Blumenthal Castle (Vaals)

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Blumenthal Castle, view from the east

Blumenthal Castle (also Bloemendal Castle , Dutch Kasteel Bloemendal ) is a palatial mansion on the western edge of the center of Vaals . Built as a private residence at the end of the 18th century, it became a nunnery and boarding school in the mid-19th century , which lasted until the 1970s. The facility has been run as a hotel since 1992. The castle is located 500 meters from the German border on Bloemendalstraat, a parallel street to Maastrichterlaan, the main thoroughfare in Vaals. An inside tour is not possible due to the hotel business, but the castle park and garden are open to the public.

history

Place of residence Blumenthal

Blumenthal Castle before the renovations in the 19th century; Watercolor by Philippus van Gulpen

In the heyday of his work, the Aachen textile manufacturer Johann Arnold von Clermont , who had settled in Vaals at Vaalsbroek Castle since 1761 , had a magnificent house built opposite his weaving mill in what was then "Lugenthal" from 1791 . The plans for this were provided by the Milanese architect and builder Joseph Moretti , who lives in Aachen and who had worked for Clermont for many years. He made use of the early classical Louis-seize style , which was popular at the time .

In August 1795, Clermont and his family moved into the building, which had been half-finished by then, but did not live to see its completion because he died in December 1795. Construction was finished under his son Johann Adam. The house was then a rectangular cube with a mansard roof and a small tower as a crowning over the ballroom at the back of the building. The construction costs are said to have been 160,000 Aachen thalers. The family received the French Empress Joséphine de Beauharnais , Napoleon's wife , with her daughter Hortense there in 1805 . Napoleon's sister Pauline even contemplated buying the property in 1811, but that never happened.

Due to the consequences of the contribution , the abolition of customs borders by Prussia from 1815 and the declining orders for the cloth industry, the Clermont family could no longer hold the property. After Johann Adam's death in 1826 it was supposed to be sold, but no interested party could be found. The manor house stood empty for several years before it was sold on September 14, 1846 with around 1,800  rods of land for 35,000  francs to Aachen city councilor Johann Wilhelm von Lommessem, son of district administrator Gerhard von Lommessem and grandson of Mayor Johann Wilhelm Gottfried von Lommessem .

Nunnery and boarding school

Shortly after its acquisition, von Lommessem received the approval of the Dutch King Wilhelm II to give the castle to the Catholic Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus ( French: Dames du Sacré-Cœur de Jesus ) in order to create a nunnery with an attached boarding school for the daughters of nobles and well-to-do families. Lommessem's daughters Anna, a friend of Clara Fey , and Caroline were among the founders of this monastery because they were members of the order themselves. The first nuns moved in on February 8, 1848, and the palace was consecrated in March. The girls' boarding school, whose most famous boarding school students included Rose Kennedy , mother of American President John F. Kennedy , was officially opened two months later on May 17, 1848. For the monastery and the boarding school, Blumenthal Castle was supplemented by two long side wings. The mansion received an additional storey, which was closed off by a flat hipped roof. Inside, a large part of Clermont's facilities was significantly changed or was lost. For example, the ballroom was converted into a chapel (consecration on June 2, 1848) and the Adam and Eve statues at its entrance were replaced by Maria and Joseph figures. The outside area was also changed by the nuns. In order to seal off the monastery from the outside world, the sisters had it surrounded by a man-high wall. At the same time as the construction of the south-east wing, the landscaped garden, which was laid out in the entrance area in the first half of the 19th century, was extended to the south-east. Today this part is a public park . In the garden area at the back of the castle, the changes were limited to the planting of a few solitary trees.

In 1855 the foundation stone was laid for a new chapel, which was consecrated in 1859 to the " Mother of Seven Sorrows " and built by the Aachen master builder Schmalbach. It was in the neo-Gothic style and stood at right angles to the northwest wing at the end. Adjacent to the chapel in the north-west wing was an oratory with a stuccoed neo-Gothic coffered ceiling . In 1862 a fire broke out in the main building, which particularly damaged the old chapel and the Way of the Cross , which is why a new Way of the Cross was built before 1865.

During the German occupation in World War II , the monastery was converted into a hospital with 350 beds from 1940 to 1944 . Boarding and school operations could not be resumed until 1947. The steadily declining number of schoolgirls from 1970 onwards prevented the school from running properly, and so the monastery was given up in 1976 and sold to the municipality of Vaals in 1978 for 2.5 million guilders .

  • Anna von Lommessem, co-founder

  • Auguste von Sartorius , superior 1861–1881

  • Schoolgirls from Blumenthal

  • Aerial photo from the time of the monastery

  • former monastery chapel

hotel

After a long period of uncertainty, the Van der Valk Group finally took over the vacant facility in November 1990 to set up a hotel. The symbolic selling price was one guilder. Numerous modifications had to be made for the planned use. The two side wings and the monastery chapel from the 19th century were torn down. Instead, two new wings with a slightly curved floor plan were built. They are adapted to the existing mansion in the center of the complex in terms of size, appearance and construction materials. The cost of this was 12.25 million guilders, which were borne by the hotel chain, the Province of Limburg , the Rijksdienst voor de Monumentenzorg and the municipality. After around two years of renovation, the hotel opened on December 19, 1992. In 2003 and 2004 extensive renovations of the castle took place, which today is not only a hotel but also an event location for training courses, company parties, weddings and celebrations of the upscale kind.

description

Gate system

Main gate on the northeast side

The approximately 2.5-  hectare castle area is surrounded on three sides by a brick wall, which on the north-east side of the road dates from the 18th century and was extended in 1848 by the sections on the other two sides. The wall facing the street has a cornice made of bluestone and is divided into sections by bluestone pillars. It is crowned by a low picket fence .

Access is through a gate from the late 18th century in the middle of the northeast side, to which a straight avenue planted with elms leads. Its large central gate made of wrought iron is flanked by two pillars made of Namur bluestone. In the past, these pillars were crowned by vases. There are narrow side gates on both sides, which were probably only installed there around 1850. The large central gate has two wrought iron arched attachments. While the upper one carries a lantern in the middle, the lower one is occupied by small trident and shows in the middle the emblem of the Order of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Directly behind the gate there used to be a bridge over the moat there , which ran parallel to the street. After it was backfilled around 1850 or in the second half of the 19th century, the bridge became redundant. Their parapet still exists today.

Mansion

Blumenthal Castle, back

The mansion is a wide 13-axis brick building in the Louis-seize style. Its three storeys rise on a high base. To the north-west and south-east, two lower, two-storey wing buildings with segmented arched windows adjoin it , in which the hotel rooms and service rooms are located. Its flat hipped roof is covered with slate and was restored in 1991. The masonry of the manor house and the side wings are whitewashed, only the surfaces of the two decorative central projections on the long sides are plastered and painted yellow. Namur bluestone was used for cornices, pilaster strips , window and door frames and other decorative elements.

The risalits take up the middle three axes and are closed off by a classicistic triangular gable with a clock. On the top floor, its axes are marked by pairs of neoclassical arched windows . The double-winged main portal is located in the middle of the risalit on the ground floor of the north-western entrance facade . A representative, two-flight flight of stairs with wrought-iron railing in the Louis-Seize style leads up to it. On this side of the first floor there is a balcony with a similar, wrought-iron railing. A five-sided extension from the middle of the 19th century is in front of the ground floor of the rear central projection. It has corner pilasters and large arched windows. Its roof is used as a terrace , the wrought-iron parapet of which is attached between low square pillars.

The interior of the manor house has undergone two fundamental changes in the course of history: the first time when the castle became a monastery, and a second time when it was converted into a hotel. The former ballroom is now a luxurious bridal suite, which is called the Rose Kennedy Suite in memory of the most famous boarding school student Blumenthal. The current appearance of the vestibule is the result of a restoration based on models from the time after the fire in 1862.

Castle park and garden

Schematic site plan of the palace complex

Within the castle area, the terrain rises evenly from the street side. The front, lower part is taken up by the palace park, which is designed as a landscape garden. However, its dimensions are only a fraction of its previous size. Today it occupies the area in front of the castle and on its sides. It used to extend to a large area southeast of the castle. Today, this area is largely a public park and a small part of it is modernly built over. The landscaped garden on the front was created in the 19th century. In addition to the two round water basins with fountains  , there are still some groups of trees and solitary trees such as old beeches , maples and chestnuts from that time . A statue of the Virgin Mary from the second half of the 19th century stands between the water basins and reminds of the time when the complex was a monastery. It rests on a high square sandstone base and was erected there by the nuns.

The historically more valuable part lies to the southwest behind the manor house and is the remainder of the terrace garden laid out in the late 18th century under Johann Arnold von Clermont . The designs for the three formal levels with water basins and fountains may have come from Joseph Moretti. Blumenthal's garden is one of the few plants in the Netherlands - if not the only one - whose basic design elements of a terrace garden have been preserved, because changes in the 19th century were limited to the planting of a few solitary trees such as beech, oak , ash and maple . The individual garden levels are connected to one another by stairs. A monumental, double-flight staircase of honor leads from the castle - lying in its central axis - to the narrow, first terrace. The retaining walls of the stairs are made of brick, the steps of Namur bluestone. On the first terrace there is an elaborately worked gate between carved bluestone gate pillars on which vases used to stand. The gate dates from the 18th century and is crowned by an oval wrought iron shield showing two intertwined Cs (for Clermont). Directly behind him, a simple second staircase in the central axis of the complex leads to the second, higher garden terrace with a large elongated water basin and several fountains. The basin takes up almost the entire length of this level. At the south-western end there is another set of stairs - again in the central axis. Its two runs lead to a platform from which another, short staircase leads to the top garden terrace. The retaining wall of the two flights of stairs has a niche in which a small fountain is integrated. This was probably also designed by Moretti. At the southwest end of the central axis is on the top terrace overlooking the garden wall in a niche on a pedestal a statue of Mary from around 1900. Their niche is by a gable with pinnacles crowned, a in the tympanum rosette is. There used to be a saying on a sculpted ribbon, but it is no longer recognizable today.

  • Landscape garden, now a public park

  • Virgin Mary statue in front of the castle

  • Terrace garden

  • Double lower staircase of honor

  • Lattice gate

  • Water basin and upper stairs

literature

  • Marcel Bauer et al .: On the way in Couven's footsteps. Grenz-Echo Verlag, Eupen 2005, ISBN 90-5433-187-9 , pp. 197-199.
  • Jacqueline Depierreux (Ed.): Schlösser an der Maas. Tourist Association of the Province of Liège u. a., Liège 2006, p. 110.
  • Wim Hupperetz, Ben Olde Meierink, Ronald Rommes (eds.): Kastelen in Limburg. Burchten en landhuizen (1000-1800). Matrijs, Utrecht 2005, ISBN 90-5345-269-9 , pp. 455-456.
  • Josef Liese: The classic Aachen, Volume 1: Johann Arnold von Clermont (1728–1795), his gender and his work in the "Vaalser Paradies" (= Aachen contributions to local research. Volume 17). Mayerʼsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Aachen 1936, pp. 76, 79, 86, 97, 127, 138.
  • Manfred Nimax: Moated castles and aristocratic residences in Dutch South Limburg between Aachen and Maastricht. Nimax, Aachen 2008, ISBN 978-3-936342-71-0 , pp. 9-10.
  • Mathieu Schlijper: Castle Bloemendal: vernieuwd en behoude. In: Heemschut. Tijdschrift van de bond Heemschut. Vol. 70, No. 1, 1993, ISSN  0017-9515 , pp. 4-7 ( PDF ; 3.9 MB).
  • JF van Agt: South Limburg. Vaals, Wittem en Slenaken (= De Nederlandse Monuments van Geschiedenis en Kunst ). Staatsuitgeverij, 's-Gravenhage 1983, ISBN 90-12-04096-5 , pp. 102-109 ( digitized version ).

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ^ JF van Agt: Zuid-Limburg. Vaals, Wittem en Slenaken. 1983, p. 102.
  2. ^ A b Jacqueline Depierreux: Castles on the Maas. 2006, p. 110.
  3. ↑ a b c J. F. van Agt: Zuid-Limburg. Vaals, Wittem en Slenaken. 1983, p. 103.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f Adolph Vaessen: History of Vaals. Contributions from the records, which Kaplan A. Vaessen edited and compiled according to the documents collected. In: Vaalser Anzeiger. 1923, 1924, 1925 ( online ).
  5. ↑ a b c J. F. van Agt: Zuid-Limburg. Vaals, Wittem en Slenaken. 1983, p. 105.
  6. ↑ Wim Hupperetz, Ben Olde Meierink, Ronald Rommes (ed.): Kastelen in Limburg. Burchten en landhuizen (1000-1800). 2005, p. 455.
  7. ↑ a b c d Castle history on the hotel's website , accessed January 5, 2020.
  8. ↑ a b Mathieu Schlijper: Kasteel Bloemendal: vernieuwd en behoude. 1993, p. 6.
  9. ↑ a b c Mathieu Schlijper: Kasteel Bloemendal: vernieuwd en behoude. 1993, p. 4.
  10. ↑ Entry of the brick wall in the national list of monuments of the Netherlands , accessed January 5, 2020.
  11. ↑ a b Entry of the gate in the national list of monuments of the Netherlands , accessed January 5, 2020.
  12. ↑ a b c d Entry of the palace gardens in the national list of monuments of the Netherlands , accessed January 5, 2020.
  13. ↑ Entry of the mansion in the national list of monuments of the Netherlands , accessed January 5, 2020.
  14. ↑ a b J. F. van Agt: Zuid-Limburg. Vaals, Wittem en Slenaken. 1983, p. 106.
  15. ↑ a b Entry of the Virgin Mary statue in the national list of monuments of the Netherlands , accessed January 5, 2020.
  16. ↑ a b Entry of the lowest garden staircase in the national list of monuments of the Netherlands , accessed January 5, 2020.
  17. ↑ Entry of the top garden staircase in the national list of monuments of the Netherlands , accessed January 5, 2020.
  18. ↑ Entry of the statue in the national list of monuments of the Netherlands , accessed January 5, 2020.

Coordinates: 50 ° 46 ′ 22.1 ″  N , 6 ° 0 ′ 47.1 ″  E