweig: Route to the natural stones. In: Johannes H. Schroeder (Ed.): Stones in German cities. 18 discovery routes in architecture and city history. Self-published Geoscientists in Berlin and Brandenburg eV, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-928651-13-4 , p. 122.
  17. ^ Robert von Lucius : Braunschweig. The key to the lock. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. April 11, 2011.
  18. ^ Braunschweig Report. Issue 45, November 4, 2009, p. 3.

Coordinates: 52 ° 15 ′ 47 "  N , 10 ° 31 ′ 38"  E