Amerang Castle

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View of Amerang Castle from the north

Amerang Castle is a castle in Amerang in the Upper Bavarian district of Rosenheim . It stands on a steep rock cone south of the village and shapes its silhouette.

Its roots lie in an 11th century castle, which was converted and expanded by the Scaliger in the 16th century to a castle with borrowings from the Italian Renaissance . The inner courtyard of the palace, with its three-story arcades, is one of the oldest early Renaissance buildings in Bavaria. As a special feature, the almost circular system in its 40 interior rooms does not have a single right angle.

The castle has been the residence of the baronial von Crailsheim family for almost 200 years , who also use it as a hotel , restaurant and event location. Some of the interiors of the listed building can be viewed on guided tours.

history

Beginnings

As early as the 11th century there was a castle at the present location , which is first documented for 1072, because a Pato de Amirangen is mentioned in a deed of donation from that year . The presumably wooden structures of this first complex have now completely disappeared. Descendants of Pato, the Edelfreien to Amerang and Burgschleinitz, probably built the still partially preserved today massive dungeon . When this family died out in 1260, they were inherited by a noble family who called themselves from Amerang to Amerang. Until around 1330 the small complex belonged to the Lords of Amerang. The last male member of this family was Nicholas II of Amerang. He presumably appointed his two nephews Seifried and Otto von Laiming as heirs, because his sister Anna had married into the house of the Laiming tournament bailiffs. After Nikolaus' death in 1330, the Laimingers ruled Amerang from then on. Since that time the rule was called Hofmark , which held the lower jurisdiction until the middle of the 19th century. After the family split into two lines in 1404, both branches shared the castle. Their status as Ganerbeburg was documented for a long time by a mighty transverse wall which divided the complex in two halves. The Laiminger changed the complex at the end of the 15th century to a late Gothic residential and defensive building in the form of a Randhausburg .

Renaissance to modern times

Amerang Castle on an engraving by Michael Wening , around 1700

The last male Laiminger on Amerang was Christoph. In 1512 he had the castle chapel expanded. When his daughter Margaretha married Johann della Scala the Elder in 1497, after Christoph's death in 1542 the castle came to the Scaliger, a noble family from Verona . Its members also called themselves "from the ladder", because the Italian scala means ladder in German. After the complex was probably destroyed by fire in the Landshut War of Succession in 1504/05, the most important building measures in the history of the castle followed during the 16th century. Around 1570, under Johann's grandson Hans Warmund von the manager, the facility was rebuilt in a Renaissance style. This included aligning all building roofs to an even height, standardizing the outer facade and building three-story arcades in the inner courtyard, for which Amerang Castle is known.

In the 16th century the castle came to the Counts of Lamberg , because Hans Warmund's heir, Johanna, married Georg Sigmund from this Austrian count family in 1607. During her time as the owner, it survived the Thirty Years' War unscathed. They left the complex structurally largely unchanged, only a small bell tower on the east wing comes from them. In addition, in 1805 they had the keep cut to the level of the adjacent buildings due to the dilapidation of the upper floors. The castle came from the Lambergs in 1821 by marriage to the current owner family, the Barons of Crailsheim, whose family is still the owner today. The von Crailsheim had the neck ditch filled in the same year . In 1887 numerous windows were enlarged.

Since the 20th century

During canal excavations between 1961 and 1963, the medieval walls and the remains of a Romanesque portal were found under the castle courtyard . From 1963 to 1967 the owners had the cellar vaults , some of which were made of carved tuff , restored . At the beginning of the 1990s, the 19th century castle roof put such a strain on the statics of the facility that in 1992 cracks and cracks appeared in the masonry and the arcades in the castle courtyard threatened to collapse. As a result, access to the courtyard was blocked and the castle closed to visitors. With the help of public funds, the castle was 1995-1998 for 6.6 million DM from scratch renovated and saved from ruin. The Amerang Castle Association, founded in 1974, makes an important contribution to all indoor and outdoor measures .

description

Amerang Castle stands on a wooded hill, which is protected on three sides by brook gorges up to 35 meters deep. The fourth side in the area of ​​the drawbridge was previously secured by a neck ditch. The four-wing main castle has an almost circular floor plan and has retained its defensive character from the outside despite redesigning in the early modern period . Its simple and unadorned exterior still looks defiant and repellent today. The oldest building structure of the castle is estimated based on the dating of some oak beams to the period between 1370 and 1450.

On the southern slope of the Schlossberg is the Amerang Castle Arboretum with a collection of trees from all over the world. Krafft Freiherr von Crailsheim laid the foundation stone for this in the middle of the 20th century. On the opposite side is the educational fruit garden of the Rosenheim district. Both are open to the public.

The entrance to the castle is a small vestibule on the east wing, above whose portal the coat of arms of the Counts of Lamberg with the Scaliger emblazoned in the middle. The eastern part of the castle, together with the south wing, forms the oldest part of the castle. There are - integrated into the eastern part of the castle - the remains of the square keep with its meter-thick walls, which enclose a supposed dungeon in the basement . The late Gothic castle chapel, which was renovated in 1997 and dedicated to St. George , is located on the first floor of the former tower . Your altar stands in a bay window that rests on two hewn granite blocks . A chapel is mentioned for Amerang as early as 1245 . The current one was consecrated in 1513 and has ornamental wall and ceiling paintings that probably date from the 15th and 16th centuries. The rest of the furnishings in the room, which is covered by a low net vault , date from the Baroque period . One side altar with depictions of St. George and St. Sigismund was possibly donated by Georg Sigmund von Lamberg and would therefore come from the period from 1600 to 1632.

Through the entrance hall, the visitor arrives in a trapezoidal inner courtyard, which has multi-storey arcades on three of its sides. The castle is particularly known for this arcade courtyard, as it is one of the most important of its kind north of the Alps. The corridors of the three-storey arcades have groin vaults , which are supported on the ground floor by columns made of stone with imitated Romanesque cube capitals . On the upper floors, the arches are supported by red marble columns of Tuscan order . The material may come from the Ruhpolding area. The storeys are accessed through a stair tower with an eight-sided onion dome in the west wing, which, like the northern wing, dates from the Scaliger era and is thus the younger part of the castle. The castle courtyard thus has similarities to those of Schwindegg and Tüßling .

Further art-historically remarkable interiors are the three- pillar hall , whose name comes from the three pillars that support its vault, the so-called knight's hall with frescoes from around 1570 and several salons with furnishings in the Baroque, Rococo and Wilhelminian style .

Todays use

Premiere of Tosca in Schloss Amerang (2015)

Ortholf Freiherr von Crailsheim has been the lord of the Ameranger castle since 1995, who lives and manages the castle together with his wife Giulia. The couple opens the facility to the public. Guided tours through the castle museum offer an insight into the history of the aristocratic residence. The old underground cellar of the palace complex is used for gastronomy purposes.

Several rooms of the castle can be rented for celebrations and events. In addition to the inner courtyard, the three-pillar hall , the Renaissance cellar, the Scaliger room , the Gothic cellar, the baroque Lambergsaal and the castle chapel are available. The owners offer overnight stays in nine rooms and suites .

The summer concerts have been held in the palace's arcade courtyard since 1965. There is also an annual castle Christmas, a garden festival and a knight festival lasting several days. There, the visitor is offered a camp life with historical groups, a medieval market bustle with traders and craftsmen, concerts on several stages, a fire show, knight fights and a field battle.

The castle includes the stud farm of Amerang, which is dedicated to breeding Pura Raza Españolas and was awarded the title “Mejor ganaderia de Alemania 2015”.

literature

  • Jolanda Engelbrecht, Krafft Freiherr von Crailsheim: Amerang Castle. Special print from the Heimatbuch for the 1200th anniversary of Amerang . Amerang 1990.
  • Krafft Freiherr von Crailsheim: History of Amerang Castle . Amerang 1969.
  • Werner Meyer: Castles in Upper Bavaria. Weidlich, Würzburg 1986, ISBN 3-8035-1279-4 , pp. 206-207.
  • Franz Prince zu Sayn-Wittgenstein: Castles in Bavaria. Residences and country estates in old Bavaria and Swabia . Beck, Munich 1972, pp. 70-71.
  • Michael Weithmann: Castles and palaces in Bavaria . Lower Austrian Press House, St. Pölten u. a. 2003, ISBN 3-85326-175-2 , pp. 65-66.
  • Wolfgang Felix Schmitt: Amerang Castle . In: Joachim Zeune, Wolfgang Felix Schmitt, Dirk Lau: Fascination castles and palaces. Upper Bavaria . Weltbild Augsburg 2006, pp. 57–61.
  • Stefan Uhl: Amerang Castle. Notes on building history. In: Castles and Palaces . Vol. 36, No. 2, 1995, ISSN  0007-6201 , pp. 88-98.

Web links

Commons : Amerang Castle  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Werner Meyer: Castles in Upper Bavaria . Weidlich, Würzburg 1986, ISBN 3-8035-1279-4 , p. 207.
  2. ↑ a b c M. Weithmann: Castles and Palaces in Bavaria , 2003, p. 65.
  3. ↑ a b c d e Schloss Amerang on burgenwelt.org , accessed on November 23, 2013.
  4. ↑ a b c Wolfgang Felix Schmitt: Schloss Amerang , 2006, p. 58.
  5. ↑ a b F. Prinz zu Sayn-Wittgenstein: Schlösser in Bayern , 1986, p. 70.
  6. ^ Werner Meyer: Castles in Upper Bavaria . Weidlich, Würzburg 1986, ISBN 3-8035-1279-4 , p. 206.
  7. ↑ Wolfgang Felix Schmitt: Schloss Amerang , 2006, p. 60.
  8. ↑ a b c d e f F. Prince zu Sayn-Wittgenstein: Schlösser in Bayern , 1986, p. 71.
  9. ↑ M. Weithmann: Castles and Palaces in Bavaria , 2003, p. 66.
  10. ↑ a b Information on the castle renovation on the website of the German Foundation for Monument Protection ( Memento from 23 September 2015 in the Internet Archive ).
  11. ↑ a b Cornelia Baumann-Oelwein: Architectural monuments endangered - architectural monuments saved. Bavaria. In: Castles and Palaces . Vol. 39, No. 3, 1998, ISSN  0007-6201 , p. 181.
  12. ↑ Wolfgang Felix Schmitt: Schloss Amerang , 2006, p. 57.
  13. ↑ Wolfgang Felix Schmitt: Schloss Amerang , 2006, p. 59.
  14. ↑ Wolfgang Felix Schmitt: Schloss Amerang , 2006, p. 61.

Coordinates: 47 ° 58 ′ 54.4 "  N , 12 ° 18 ′ 25.2"  E