Auhof Castle (blind market)

Auhof Castle in Blindenmarkt

The Schloss Auhof is in the south of the market town of blind market in the district of Melk in Lower Austria . The castle as a religious house of the order Servants of Jesus and Mary is a listed building .

history

Originally the building was a Meierhof (called Hof zu Au auf dem Ybbsfeld ) of a hunting lodge , which was mentioned in a document in 1396 in the fief book of Duke Albrechts IV and which came off in the 18th century. The Meierhof was expanded to look like a castle in the 16th century and was connected to the Karlsbach rulership. The building went to Stephan Reitner in a document in 1564 and was owned by the Princes of Starhemberg from 1684 to 1933 . Until 1848, the castle served the Starhembergers as the administrative, rulership and regional court seat . After that it remained the seat of the property administration and the forestry office for the princely Starhemberg property.

From 1933, Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg sold it to the private citizen Siegfried Hofer, who lost it to a German settlement company from 1938. Recovered in 1951, Hofer sold the castle to the Kneissel company in 1960. Only three years later it was sold to the Haslmayr-Grassegg company, which set up a sportswear factory and expanded the castle in the following years with additions. In 1993, the operation had to be stopped and was again sold a year later to a private person who the entire estate of the Congregation as a gift bequeathed.

Since 1994 the castle has belonged to the Order of the Servants of Jesus and Mary (SJM - Servi Jesu et Mariae). In 1996 the first members moved into what is now the Auhof Monastery . In the following years, extensive renovation and renovation work was carried out. In 2018 the novitiate of the order left the Auhof and moved to Haus Assen in Germany.

architecture

The castle was built in the 16th and 17th centuries and its core has been preserved. Conversions and additions took place in the late 18th century and in the 1960s. The two-storey, three-wing building open to the west has a hipped roof . The long north-south central wing in the east seems to be the oldest part of the castle, above whose double-winged gate entrance painted with rhombuses there is a large composite coat of arms made of light sandstone under a wide triangular gable . The northern short crossbar was extended by an eight-axis extension.

literature

• The art monuments of Austria. Dehio Lower Austria south of the Danube 2003 . Blind Market, Former Gutshof (Castle) Auhof, p. 277.
• Franz Xavier Joseph Schweickhardt (Knight of Sickingen): Presentation of the Archduchy of Austria , Volume XIII, Vienna 1838; In it: Auhof , p. 134 ff. And Die Fideicommiß = Herrschaft Auhof , p. 136–139.

Web links

Commons : Auhof Castle (Blindenmarkt)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Entry about Auhof Castle on Lower Austria Burgen online - Institute for Reality Studies of the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times, University of Salzburg

Individual evidence

1. ^ Gl: Order moves novitiate to Lippborg. In: The bell online. March 29, 2018, accessed March 30, 2018 . 

Coordinates: 48 ° 7 ′ 23.1 ″  N , 14 ° 59 ′ 21.5 ″  E