Alterlaa Castle

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Alterlaa Castle, street front (2006)
Alterlaa Castle

The Castle Alterlaa , including Castle Erlaa , is a castle in the 23rd district of Vienna Liesing .

history

Erlaa Castle (around 1900)

The manor house Erlaa was first mentioned in a document in 1244. As can be seen in an engraving by Georg Matthäus Vischer from 1672, the complex had already been expanded into a large four-winged castle in the 17th century. The palace chapel was consecrated in 1726 by Archbishop Sigismund von Kollonitz of Vienna . At that time Alterlaa was owned by the Counts of Seillern. In 1765 Georg Adam von Starhemberg acquired the castle. From 1766 to 1770 it was rebuilt in the late baroque - classicist style, presumably according to plans by the court architect Nikolaus Pacassi . The palace park was also laid out under Georg Adam von Starhemberg. In 1805 and 1809 Napoléon Bonaparte's troops were billeted.

Jerome Bonaparte , King of Westphalia, Emperor Napoleon's youngest brother, lost his Kingdom of Westphalia after the Battle of Leipzig and was granted asylum in Austria. He acquired Alt-Erlaa Castle from Prince Starhemberg through his chamberlain, Baron Linden. In 1817 he moved in with a large retinue. At the instigation of Metternich , for whom Erlaa was too close to Schönbrunn, after a few years he had to give up his new domicile again and move to Schönau , which he had acquired from Baron Peter von Braun in exchange for Erlaa. Braun had the baroque park converted into an English landscape garden with cascades, temples and artificial ruins, which soon became a sight in the vicinity of Vienna.

In 1848 the troops of Joseph Jelačić von Bužim were quartered in the castle. After 1880, a part of the castle was used as a private hospital for the poor. In the last quarter of the 19th century, the property was owned by Duke (Anton Günther Friedrich) Elimar von Oldenburg (1844–1895) (son of August I, Grand Duke of Oldenburg ), from whom it (after his death in the castle) was transferred to the Widow ( morganatic ) Freiin Nathalie Vogel von Friesenhof and Brogyan (1854–1937) left.

In 1918 the Alterlaa Castle came to the landowner Johannes Brenner Freiherr von Felsach (1884–1970), from the noble family Brenner von Felsach , whose descendants are still the owners of the castle today. Another renovation took place in 1919/20, in the course of which the front wing and the palace chapel were demolished and, among other things, the court of honor and the wall on the front were built.

Location and architecture

main building

Forgotten monument

The castle is located at Erlaaer Strasse 54 between the old town center of what is now the Erlaa district and the Alt-Erlaa residential park built in the 1970s and 1980s . A protected chestnut avenue, today's Gregorygasse , leads to the palace in the direction of the imperial Schönbrunn Palace . The two-storey main building has a high hipped roof and two side wings grouped around a courtyard. In the middle wing there is an outside staircase on both the courtyard and the side facing the palace gardens. Groin vaults from the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries have been preserved on the ground floor . The wood paneling in some of the rooms on the upper floor dates from around 1770 and shows rocaille carvings.

Castle Park

The extensive Erlaaer Schlosspark connects to the main building in the south. It goes back to an English landscape garden laid out around 1770 , the basic structure of which has been preserved despite a redesign in the 19th century and is one of the oldest parks of this type in Vienna. In the park there are artificially created watercourses with stepped waterfalls ( cascades ) and a grotto. An artificial ruin, a round temple, several stone benches and remains of bridges also date back to the 18th century.

On the back at Kugelmanngasse there is a "forgotten monument" just behind the fence. The name Kugelmanngasse was derived from a former stone statue of Atlas , who carried the celestial sphere and was therefore popularly called "Kugelmann". If you look closely at the forgotten monument, you can see a figure with his hands up - a large atlas with the globe, as Primo Calvi wrote in 1901.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Entry about Alt Erlaa on Burgen-Austria
  2. ↑ Taufbuch Perchtoldsdorf, Vol. 16, p. 227
  3. ↑ Ferdinand Opll: Liesing: History of the 23rd Viennese district and its old places . Jugend und Volk, Vienna 1982, ISBN 3-7141-6217-8 , pp. 27–31; P. 90
  4. ^ Dehio-Handbuch Wien. X. to XIX. and XXI. to XXIII. District . Edited by Federal Monuments Office. Anton Schroll, Vienna 1996, ISBN 3-7031-0693-X , p. 701

Web links

Commons : Alterlaa Castle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ This Duchess of Oldenburg left parts of the palace to the composer / pianist Anton Rückauf (1855–1903) ( who came to Vienna from Prague in 1878 ), who died on September 19, 1903 on the property. - See: I (ngrid) Fuchs:  Rückauf, Anton. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 9, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1988, ISBN 3-7001-1483-4 , p. 319. as well as a small chronicle. (...) † Anton Rückauf. In:  Neue Freie Presse , Abendblatt, No. 14033/1903, September 21, 1903, p. 7 middle. (Online at ANNO ). Template: ANNO / Maintenance / nfp.

Coordinates: 48 ° 8 ′ 52 "  N , 16 ° 18 ′ 23"  E