Bingenheim Castle

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View from the bridge to the outer bailey of the residential tower ( high building )

Bingenheim Castle is a 15th to 17th century castle complex in Echzell - Bingenheim in the Wetterau district in Hesse , which emerged from an older castle complex . In the Middle Ages , the castle was initially owned by Fulda . It reached its greatest importance in the late 17th century when Wilhelm Christoph von Hessen-Homburg , the Landgrave of Bingenheim , had it expanded into a palace-like residence.

Daniel Meisner / Eberhard Kieser : Thesaurus Philopoliticus or Political Treasure Chest (1630) with castle and place Bingenheim.
Portal at the long building
Long construction , field side
View of the bridge to the outer bailey, in the background the Hohe Bau

history

The town of Bingenheim, first mentioned in a document in 817, is located near the Horloff lowland at a river crossing and the intersection of medieval highways. In Roman times the Limes ran here not far from Echzell Castle . A castle complex as the forerunner of today's Bingenheim Castle is first mentioned in a document in 1064. The castle was the administrative center of the Abbey of Fulda associated Fuldischen Mark .

Part of the fiefdom was owned by the von Munzenberg family . With the Munzenberg inheritance , the property came to the Falkensteiner in 1255 and to the Ziegenhain county in 1311 . The abbey occupied the castle with castle men from the 13th to 15th centuries . In 1357, Prince Henry VII of Fulda received permission from Emperor Charles IV to make the town in front of the castle a town. However, no corresponding development took place.

In 1423 Fulda finally sold the castle to Philip I of Nassau-Saarbrücken , to whom it had been pledged since 1410. In the meantime, the castle was also owned by the Lords of Hanau . In 1570 it fell to Ludwig IV of Hesse-Marburg , and in 1604 to Hesse-Darmstadt . Destruction from the time of the Thirty Years War is not known. In 1648 there was another change of ownership: Landgrave Georg II of Hessen-Darmstadt ceded the office of Bingenheim to his son-in-law Wilhelm Christoph von Hessen-Homburg .

Wilhelm Christoph resided in Bingenheimer Schloss and was therefore called Landgrave of Bingenheim . He had the system rebuilt in the style of the time and adapted to his needs. Two plaques in German and Latin on the portal of the Lange Bau testify to his construction activity . After his death in 1681 the property reverted to Hessen-Darmstadt. Later a Darmstadt forest administration was housed in the castle.

Since 1962, the castle has been owned by the Bingenheim community , which has maintained a healing and care institute for children, young people and adults there since 1950. For this purpose, modern, functional buildings were erected in the area of ​​the outer bailey and the area surrounding the Bingenheim Palace. A visit from the inside is not possible.

investment

Bingenheim Castle today presents itself as a castle-like converted castle complex, the substance of which dates from the 15th to 17th centuries. The outer and inner bailey are surrounded by deep moats that are now dry. The outer bailey can be reached via a three-arched stone bridge. There was a drawbridge over the moat between the outer and core of the castle, which was replaced by a two-arched stone bridge in 1729 due to its disrepair.

In the main castle there are two castle buildings, the high building and the long building . The four-story residential tower ( high building ) is the oldest part of the complex. With its corner towers protruding on consoles, it appears late Gothic . A staircase was added in 1679, an escape staircase made of steel outside only recently. You can still see the beginnings of the curtain wall on the building, as well as the remains of two bay windows on the outside.

The long building represents the actual residential building of the castle from the time of the Bingenheim landgrave. The two-storey building has distinctive stepped gables and Gothic pointed arched doors. Portal inscriptions indicate a renovation under Landgrave Wilhelm Christoph in 1675. In addition, there is the cubic kitchen with a mansard roof from the second half of the 18th century.

In the outer bailey, the princely office building built in 1723 has been preserved in ornamental framework . An elongated half-timbered building, which served as a manorial fruit storage with barn and stables, was demolished in the 1970s. Remnants of two round corner towers were integrated into the modern development. They date from around 1500 and, like a large part of the preserved circular wall, are crowned with battlements.

literature

  • Barbara Dölemeyer: Landgrave Wilhelm Christoph, the "Bingenheimer" - On the trail of the Homburg Landgraves in the Wetterau . In: Echzeller Geschichtshefte 11, 2001, pp. 15–41.
  • Siegfried RCT Enders: Monument Topography Federal Republic of Germany , Department: Architectural Monuments in Hesse. Wetteraukreis I. Ed. By the State Office for Monument Preservation Hesse , Vieweg, Braunschweig / Wiesbaden 1982, ISBN 3-528-06231-2 , pp. 204–207.
  • Georg Ulrich Großmann : South Hesse. Art guide. Imhof, Petersberg 2004, ISBN 3-935590-66-0 , p. 122f.
  • Rudolf Knappe: Medieval castles in Hessen. 800 castles, castle ruins and fortifications. 3. Edition. Wartberg-Verlag, Gudensberg-Gleichen 2000, ISBN 3-86134-228-6 , p. 348f.
  • Otto Schwarz: From the history of the castle in Bingenheim. In: Büdinger Geschichtsblätter 2, 1958, pp. 179f.
  • Rolf Müller (Ed.): Palaces, castles, old walls. Published by the Hessendienst der Staatskanzlei, Wiesbaden 1990, ISBN 3-89214-017-0 , pp. 93–95.

Web links

Commons : Schloss Bingenheim  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Daniel Meisner / Eberhard Kieser: Thesaurus Philopoliticus or Politisches Schatzkästlein Vol. 2 , facsimile reprint of the Frankfurt / Main edition 1625–1626 a. 1627–1631, Nördlingen 1992, book 5, no. 7.
  2. ↑ Knappe p. 348f.
  3. ^ Uta Löwenstein: County Hanau . In: Knights, Counts and Princes - Secular Dominions in the Hessian Area approx. 900–1806 = Handbook of Hessian History 3 = Publications of the Historical Commission for Hesse 63. Marburg 2014. ISBN 978-3-942225-17-5 , p. 209 .
  4. ↑ Palaces, castles, old walls. P. 93.
  5. ↑ To the chronicle of Bingenheim
  6. ↑ Monument topography, p. 207.

Coordinates: 50 ° 22 '24 "  N , 8 ° 53' 39.6"  E