Birkenfeld Castle (Haßberge)

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The main building from the south

The Birkenfeld Castle is located in Birkenfeld , about two kilometers west of the market Maroldsweisach in the district Haßberge in Unterfranken . The large estate is one of the most important castles of the 18th century in Lower Franconia. A special feature is the conception as a rural villa , which was uniformly planned and implemented from the main residential building to the agricultural farm in the years 1738–1752.

history

View from the village street

At the beginning of the 14th century, Birkenfeld was owned by some servants of the Counts of Henneberg. Around 1350 the Zollner were wealthy here, towards the end of the 15th century those of Hutten appeared in the documents. After the death of the last Birkenfeld Hutten, Johann Philipp Friedrich, rule over the heirs came to the von Wöllwarth family . In the 19th century, the Counts of Ortenburg finally inherited the complex, which is still in their possession today. From 1994 to 1997 the main building had to be statically secured, which was due to some design errors from the construction period.

The existing palace construction goes back to the aforementioned Johann Philipp Friedrich von Hutten. Construction began in 1738 and the interior was not finished until 1775. The previous system is documented by precise plan recordings and drawings. The almost square core castle with its two corner towers was surrounded by farm buildings and stables. Around 1742 the old core building had already been replaced by the present manor house. The old farm buildings were then gradually demolished and replaced by the existing buildings until around 1752. A large farmyard was set up to the south-east and a kitchen garden to the south.

Building description

The entrance to the castle district

The market town of Birkenfeld actually only consists of the large castle complex and a few residential buildings on the street and on the mountainside. The castle district is accessible from the street through a driveway flanked by lions on sandstone pillars. The three-story main building in the north sits on the foundations of the former moated castle, which is noticeable in the slightly irregular floor plan. The restrained structure consists of embossed corner pilasters on the edges and the slightly protruding central risalite , which is terminated by a flat triangular gable. The four palace wings are grouped around a tiny atrium and the main staircase and are covered by hipped roofs. The stairwell has its own roof.

To the south-west and south-east, single-storey commercial buildings flank the courtyard , which are bordered on the sides by two-storey pavilions . The eastern stables wing and the western coach house wing have mansard roofs and hip roofs over the pavilions.

At right angles to the bailiff's pavilion in the east wing is the large farmyard with stables, a former blacksmith's shop and metalworking shop. These one to two-story utility buildings are also represented by pavilions with mansard roofs. In the southwest, the orangery pavilion complements the ensemble.

Inside the villa-like main building, the unusually rich decoration of the 18th century has largely been preserved. The stucco work was done in three stages. Carlo Galdini worked in the rooms from 1741/42 , Johann Jakob Berg worked from 1752 to 1754. The rich rococo stucco work on the upper floors goes back to the local master Bernhard Hellmuth, the wall and ceiling frescoes to Johann Franz Gout. The decoration of the “Italian” dining room was done entirely al fresco . It depicts scenes from Greek mythology, such as Mercury and Argus and Apollo and Daphne . Due to his high position at the Ansbacher Hof, the client was able to attract the best artistic talent from this area for his project.

The builders

The noble palace building is clearly based on the margravial buildings of Ansbach. The young Johann David Steingruber was selected as the master builder, but at that time he was still quite inexperienced. The former Ansbach court building director Karl Friedrich von Zocha , who probably advised an aristocratic committee under the builder Johann Philipp Friedrich von Hutten, played a major role in the design of the complex . Some of the structural deficiencies in the construction could also be due to the participation of this committee of noble “gentlemen” architects.

Appreciation

Similar to the neighboring Burgpreppach , Schloss Birkenfeld has received little attention from academic research. The few investigations dealt mainly with the unusually high quality equipment. Around 1974, Franz von Sayn-Wittgenstein saw “nothing special at all, other than a larger manor…” in architecture . Such an assessment certainly does not do justice to the importance of this remote “villa rustica” with its echoes of older French and Dutch architectural traditions. As a work of the Protestant Ansbach early classicism , the castle stands in clear contrast to the absolutist, counter-Reformation architecture of some neighboring castle buildings such as Burgpreppach Castle . A similarly designed system is only found in Ullstadt in Franconia .

literature

  • The art monuments of the Kingdom of Bavaria. Volume 3: The art monuments of Lower Franconia & Aschaffenburg. Issue 5: Georg Lill, Felix Mader : District Office Hofheim. Oldenbourg, Munich 1912 (Unchanged reprint. Ibid 1983, ISBN 3-486-50459-2 ).
  • Anton Rahrbach, Jörg Schöffl, Otto Schramm: Palaces and castles in Lower Franconia - A complete representation of all palaces, manors, castles and ruins in the Lower Franconian independent cities and districts . Hofmann Verlag, Nuremberg 2002, ISBN 3-87191-309-X , pp. 155–156.
  • Volker Rößner: Palace construction of the 18th century in the knight canton of Baunach (= publications of the Society for Franconian History Würzburg eV Series 8: Sources and representations on Franconian art history 12). Degener, Neustadt / Aisch 2000, ISBN 3-7686-9272-8 . (At the same time: Bamberg, Univ., Diss.).

Web links

Commons : Schloss Birkenfeld  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Graphic reconstruction of the construction process at Rößner, Figure 83
  2. ↑ Rößner, p. 103

Coordinates: 50 ° 11 ′ 40.6 ″  N , 10 ° 36 ′ 52.1 ″  E