Übigau Castle
The Übigau Castle is a baroque palace in Dresden . It was built from 1724 to 1726 on behalf of Count Jacob Heinrich von Flemming , but was acquired by Elector August the Strong shortly before its completion . In the middle of the 19th century, under Johann Andreas Schubert, it was the administrative headquarters of the mechanical engineering company Übigau and is therefore closely linked to the construction of the Saxonia , the first locomotive built outside of England . In the 1920s it served as the headquarters of the neighboring Übigau shipyard .
Übigau Castle is located directly on the Elbe in what is now the Übigau district . It was located in the former world cultural heritage of Dresden Elbe Valley . The urgently needed renovation of the cultural monument , which was planned by various owners from the 1990s onwards , has not yet been carried out, so that the building is becoming increasingly dilapidated. The building is open on certain occasions and there is an inn in the park during the summer months.
location
Located in the northwest of the Saxon state capital, the castle is located a little south of the historic village center of the Übigau district known as Altübigau , about three kilometers from the inner old town . It stands between Werftstrasse and the right bank of the Elbe, with which it is connected through the castle garden via an outside staircase , on a plot of land of around 8,200 m² at the address Rethelstrasse 47. From here there is a view of the broad Elbe meadows on the other bank to the Pieschener Winkel, to the Ostragehege and also to the grounds of the Alberthafen on the opposite side of the river . In the immediate vicinity there are industrial buildings in a south-westerly direction, some of which, however, are also not used. The overall urban environment affects the effect of the once free-standing building. Like the rest of Übigau, the castle belongs to the statistical district of Mickten and with this in turn to the district of Pieschen . The western end of the former world cultural heritage of Dresden Elbe Valley is roughly at the level of the castle .
Construction
The Übigau Castle was built in baroque form within two years at the beginning of the 18th century . Due to his early death, it is the only completed building in Dresden by the court architect Johann Friedrich Eosander von Göthe , who also worked on the Berlin City Palace and had only recently been called to the royal seat of Saxony. Even before the completion of the two-storey building, the plan was changed, as a result of which the existing core building was expanded on the garden side with two arched halls one above the other, of which the one on the ground floor remained closed. On the other hand, seven of the nine axes of the castle on the upper floor open in loggias towards the Elbe, so that this facade is reminiscent of the Italian Renaissance . The other windows have parapets and are separated from one another by pilasters . However, as a result of vandalism and advanced deterioration, they have all been barely boarded up since the 1990s. On the garden side, there is also a dwelling in the middle above the upper floor . In between, on the eaves , the two seated Hercules and Mars line a Saxon - Polish coat of arms. On the ground floor there are rustic-style plaster strips. The originally planned side wings were not realized.
Since the time it was built, the complex has had a lavishly decorated French baroque garden . The ensemble included two gatehouses, four pavilions , a farm building, an orangery and a fountain. However, they all fell victim to the industrial use of the site in the 19th century, as did large parts of the once rich sculptural jewelry by an unknown creator. A two-winged flight of stairs leads from the garden, which is more than five meters above the normal level of the Elbe, down to a former gondola port, which is the third landing stage after Pillnitz Castle and the Japanese Palace , the two similarly foreign-looking counterparts of Übigau Castle in Dresden courtly watercraft on the Neustadt side of the Elbe. On the opposite bank, on the old town side of the Elbe, an avenue known as the Übigauer Fährweg has been leading to the castle since 1734 as a visual axis. However, it is no longer preserved in its entire length.
history
Pleasure palace of the nobility
The Electoral Saxon Cabinet Minister, Field Marshal General and Privy Councilor Reichsgraf von Flemming , who was very wealthy and known for his sumptuous court, planned after 1720 the construction of a representative summer residence for himself outside the gates of Dresden. He chose a site on the Elbe near Übigau with a view of the royal seat. The four owners of these properties used as vineyards, Übigau farmers, were quickly expropriated.
When the building, erected between 1724 and 1726 under the direction of the Swedish-Pomeranian architect Eosander von Göthe, was about to be completed, the Saxon Elector and King of Poland Augustus the Strong acquired it for a large amount of money, which roughly equated the proceedings in the case of the Holländisches Palais (Japanese Palace), repeated a little less than a decade earlier. However, the elector himself was only very rarely personally present in Übigau. In addition, the expansion plans drawn up for the palace by the builder Zacharias Longuelune on his behalf were not implemented. However, he successfully pushed ahead with the expansion of the garden and organized glamorous festivities. On August 28, 1727, the German Empress Elisabeth , the wife of Charles VI, celebrated here . and mother of the future Empress Maria Theresa , her 36th birthday. In 1728, Friedrich Wilhelm I, the King of Prussia , paid a visit to the pleasure palace .
The son of Augustus the Strong, Friedrich August II , inherited the castle after the death of his father in February 1733. However, since he was not interested in it, he gave it to his minister, Count Sułkowski, in recognition of his many years of service. Following the fall of Sułkowski in February 1738, which was largely driven by his rival Count Brühl , Friedrich August II bought the castle back. In the following years it was mainly the elector's sons who used the castle as a starting point for hunts in the Dresden Heath . One last major event was the parade of the Saxon Army between Übigau and the Wilder Mann, three kilometers further north, with various training maneuvers in 1753; the castle served as a pleasure camp. The last visit by a member of the court is mentioned in 1770.
Since the Albertines had now completely lost interest in the castle, the castle gardener then set up a restaurant that was quickly popular with the residents of the surrounding area . Nevertheless, the palace was still in very good condition at that time. This changed after a phase of vacancy at the beginning of the 19th century during the wars of liberation . After the Russian Tsar's Army had withdrawn from the Dresden area, which had only recently been occupied, following the Battle of Großgörschen , Napoléon's troops occupied the Saxon royal seat and the surrounding area in the run-up to the Battle of Dresden . Some of them were quartered in Castle Übigau between May 11 and 18, 1813 and looted or destroyed the interior. The Saxon royal family finally had the now neglected castle auctioned off in 1831.
Center of the German steam engine and inland shipbuilding
At this auction, the Dresden council carpenter Paul Siemen was awarded the contract and renovated the building. This led to a second bloom.
Just five years later, in the early days of the Industrial Revolution , Johann Andreas Schubert was one of the founders of the Actien-Maschinenbau-Verein Übigau , whose production building was located directly north of the Übigau Castle in its park. The castle acquired by the company at the time housed administrative offices on the ground floor, construction rooms and Schubert's apartment as technical director and company manager were on the upper floor . The Maschinenbauanstalt produced under his leadership primarily steam engines and boilers . In 1837 Schubert constructed the drive for Queen Maria , one of the first Upper Elbe steamships , in Übigau , followed a year later by the boiler and engine of the steamship Prince Albert . Around the same time he built the first functional steam locomotive constructed in Germany , the Saxonia , which was later used for the Leipzig-Dresden Railway . After Schubert had terminated his contract with the Actien-Maschinenbau-Verein in April 1838 and returned to his chair at the Royal Technical Educational Institute in Dresden , the company ran into economic difficulties. In 1841 it was liquidated due to a lack of orders.
After that, the Übigau Castle initially served as the administrative headquarters of various companies. From the 1840s onwards, a steam mill, a vinegar and paint, a string and a paper factory were established in the neighborhood, which finally burned down in 1875. The von Oppen family also lived in the castle between 1854 and 1886.
On the southern neighboring property was a 1877 single shipyard founded and three years later by the Elbschifffahrtsgesellschaft chain over which name to the then practiced on the same chain Marine was referring. Under the direction of the engineer Ewald Bellingrath , it was continuously expanded into one of the most important inland shipyards in Europe. The chain shipyard expanded its property to include the castle in 1886 and was incorporated into the Dresden machine factory and shipyard in Übigau in 1905 . Initially, she leased the building to an innkeeper who ran the Übigau castle tavern here from 1886 to 1921, and after the First World War she set up her administrative offices here. After the large company had to be closed in the course of the global economic crisis in 1930, the castle Übigau , now in the middle of an industrial area and owned by a property speculator , was to be demolished .
The demolition could be prevented by the fact that the Central Association for Workers Sport 1885 e. V., a Übigau workers' sports club and early forerunner of SC Borea Dresden , leased the building and made the rooms available to various organizations such as the KPD , which is why the building was known as the Red Castle in the early 1930s . After the seizure of power of the Nazis communist organizations were banned and their members Uebigauer mid June 1933 gathered in the castle and then into a concentration camp Hohnstein spent. Then the castle was again briefly empty until it temporarily as the residence of the owner of 1935 on the shipyard newly established submarine - munitions factory was used. After the end of the Second World War , this company was expropriated in 1948.
During the GDR era, the administration of VEB Dampfkesselbau Übigau was housed in the castle . To the north of the castle, the culture house belonging to the VEB TuR Dresden was built in 1954 , in which many of the greats of the GDR cultural scene once performed and which has been used as a studio by the artist Eberhard Bosslet since 2000 . During the 1970s, the palace park was the venue for a small district festival several times, but towards the end of the decade it had to be closed to the public due to vandalism. The historic Übigau castle building remained the seat of VEB Dampfkesselbau until 1990.
After the turn
Übigau Castle has been vacant since the time of political change , when the steam boiler construction company had to drastically downsize and finally moved out. A Möllner investor bought the castle from the Treuhandanstalt in 1993 to accommodate art studios, but due to a formal error, the contract had to be declared invalid afterwards. There was also a legal dispute with the son of the previous owner. In the mid-1990s, the castle was repeatedly broken into and rubbish was dumped. At the end of 1997, the investor finally withdrew his offer after four years of unsuccessful negotiations with the trust and monument protection office.
In August 1999 the Heidelberg cigar and real estate entrepreneur Dieter Schinz (1938–2009) acquired the building and planned not only a cultural use but also the furnishing of an apartment and office space. He also intended to restore the baroque gardens true to the original. In the following year he bought additional properties in the area, but the renovation has not yet started. Only a few security measures have been taken on the building since then. No other interested parties came to the train. Even the elevation of the castle property to part of the world cultural heritage of Dresden Elbe Valley in 2004 did not change the status quo .
In 2004, the US buyers Helga and Jack van Horn visited the site. But it was not sold on. In June 2005, the citizens' initiative Schloss Übigau was founded , which was committed to the preservation and renovation of the cultural monument until it was dissolved at the end of 2009 . From 2006 to 2008 she also organized an annual Übigau castle and street festival. For the summer months of 2008, the park was reopened to the public for the first time in decades, because a beer garden opened in it. Since then, it has been operated annually in summer under the name “Sommerwirtschaft Schloss Übigau”. In the summer of 2009, after the death of the owner Schinz, the Friends of Castle Übigau for Art and Culture e. V. , who, in coordination with the principal heiress and in succession to the citizens' initiative, advocates the cultural and artistic use of the palace and its outdoor facilities and also wants to organize events himself. Plans are still in progress with the aim of renovating the building over a period of five to ten years.
The Free State and the city are not forcing the repurchase of the site, as demanded by the Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen parliamentary group, but initially only issued conditions to the real estate company to secure the monument.
At the end of 2010, Ingrid Schinz had students from the Dresden University of Applied Sciences in Dresden, under the direction of Professor Torsten Gonschorek, design concepts for future public use of the facility on the Übigau bank of the Elbe. The ideas range from a chocolate castle (café, courses and sales) to a rococo center, a dance and music school, ateliers for artists (all with summer catering) and office use. Karsten Linke, whose engineering office represents the owner, reported in March 2012 to the local advisory board (since 2018: city district council) Pieschen about these ideas.
In November 2017 there was another change of ownership. The castle building is now owned by Frank Bertram and his Bertram Grundbesitz GmbH Co. KG.
literature
- Cornelius Gurlitt : The art monuments of Dresden's surroundings, part 2: Amtshauptmannschaft Dresden-Neustadt . In: Descriptive representation of the older architectural and art monuments of the Kingdom of Saxony , Volume 26. CC Meinhold, Dresden 1904. (Digitalisat Uebigau. Das Schloss. Sheet 293 , sheet 294 , sheet 295 , sheet 296 , sheet 297 , sheet 298 , sheet 299 .)
Web links
- Übigau Castle at dresden-uebigau.de
- Übigau Castle at dresden-bilder.de
- Übigau Castle at visitdresden.net
- Castle Übigau at dresdner-stadtteile.de
- Castle Übigau in the Stadtwiki Dresden
- Übigau Castle at dresden-und-sachsen.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ hö: Landfried boss Dieter Schinz is dead . (PDF; 130 kB) In: Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung , June 22, 2009, p. 6.
- ^ Frank Philipp: Castle Übigau. Review. Übigau online, accessed on December 14, 2015.
- ^ OV: City should decide the right of first refusal for Castle Übigau . Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen parliamentary group, May 5, 2009, accessed on December 14, 2015.
- ↑ Stefan Rössel: Will Castle Übigau become a chocolate center? In: Sächsische Zeitung , November 4, 2010.
- ^ Dresden television on March 14, 2012.
- ↑ New owner of Übigau Castle invites you to the Open Monument Day 2018 - Pieschen Aktuell . In: Pieschen Aktuell . September 3, 2018 ( pieschen-aktuell.de [accessed October 8, 2018]).
Coordinates: 51 ° 4 ′ 10 " N , 13 ° 41 ′ 55" E