Caputh Castle

View of the castle with Lake Templin around 1795,
gouache by Johann Friedrich Nagel

Ballroom

The Elector's vestibule

Willem Frederik van Royen , dwarf slayer on the Havel in front of Caputh around 1685 in the antechamber of the Electress with the oldest view of the castle

Alcove, bedchamber of the Electress

Ceiling painting with two putti

The Caputh Castle is located in the Caputh district of the Schwielowsee municipality near the Brandenburg state capital Potsdam on Lake Templin . It belongs to the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg and was the summer residence of the Brandenburg electors from the end of the 16th to the end of the 17th century.

History and building history

Caputh Castle is the only preserved castle in the Potsdam cultural landscape from the time of the Great Elector Friedrich Wilhelm and the Brandenburg Early Baroque . From 1995 to 1999 it was restored mainly by the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation for nine and a half million DM and with funds from the Cornelsen Cultural Foundation .

Beginnings

In 1594 the Electress Katharina acquired the knightly seat of Caputh from the von Rochow family . The summer residence built by the Electress was largely destroyed in the Thirty Years' War and was given to the electoral quartermaster Philip de Chiese (also Philippe de la Chièze) by the Great Elector in 1662 . On the old remains, he built a country house the size of nine to two window axes with a hipped gable roof , which still shapes the appearance of the castle today.

The Great Elector and Electress Dorothea

In 1671 the Great Elector repurchased the estate with all the lands and vineyards in exchange for a 150 Hufen (approx. 2,600 hectare) property in the Memel Delta in East Prussia and gave the early Baroque pleasure house to his second wife, Electress Dorothea of Brandenburg . The Electress extended the palace to a largely preserved, representative three-wing complex with a central risalit and a double curved flight of stairs on the north side, the main entrance from Lake Templin at the time. A small court of honor was created by adding two square corner pavilions on the south side. The rustication as discontinued at the time of the Electress Dorothea in bright ocher, as well as the frames of the windows with ear-shaped window surrounds . To preserve the high ballroom in the eastern part, the one-and-a-half-story castle was increased by half a storey with an attic . The fireback of the ballroom, dated 1684, and the only signed and dated ceiling painting in the antechamber of the elector ( Samuel Theodor Gericke , 1687) give indications of the duration of the expansion work . The Electress Dorothea also richly furnished the interior. The summer palace was her favorite place of residence, especially after the elector's death in 1688.

successor

After her death in 1689, the son of the Great Elector from his first marriage, Friedrich III. - from 1701 King Friedrich I in Prussia - Schloss Caputh returned from his half-siblings and gave it to his wife Sophie Charlotte in 1690 according to tradition . The palace returned it to the elector four years later, since it was dedicated to building the palace in Lietzenburg, known as Charlottenburg Palace from 1705 . Under Friedrich, Caputh experienced his most glamorous time as his favorite seat, equipped as a pleasure palace for festivities and hunting trips. The furniture was changed and in some rooms, such as the upper vestibule and the porcelain chamber, the stucco with strong acanthus leaves was renewed. His son and successor, King Friedrich Wilhelm I , also known as the soldier king , used the castle for hunting and created the well-known tiled hall . Frederick the Great leased the plant to a dye works for Turkish yarns and a weaving mill for English leather . At the end of the 18th century the garden was used as a fruit tree nursery. In 1820 the Prussian Lieutenant General August von Thümen bought the castle. His son Wilhelm von Thümen had the park redesigned according to Peter Joseph Lenné's beautification plan. Plaster reliefs with scenes from the Wars of Liberation were added over the doors of the ballroom. In 1908 it came into the possession of the von Willich family by inheritance. The castle ensemble, expropriated in the course of the land reform , was used as a vocational training facility from 1947. In November 1995 the Foundation Prussian Palaces and Gardens Berlin-Brandenburg took over the palace and carried out extensive restoration work. Caputh Castle has been open to the public since 1998. The castle, the castle park with the cavalier's house and the farmyard of the castle with outbuildings are under monument protection .

Side view
Caputh Castle, park and lake side
Caputh Castle, courtyard side
Typical for Lenné: lines of sight shape the park

Furnishing

Tiled hall

Sights include the lavishly decorated ballroom and the tiled hall in the basement , the walls and vaulted ceiling of which the soldier king Friedrich Wilhelm I had around 1720 equipped with around 7,500 blue and white Dutch faience tiles as a dining room for his hunting parties. After the tiled hall in Oranienbaum Castle near Wörlitz, it is the oldest and, because of its vaults, probably the most important in Germany. The vaults could be saved with an invisible concrete rib construction. Over a hundred damaged tiles were put together and retouched. 200 original tiles were bought later.

Home decor at the time of the Great Elector

The Elector's rooms are located adjacent to the ballroom in the eastern part of the palace and are smaller than the four bedrooms and living rooms and two cabinets of the Electress in the west of the palace. Baroque stucco ceiling and ceiling paintings by the two court painters Samuel Theodor Gericke and Augustin Terwesten from the time of Electress Dorothea have been almost completely preserved in the Elector's bedchamber, in the ballroom and in the Elector's preparation (rooms 18, 23, 24). The rooms were originally furnished with precious leather wallpapers and wall coverings. The interior furnishings include lacquer furniture, porcelain, faience and sculptures from the original furnishings or from the estate of Electress Dorothea from the Potsdam and Berlin palaces. The works of art exhibited today convey an impression of the development of courtly art and princely living culture around 1700. A table made of dark ebony with heart-shaped inlays made of ivory comes from the Berlin City Palace .

Dorothea set up a porcelain chamber in the western corner pavilion. This was the second porcelain chamber of its kind in Brandenburg after the porcelain cabinet of Electress Luise Henriette , the first wife of the Great Elector.

Painting collection

Lady with a Parrot by Willem van Mieris

The painting collection with more than a hundred of the original 300 works consists mainly of Dutch and Italian paintings. The first marriage of the Great Elector to Luise Henriette of Orange shaped the style of the electoral court.

The painting Lady with a Parrot by the painter Willem van Mieris (1662–1747) from Leiden was stolen as looted art by British soldiers from the Grunewald hunting lodge in Berlin after the Second World War . In the 1980s it appeared under a different attribution at Christie's and an exhibition and was offered to the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg in 2002. It has been on display in the cabinet in the Electress's hall since 2004. It was the most valuable picture from the estate of the Electress Dorothea, who had acquired it in 1689 shortly after its creation; it was one of her favorite pictures.

In the antechamber of the Elector there are portraits of the first twelve Roman Caesars between 1616 and 1625 by various Dutch and Flemish painters, presumably created for Johann Moritz von Nassau-Siegen .

park

Kavaliershaus, now a restaurant

The castle garden has a size of approx. 3.5 hectares. The park is on the shores of Lake Templin . The baroque park with sculptures and fountains, a terraced garden and many fruit trees was redesigned based on Lenné's beautification plan from 1830 with the southern end on the banks of the Havel . Between the Havel and the castle, the garden space was filled with loosely placed trees that just barely exposed the view of the river. Half of the garden was taken up by vegetable fields. Thick bushes and trees screened these beds. In Lenné's plans, the baroque visual relationships are not included. Chestnuts (chestnuts) were later planted as trees. The von Thümen family also built the Kavaliershaus between the castle and the Havel.

Events

Epiphany

On July 8, 1709, three crowned European heads met in Caputh Castle as part of the Epiphany . The Danish King Frederick IV and Augustus the Strong came in a magnificent ship . The host was the Prussian King Friedrich I. The two guests negotiated with the Prussian king about an alliance against Sweden. However, the friendship and neutrality pact concluded a few days later had little political significance.

The lock in literature

A detailed appraisal of the castle can be found in Theodor Fontane's " Walks through the Mark Brandenburg ". He describes the history and the personal impression of a visit in detail. Its presentation begins with the lines:

"Who has not heard of Caputh (that's the name of the village), who
, in the past, had the greatest ornament,
When Dorothea, who still honors Brandenburg,
read the castle on the Havel stream as a widow's seat."

- Theodor Fontane

literature

Hans FW Fieck: Kaputh Castle near Potsdam. In: Journal of Construction . Volume 61 (1911), col. 247-260, plates 25-27. Digital copy (pdf) in the holdings of the Central and State Library Berlin .
Theodor Fontane: Hike through the Mark Brandenburg. Volume 3: Havelland.
General Directorate of the State Palaces and Gardens Potsdam-Sanssouci (ed.): The Great Elector as a collector and patron. Potsdam 1888.
General Directorate of the State Palaces and Gardens Potsdam-Sanssouci (Ed.): Potsdamer Palaces and Gardens. Building and gardening art from the 17th to the 20th century. Potsdam 1993.
Harri Günther: Peter Josef Lenné. VEB Verlag für Bauwesen, Berlin 1985.
Tita Hoffmeister: Caputh. Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-87584-423-8 .
August Kopisch: History of the Royal Palaces and Gardens in Potsdam, Berlin 1854.
Hellmut Lorenz (ed.): Berlin architecture of the baroque period. The drawings and notes from the travel diary of the architect Christoph Pitzler. Berlin 1998.
Gerd Schurig: The park of Caputh Castle. In: Nothing thrives without care. The Potsdam park landscape and its gardeners. Exhibition catalog SPSG, Potsdam 2011, pp. 24–29.
Gerd Schurig: Garden, Caputh. In: Bund Heimat und Umwelt in Deutschland (ed.): White paper on historical gardens and parks in the new federal states. 2. revised Ed., Bonn 2005, ISBN 3-925374-69-8 , p. 51 f.
Gerd Schurig: Caputh Castle Garden. In: Peter Joseph Lenné, Parks and Gardens in the State of Brandenburg, Catalog raisonné. Edited by BLDAM and SPSG, Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft Worms 2005, pp. 40–43.
Claudia Sommer: The Caputh Castle. In: Carmen Hohlfeld: Caputh and the Caputher. A cultural and historical foray. Ed. Municipal administration Caputh, Caputh 1992, pp. 22–32.
Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation (Ed.): Royal Palaces and Gardens in Brandenburg: Castle and Park Caputh , Texts: Claudia Sommer, Petra Reichert, Gerd Schurig. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin / Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-422-04011-3 .
Peter Jochen Winter: Be amazed where the majesties used to drink. Phoenix from Potsdam: The restored Caputh Castle opens the first rooms. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . dated October 16, 1998.

Web links

Commons : Schloss Caputh - collection of images

Individual evidence

↑ Julia Schmidt: The renovation cost nine million marks - all rooms accessible for the first time. Caputh Castle is reopened. . Berlin newspaper . September 10, 1999. Retrieved December 20, 2015.

↑ Dieter Weirauch: Happy ending after an art theft - "Lady with a Parrot" returned . In: The world . April 8, 2004. Retrieved September 14, 2015.

↑ Happy return of the "Lady with a Parrot" . April 7, 2004. Archived from the original on April 29, 2016. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved April 29, 2016. @1@ 2

^ Theodor Fontane, Walks through the Mark Brandenburg. Havelland, the landscape around Spandau, Potsdam, Brandenburg. Volume 3, Aufbau-Verlag, 1976, p. 400.

52.349111111111 13.000713888889Coordinates: 52 ° 20 ′ 56.8 " N , 13 ° 0 ′ 2.57" E

[1] Julia Schmidt: The renovation cost nine million marks - all rooms accessible for the first time. Caputh Castle is reopened. . Berlin newspaper . September 10, 1999. Retrieved December 20, 2015.

[2] Dieter Weirauch: Happy ending after an art theft - "Lady with a Parrot" returned . In: The world . April 8, 2004. Retrieved September 14, 2015.