Ahrenthal Castle

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Aerial view of the Ahrenthal palace complex
Main building of Ahrenthal Castle

The Ahrenthal Castle , formerly Ahren Dahl called, is a moated castle in the Harbach valley between Sinzig and its district francs in Rhineland-Palatinate . Its name goes back to the Aar (= eagle), the heraldic animal of its builder, the Reich Ministerial Rolman I von Sinzig zu Ahrendahl (also called Roilman vom Turne zu Sinzig). In Prussian times it was a manor suitable for state assembly . Today the facility serves as a seminar center and can only be viewed from the outside.

history

Built on allodial property around 1330/31 as a moated castle, the complex was first mentioned in May 1331 under the name Bovendorf, when the knight Rolman I von Sinzig gave it to Archbishop Heinrich II of Virneburg as a fief . Rollmann's son Heinrich received permission from Emperor Ludwig IV in 1336 to add a bailey to his Cologne fiefdom and to fortify the complex with a drawbridge and a defensive wall . In December 1353, the imperial permit for further expansion followed. At that time the name change from Bovendorf to Ahrendahl took place gradually. From then on, the lords of the von Sinzig family named themselves only after this property. From 1356 the buildings in the outer bailey were run as imperial fiefs. Heinrich II. Von Ahrenthal (1380–1428) and his brother Salentin shared the castle property among themselves. Heinrich II died without male descendants, and so his part of the Wasserburg passed through Heinrich's daughter Margarete, who was married to Otto Heinrich von Wiltberg, to her husband's family. The common owners regulated living together in the castle in 1427 by means of a truce agreement , which also gave a little information about the appearance of the former complex. Accordingly, the medieval main building was a residential tower with five floors and a basement. Both the outer and core of the castle were secured by their own moat . Construction work was carried out on this complex in 1436 and from 1474 to 1481.

Floor plan of the main building in the 17th century

In 1512 the lords of Sinzig zu Ahrendahl died out in the male line with Kunibert, and the castle complex at that time was completely transferred to that of Wiltberg. In the 16th century they had the late medieval residential tower replaced by a three-winged, fortress-like building in the Renaissance style with four round corner towers. Parts of the previous system were included in the new building. The area of ​​the large south wing took up almost 2/3 of the total area. The building-free north side was closed off by a strong wall. The family died out with the unexpected death of Adolf von Wiltberg in 1621. Friedrich Wilhelm von Efferen is attested as the next castle owner from 1631. As early as 1617 he was able to obtain the tenant mortgage for himself, but the mortgage was not final until 14 years later. After the death of Friedrich Wilhelm in 1639, the complex came to the barons of Hillesheim , who came from the Bergisch region and were raised to the rank of imperial count in April 1712 . Ahrenthal's first owner from this family was Wilhelm von Hillesheim, who was enfeoffed with the castle on January 28, 1641. He was able to assert himself against claims by the Wiltberg family because the von Wiltbergs owed his family 2,800 thalers. It was an unpaid dowry for Friedrich Wilhelm's grandmother Anna von Carthausen, née von Wiltberg. In 1651, about half of the Renaissance main building and the tower of the brewery collapsed . Wilhelm von Hillesheim was not present that day, his wife Catharina von Syberg was probably able to save herself with their children unharmed. However, there was not enough money to rebuild, and the lords of the castle probably moved to Niederbach. The castle had not been inhabited since 1668 at the latest, because the remaining part of the residential building was now also in danger of collapsing, but a tower of the Renaissance castle still stood until the 19th century.

Ahrenthal Castle on a lithograph from around 1870

In 1428 the feudal rights over Ahrenthal went to the Elector of Trier together with a pledge over Sinzig . His successors as feudal lords were the dukes of Jülich in the 16th century. In 1702, Ahrenthal's fiefdom ended from the Duchy of Jülich , and the rule became an immediate imperial fief. In 1728 Franz Wilhelm Caspar von Hillesheim began to redesign and redesign the building. The plans for this were provided by the court architect Johann Adam Breunig from the Electoral Palatinate , and the Schwetzingen Palace was built according to his designs . The planning began as early as 1720. Two drawings by Franz Born from 1722 show the planned new buildings: A three-winged castle with octagonal pavilion towers at the corners opened with the undeveloped fourth side to a bailey in the shape of a horseshoe. The buildings were surrounded by baroque gardens . Up until the client's death in 1748, however, only the three-winged utility wing and, in some cases, the palace garden were realized from the generously planned renovation. The actual construction of the palace was no longer carried out because the further construction work by Wilhelm's son, Wilhelm Ernst Gottfried von Hillesheim, was postponed.

Since the new owner of Ahrenthal died in 1785 without any descendants, the property came to the Count von Spee family through his eldest sister Anna Elisabeth Augusta Maria through marriage in January 1756 to Ambrosius Franziskus von Spee and is still in their possession today. Ambrosius Franz resided at Schloss Heltorf , the ancestral home of his family, and therefore showed little interest in the Ahrenthal property. He was therefore only reasonably well entertained. This changed only under Wilhelm Reichsgraf von Spee. Around 1890 he had the ruinous Renaissance building torn down and the current palace building built in its place according to plans by the architects Bernhard Tüshaus and Leo von Abbema from Düsseldorf. The plan to convert Ahrenthal Castle into a family entrenchment was no longer carried out with the outbreak of the First World War .

South facade of the main building after the repair work from 2004

After the outer walls of the outer walls of the outer bailey were burned down in 1920, the buildings in the outer bailey were rebuilt, but the interior was largely abandoned. The original shape of the roofs was not rebuilt like the baroque original, but with a ridge two meters higher . From 1921 to 1923 the von Spee family invested the inflation-driven sum of three million marks to modernize the castle building and to install electricity there. In 1954 the shed , the so-called sheepfold, collapsed due to pressure from the adjacent mountain slope . When the eastern corner tower of the farm buildings collapsed on December 27, 1973, further historical building fabric was lost. The owners had the tower rebuilt in 1981. From the beginning of the 1990s, businesses were located in the outer bailey, and rooms could also be rented for events and celebrations. The castle chapel by the house was also available for weddings. In 2004, extensive renovation and restoration work began on the main building, which until then had housed six apartments. After the work was completed, some rooms on the ground floor of the manor house could also be rented for events. The palace complex has been used as a seminar center since 2011, although the riding facility in Ahrenthal, which had been in operation for some time, was retained.

description

North wing of the outer bailey
Main building of the castle, view from the northeast

The lock system consists of a three-bladed, open to the south Vorburg and a historistic manor . The buildings are surrounded by a palace park in the style of an English landscape garden , which emerged from a baroque French garden through redesign. At three of its four corners are small corner pavilions with a square floor plan and bell-shaped roof.

The core of the outer bailey dates back to the 18th century, but was changed in the 1920s. It is surrounded on three sides by silted-up moats, which are the only visible relic of the medieval predecessor complex. The single-storey wings of the outer bailey have high, slate-covered mansard roofs . The red sandstone window and door frames stand out well against the plastered and whitewashed masonry . In the north-facing, central middle wing, the corners of which are marked by two-storey square towers , there is the large, elaborately designed round arched portal in a three-axis central risalit with a crowning triangular gable . The risalit is structured vertically by pilaster strips , while cornices ensure a horizontal structure. The cornice above the portal has a stone heraldic stone.

The two-storey mansion in the neo-renaissance style stands on a castle island measuring around 36 mx 40 m, which is surrounded by a moat up to 15 meters wide. A two-arched stone bridge leads over this to the arched portal on the north side, the facade of which is divided into six axes by windows . The entrance is in the middle two axes of the house and is flanked by two columns . Above it are - carved in stone - the initials of the builder Wilhelm von Spee and the year 1890. In the attic, the two central window axes are emphasized again by a small gable structure. The two floors of the building rise on a high base and are closed off by a mansard roof. The individual floors can be clearly identified from the outside through profiled cornices. The sandstone walls are lightly plastered and have red corner blocks . This red is repeated in the stone window and door walls . On the north side there are two three-storey corner towers, which are adjoined by two side wings to the south along the narrow sides of the central building. At the southwest corner of the mansion there is a polygonal tower with a hood in the same shape as the tower floor plan. The building on the eastern side is the castle chapel in the neo-Romanesque style with a high, narrow roof turret with a bell. Its apse on the south-east corner of the building is, so to speak, the counterpart to the polygonal tower on the south-west corner. In between there is a covered terrace, which is closed on the south side with a low wall towards the moat. A bridge leads from there into the garden.

literature

  • Karl Bruchhäuser: Truth and legend about Ahrenthal Castle . In: Local calendar of the Ahrweiler district in 1953 . Rheinischer Landwirtschaftsverlag, Bonn 1954, ISSN  0342-5827 , pp. 112-115 ( online ).
  • Wolfgang Dietz: Ahrenthal Castle. Function and use through the ages . In: Heimatjahrbuch Kreis Ahrweiler 2006 . District administration, Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler 2003, ISSN  0342-5827 , pp. 129-134 ( online ).
  • Alexander Duncker : The rural residences, castles and residences of the knightly landowners in the Prussian monarchy along with the royal family, house, Fideicommiss and Schattull goods . Volume 13, Berlin 1873/1874 ( digitized version ).
  • Joachim Gerhardt: The art monuments of the Ahrweiler district. (= Die Kunstdenkmäler der Rheinprovinz , Volume 17, Department 1.) L. Schwann, Düsseldorf 1938, pp. 637–645.
  • Günter Haffke: Ahrenthal from the beginning to the middle of the 17th century . In: Jürgen Haffke, Bernhard Koll: Sinzig and its districts. Yesterday and today . Sinzig 1983, p. 118 ff.
  • Matthias Röcke: Castles and palaces on the Rhine and Ahr . ARE Verlag, Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler 1991, ISBN 3-9802508-3-0 , pp. 25-27.
  • Roderich Graf von Spee: Ahrental Castle from the middle of the 17th century to the present . In: Jürgen Haffke, Bernhard Koll: Sinzig and its districts. Yesterday and today . Sinzig 1983, pp. 127-136.
  • Alexander Thon, Manfred Czerwinski: The most beautiful castles in Germany. Part 2: Middle Rhine Valley from Rüdesheim to Bonn . CD-ROM, Superior, Kaiserslautern 2003, ISBN 3-936216-08-8 .

Web links

Commons : Schloss Ahrenthal  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b c A. Thon, M. Czerwinski: The most beautiful castles in Germany Part 2: Middle Rhine Valley from Rüdesheim to Bonn 2003.
  2. a b c W. Dietz: Ahrenthal Castle. Function and use through the ages .
  3. a b K. Bruchhäuser: Truth and legend about Ahrenthal Castle .
  4. a b c d e f Entry by Jens Friedhoff about Schloss Ahrenthal in the scientific database " EBIDAT " of the European Castle Institute, accessed on September 12, 2016.
  5. a b c d e f History of the castle (PDF file; 26 kB)
  6. G. Haffke: Ahrenthal from the beginning to the middle of the 17th century. 1983, p. 125.
  7. a b Information according to the information board on site
  8. ^ R. Graf von Spee: Ahrental Castle from the middle of the 17th century to the present. 1983, p. 133.
  9. a b Information according to the property map for Sinzig available online at geoportal.rlp.de

Coordinates: 50 ° 31 '13.3 "  N , 7 ° 14' 48.9"  E