Burgellern Castle

Burgellern Castle in Scheßlitz-Burgellern

The Burgellern Castle is a castle in Burgellern near Bamberg. The former Domkapitelsche residence from the 18th century now houses a hotel and a restaurant.

history

The earliest sources refer to a medieval castle under Konrad von Giech when the chapel was consecrated in 1342. Further construction work under the changing gentlemen remains in the dark. It was not until 1726 that a letter from Marquard Wilhelm Graf von Schönborn , Provost of Bamberg , documented that he converted Burgellern Castle into a residence and stayed there many times in the following years. In 1772 his successor built the office building in the palace gardens. In November 1802, as a result of the secularization, the domkapitel property in Burgellern passed into electoral Bavarian property. The state administration sold the "Aerarialgut zu Burgellern" for 38,025 guilders in a document dated May 24, 1810to the court factor Seligmann Samuel Hesslein zu Bamberg, who in turn sold it to the brother of the last Bamberg prince-bishop, Lieutenant General Leopold Freiherr von Buseck .

Burgellern Castle around 1900

From around 1821 the castle was owned by his sons Karl Theodor and Friedrich Carl von Buseck. During the time of the Buseck ownership, the castle must have been considerably rebuilt. A lithograph by the painter Karl Theodor von Buseck from 1821 shows the baroque condition of the two-wing complex. In the 19th century, the high mansard roof was replaced by a mezzanine floor under a low pitched roof. The castle was redesigned in a classical style and after 1839 received an oriental interior. As a result of a trip to the Orient by the Buseck brothers with Duke Max in Bavaria in 1838, several salons and cabinets were entirely decorated with oriental wall and ceiling paintings and furnished in an oriental style. During this time, the Bavarian nobility met in Burgellern, including King Maximilian in 1853 , who, like Ludwig I or Duke Max, was friends with the Barons von Buseck.

When the Buseck brothers died unmarried and childless in 1860 and 1866, the inheritance passed to the son of their sister Caroline von Thünefeld, née von Buseck. Rudolf von Thünefeld moved to Burgellern in the 1880s. Under him, the office building was converted into a car depot and a pump house was built in the castle park in 1896. The pump house, built in the style of a romantic castle, was used to operate the fountain in the castle park. Von Thünefeld also died unmarried on April 12, 1906. The von Buseck brothers and Rudolf von Thünefeld are buried in the burial chapel of the baroque Katharina Magdalena chapel at Burgellern. Adam Schäfer created the mighty black marble tumblers . The inheritance passed to the family von Bodeck , who were related on the mother's side, but they could not keep the property in debt. It was offered for sale piece by piece. A large part of the inventory went to the art trade.

In 1908 the Austrian Lieutenant Gottlieb Hertschik, who came from Altbunzlau in Bohemia and had been in the Egyptian military, bought the castle for 100,000 gold marks together with his wife Elisabeth Nierstrasz, who ran the Elisabeth-Hertschick Children's Home there from 1934 before the National Socialist People's Welfare took over the castle in 1936 and built the first maternal home in Ostmark there. During the Second World War, 1944/45, the palace housed an outstation of the Bamberg State Women's Clinic . During this time around 1500 children were born in Burgellern Castle.

Burgellern Castle around 1940

After the war, 1948–62, a lung sanatorium was housed in the castle under the direction of the pulmonologist Shift. After years of vacancy, the castle housed a religious community, the Morija Mission, from 1978 to 1982. Until 1994, the Topfs ran a Christian conference center in the castle. During the subsequent vacancy, the building and the seven-hectare park fell into disrepair.

It was not until the transition to private ownership in 2005 that the castle was saved from deterioration. With the renovation and conversion of the castle into a hotel and restaurant business by the Kastner family from Bayreuth, the gradual reconstruction began in 2006. The network of paths in the park was restored, the castle opened in 2008, the natural swimming pool reactivated and the restored so-called water castle (pump house) reopened in 2013. Today the castle offers a total of 22 guest rooms as well as meeting and event rooms.

Web links

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

• Burgellern.de

Individual evidence

1. ^ Domarus, Max: Marquard Wilhelm Graf von Schönborn. Eichstätt 1961.
2. ↑ Kastner, Birgit: A journey to the Orient. Sennefeld 2010.
3. ↑ State Archives Bamberg, G49

Coordinates: 49 ° 59 ′ 16.1 ″  N , 11 ° 2 ′ 42.7 ″  E